After his sister’s nagging, energy-conservative Oreki joins the Classic Literature Club. However, he gets more than he bargained for when he is dragged into a 45-year-old mystery that surrounds their club room by the endlessly curious and intriguingly cute Chitanda. Alongside his club mates, he also finds himself dragged into a host of other cases by Chitanda’s curiosity, using his keen mind to come to logical solutions.
Despite some notable flaws, Hyouka is a special anime. It is a mystery series that focuses on very small and inconsequential mysteries, not horrible dark ones. If you are looking for more anime series like Hyouka, then look on below.
Anime Like Hyouka
For Fans of Lethargic Main Characters
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU
Hachiman Hikigaya firmly believes that a joyful youth is something that people make up just to lie to themselves. After writing an essay criticizing relationships, he is forced to join the Volunteer Service Club that is aimed at helping others solve their problems. With the only other member being the icy Yukino Yukinoshita, they use their wits and cold views on society to help others.
Surprisingly, these series have a lot in common. Both Hyouka and SNAFU are about low-energy, grumpy men being forced into a club where they end up helping others. While SNAFU is more about solving problems than mysteries, it has a lot of the same vibes, though more comedy.
Tanaka-Kun is Listless
For Tanaka, being listless is a way of life. He spends his every waking moment looking for ways to conserve his energy. However, it seems the whole world is out to change his lazy ways.
Both series have a high focus on lazy main characters doing whatever they can to save energy. However, while Hyouka has a pretty wholesome plot, Tanaka-kun is Listless is more about the gags and the comedy than anything else.
Natsume’s Book of Friends
For as long as he can remember, Takashi Natsume has been chased by spirits, but recently he discovered that the reason was because his deceased grandmother had passed on to him her “Book of Friends,” a book containing all the spirits she had brought under her control. Now Natsume realizes that these spirits haunt him in hopes of gaining freedom. With few friends, no loving home, and constantly hunted by malicious spirits, Natsume looks for a place where he belongs.
While Natsume isn’t necessarily lazy like Oreki, they do have some things in common. They live their lives essentially outcasted for various reasons. However, while the shows do have their differences, they are tied together by the fact that the main characters essentially “find their tribe,” as it were, by gathering a small group of friends.
For Fans of Club Shenanigans
Beyond the Boundary
As the last surviving member of her clan of spirit warriors, Mirai Kuriyama must use her special power of fighting using her blood in order to subdue Youmu, creatures that are the manifestation of negative human emotions. One day at school she happens across Akihito, a rare half-breed Youmu in human form. Immediately trying to kill him, she finds out he is an immortal being and the two strike up an impromptu friendship.
While both sharing beautiful animation, these shows are also bound together by the fact that the main characters end up joining clubs that were not what they thought. While Beyond the Boundary is very supernatural, Hyouka leans more towards the mystery. Regardless, both are not simple shows about school clubs,
Kokoro Connect
At Yamaboshi Academy, there is a club called the Student Cultural Society, a club of five students who don’t fit into any other clubs. Everything is normal and boring until one day the club members start switching bodies. Forced to be closer than ever before, emotional scars and hidden secrets are prepared to come out.
Again, these are two series that share the same distinctive KyoAni animation, so thus, they look beautiful. However, they are also both series about clubs that get tangled up in a mystery. In Kokoro Connect, they are thrust into the body-swapping mystery, but the members in Hyouka (outside the main character) go looking for mysteries.
Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions
Everyone has that stage in their life where they think themselves special, different from mere humans. This phenomenon is called Chunibyou Syndrome and most common in pre-pubescent children. In middle school, Yuuta Togashi thought himself the Dark Flame Master. He has since grown out of it upon entering high school and looks back at those cringe-worthy times with displeasure. Unfortunately, after a chance meeting with Rikka Takanashi, a girl believing to have a God in her eye, she attaches herself to him and brings that Chunibyou past back out.
Yuuta is notably more high energy than Oreki on his best day, but the similarity these shows share is in their plots. Both main males find themselves shanghaied into a club that doesn’t even do what the club is advertised to do. It is really just an excuse to goof off.
For Fans of Mystery Solving
Gosick
Kujou Kazuya is a transfer student to the elite Saint Marguerite Academy in the Southern European country of Sauville. However, because of his Japanese descent, he is shunned by the other students. One day in the library of the school, he ends up following a long blonde hair to a beautiful doll-like girl call Victorique de Blois who can predict the future, including their own currently entwined one. Together, the pair begin to solve the mysteries that are beginning to plague their surroundings.
While the tone and character design of Gosick vastly different from Hyouka, both of these series are about solving mysteries. Rather, they are about misfits solving mysteries. However, the mysteries in Hyouka are usually lighter in tone.
Heaven’s Memo Pad
Narumi Fujishima doesn’t really fit in at school, but still craves friends. When another misfit introduces him to a strange NEET girl that lives above a ramen shop, he is drafted into her ultra elite private detective agency.
Although the mysteries occasionally wander into darker territory, Heaven’s Memo Pad blends the intrigue of mystery with some comedy to lighten things up. Furthermore, both of the series also feature a main character with a personality that is not the most normal. Often they take advantage of that for comedy as well.
Detective School Q
Kyuu is a boy with a knack for logic and reasoning. In his desire to become a detective, he enrolls in the Dan Detective School where together with a programmer, a girl with a photographic memory, and a martial arts master, they solve crimes.
There are many mystery anime series in the sea, but very few are like Hyouka. The way it keeps its mysteries towards a lighter tone is particularly special. Detective School Q angles that way as well, but it doesn’t quite capture the innocence that is Hyouka’s mysteries.
If you have more anime series like Hyouka, let fans know in the comments section below.
