Shoushimin’s eccentric main characters begin their stories seeking normalcy. The contrast between their wishes and nature matches the way that the show’s framing, hellbent on appearing neutral, becomes unnerving even before it occasionally unleashes some outlandish stylization. A fascinating approach, best appreciated alongside its sibling series Hyouka.
Shoushimin is a mystery series featuring high schoolers, built around a guy with astonishing deductive skills and a quirky girl with whom he’s entangled. Right at the beginning of the story, their relationship with normalcy and societal expectations—what an ordinary school life is like, and how they feel about themselves in regards to it—is exposed to make a statement about those lead characters. After that, their growth and arc-based narratives advance at the tune of episodic mysteries; more often than not, the most down-to-earth, mundane puzzles you could imagine. This is all written by Honobu Yonezawa and set in his birthplace, the Gifu prefecture.
That is Shoushimin, and it is also Hyouka.
That strong link with its more popular sibling, a predecessor in both novel and anime form, cannot be understated. Even aspects you may find minor, like the Gifu setting, feel rather meaningful in the way they’re brought to life. The Shoshimin anime is tangibly, physically set to real-life locations… to the point of sometimes introducing Google Street View-induced errors, though they mostly fixed those when revising the episodes. Minor inconveniences aside, this approach makes it hard not to think about a previous series that not only had the same mindset, but that remains to this day a popular target for anime pilgrimage. It’s not much of a secret that the team behind this new adaptation had the Hyouka anime in mind.
It’s a bit of an unwritten rule not to explicitly mention works produced by different teams, unless they’re so far back in the past they’re embedded into culture itself. While there’s more leeway in these cases, this remains true even if they share DNA with your own work. If you never watched the video where Bocchi the Rock’s core staff explain why they moved on, there is an entire corner where the director repeatedly refers to Frieren without saying the elf’s name. In spite of that, the pamphlet for Shoshimin’s third Blu-ray release features a discussion between its producer and staff that repeatedly brings up Hyouka and its adaptation. They talk about it in the context of choosing the title for the show, as well as how the gap between books and anime can affect mystery-crafting; everyone carries a phone now, but not necessarily in the early 00s when Yonezawa first wrote many of these stories. Even when they arrive at different answers, they’re formulated in relation to that preceding work. After all, you can’t say that you’re not Hyouka without saying the word Hyouka.
The aspect of the show where that relationship becomes murkier, despite the beautiful results in the end, is the character designs. As it turns out, Yonezawa’s work wasn’t initially published with a commercial anime-like coat of paint. Hyouka’s Sneaker Bunko release presented itself more like a storybook that then drifted into the sketchier illustrations of Hisayo Uesugi, while the Kadokawa Bunko ones opted for photos on the cover instead. When it comes to Shoushimin, Wakako Katayama’s colorful paintings have nothing to do with the style present in the anime; neither do the two distinct manga serializations for its first arcs. Rather than entrusting the job of adapting those concepts to in-house personnel, this team sought the talent of Atsushi Saito—an animator trained at Kyoto Animation. While his tenure there was short, he is open about how much his time there influenced him. Most relevantly in this case, Saito had always kept up with a senior he admired: Hyouka’s designer Futoshi Nishiya, who (in an extremely uncommon event at the studio) even smuggled him into the production of Koe no Katachi where he led the animation.
Although in that same Shoshimin pamphlet Saito notes that he was given freedom to interpret the designs according to what he got out of the series, he also was explicitly asked to give the two leads a look that might make them popular at first glance. And so, when you ask an artist with this background to reimagine a source material tied to Nishiya’s previous work, with the addendum that it would be nice if they were trendy on their own like Hyouka’s titular duo remains to this day, the similar vibes in the results are a given. Shoshimin’s characters in animation don’t look like any other interpretation of Yonezawa’s work, but specifically the Hyouka anime. The designer himself highlighted similar points, like the somewhat realistic proportions in relation to his usual output, as well as the usage of the colorful eyes to spice it up.
This puts the Shoshimin adaptation in the slightly uncomfortable position of wanting to carve an identity of its own that fits the nature of this series, but also remaining so conscious of its predecessor that it can never leave its orbit. It places unfair expectations on the series, and I also don’t blame anyone who finds aspects like the design choices to be a tad too cynical given what happened to Hyouka’s core staff. Given that I’ve become very fond of Shoshimin in the end, you might be expecting a call to watch it while completely separating it from Hyouka.
That’s not it. You should watch Hyouka if you haven’t yet, and then proceed to experience Shoshimin with the ability to parse the dialogue between the two. As long as you keep reasonable expectations when it comes to the finesse of the production, this will allow you to enjoy Shoshimin even more, especially if you’re predisposed to like eccentric characters.
Let’s return to the beginning of each series. Hyouka opens up with Houtarou Oreki’s thoughts, contrasting society’s expectations of high school as a rosy, vibrant part of people’s lives with his preferred philosophy of energy conservation. Within minutes, his iconic meeting with Eru Chitanda traps him and compromises that entire mindset; it’s not a coincidence that this is conveyed through a plethora of colors, given that he’d used those as the core of his initial metaphor. Meanwhile, the introduction to Shoushimin follows Jougorou Kobato as he exposes his view of what an ordinary person is like. Talking to his sweets-loving partner Yuki Osanai, he describes that ideally mundane individual as someone who isn’t meddlesome and causes no trouble. Over the course of that first episode, you notice that the degree to which they intend to pass as ordinary already makes them big weirdos, and that they don’t even accomplish those dubious precepts of normalcy in the first place.
Neither of those initial statements sums up the true, honest nature of those protagonists, and they certainly don’t capture their entire character journeys. What they do, though, is sum up an attitude. Oreki and Kobato may not agree about what normalcy is at all, but the former knows that he’d rather betray society’s expectations of what a standard high school life is like, while the latter is the protagonist of the so-called Shoshimin: How to Become Ordinary. Whatever being normal entails, Kobato desires it as much as Oreki wants to stray away from it. This fundamental contrast in mindsets becomes a whole lot more interesting when you consider how each of them informs the general direction of their shows, in a way you can only appreciate in full by watching them both.
Again, let’s begin by observing the older sibling. 8 years ago, we wrapped up a short series of interviews relating to Hyouka with a short article addressing one of its most distinct elements: the fantasy within its mundanity. Series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Yasuhiro Takemoto was mindful of how much time is dedicated to very down-to-earth feelings, as well as exposition regarding mysteries that are also quite low stakes. To increase its charm, and especially considering that they were also interested in subjectivity as a core idea, Takemoto actively encouraged every other director to come up with outlandish imagery to accompany the understated, youthful mystery-solving. As a result, every episode of Hyouka has unique stylizations that enrich the flavor of the series—while often telling you something about a character in the process.
What about Shoushimin, then? The first thought that series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. Mamoru Kanbe conveys in his Blu-ray booklet interview is that he was worried about how to turn such a dialogue and exposition-heavy series into a visually compelling experience. Meaning that, for starters, both directors shared the same preoccupations. It’s worth noting that despite being less known nowadays, and even having his reputation tarnished somewhat by a Promised Neverland adaptation that fell apart for reasons he did not impose, Kanbe is a very solid director. Titles like Sora no Woto (another work directly influenced by KyoAni artists, and where Saito met him to boot) should be enough to prove he’s a creator worth paying attention to. Across his whole career, Kanbe’s most impressive work has been as an episode director; his thorough contributions to Card Captor Sakura contain some of the series’ best moments, and even nowadays, project leaders like Atsuko Ishizuka still know how to maximize his entertaining storyboarding.
Now, while funny hijinks and emotional clarity are registers where he can thrive, scenarios where characters sit around and hold endless conversations that may take several episodes to pay off are something that he has struggled to wrap his head around. An amusing example of this is in his contributions to Occultic;Nine, in the form of ridiculous storyboarding; Kanbe still imbues some shots with clear intent, but overall, his worry about maintaining those long conversations visually compelling overcorrects and makes it all feel like Spiderman has had a few too many dreams before shooting the episode. In the end, Occultic;Nine is outrageous enough of a series to absorb such idiosyncratic direction, but what happens when Kanbe is presented with a similar challenge in a deliberately restrained work?
The answer begins with a series of tricks the director is so proud of that he has brought them up in essentially every interview. There are choices like the cinemascope aspect ratio, with a narrower framing that sometimes places greater emphasis on a clue the viewer can pick up on, which Kanbe had always wanted to give a try at. The most important technique in his view, though, is what he calls background swaps. Back in Kimi to Boku (2011-2012), he had temporarily switched the location of a scene to an allegorical train to fine-tune the flavor of that dramatic moment. That’s a common enough directorial choice, but given that a Shoushimin adaptation requires a lot of talking in place, he tried to come up with a formula that’d allow those to become a key element in its visual language.
While most directors opt for blurring, abstraction, non-orthodox color usages, and other techniques to make it clear that such scenes aren’t set in real environments, Kanbe decided to head in the exact opposite direction and present those swapped backgrounds in crystal clear ways. In Yonezawa form, the story aims to be physically rooted in the prefecture of Gifu, so this would be another mechanism to submerge the viewer into its locations. At the same time, though, you don’t want to lose the allegorical power that normally motivates these swaps; it may be enough to transport the characters to scenery related to the mysteries they solve as they talk their way through them, but to apply the swapping to character beats, a random place in town wouldn’t do the trick.
And so, we get an interesting mix of reality and metaphor that’s already exemplified in the climax of the first episode. After solving a petty incident at school, Kobato and Osanai rush back with the important goal of buying a fancy strawberry tart. Making it on time might require ever so slightly breaking the law, but the two don’t hesitate much to do so. As they cross a bridge while riding a bike, that same structure’s symbolic meaning is used for a series of swapped background sequences; he reaches out to her, as they’ve accepted each other as their convenient excuses anytime their instincts make them stray away from that normalcy they strive for. The bridge becomes the background of that connection, while still remaining the road they’re physically using—that is the duality of Kanbe’s background swaps. Although he didn’t use his position as series directorSeries Director: (監督, kantoku): The person in charge of the entire production, both as a creative decision-maker and final supervisor. They outrank the rest of the staff and ultimately have the last word. Series with different levels of directors do exist however – Chief Director, Assistant Director, Series Episode Director, all sorts of non-standard roles. The hierarchy in those instances is a case by case scenario. to force other storyboarders to apply these tricks, he set the tone and proactively offered the possibility to do so, hence why they spread even beyond his own episodes.
When it comes to his material choices as Shoushimin’s director, this was what he was most conscious of, hence why he has emphasized it so much when discussing the show. However, I believe that the unique charm in its direction lies on a more fundamental level, and may be something that the team may have nailed in a purely instinctual way. To observe an example of what I’m referring to, we can simply return to the first scene in the show. As various students check whether they’ve been accepted at Funato High School, the layoutsLayouts (レイアウト): The drawings where animation is actually born; they expand the usually simple visual ideas from the storyboard into the actual skeleton of animation, detailing both the work of the key animator and the background artists. are often spacious, highlighting the depth of the location. Within a series that underlines its real setting, these types of shots that sell the space are a constant. And yet, our two protagonists appear more often than not perfectly centered. It’s extremely common to find them in the middle of these middle-distance shots, sometimes with a fair amount of symmetry to the framing. On their own, they read rather neutral. Ordinary, you could say.
This approach is maintained across the show, regardless of who is in the storyboarder’s seat. It’s particularly pronounced when the leading duo are attempting to project that image of normalcy that they’ve set their goals on. For example, Takakazu Nagatomo’s episode #03 with its ordinary meeting to have some sweets, or the banter in the festival for the sixth episode; storyboarded under the appropriate pen name Charlotte, borrowing from Osanai’s taste and the title of the episode itself. Of course, these framing ideas don’t exist on their own—like any other creative choice, they interact with everything else. This means that they coincide with the sparse usage of music across the show, as well as the soothing voice acting that characterizes it. Again, it’s all normal. Too normal.
How would you feel about someone who repeatedly tells you that they’re ordinary, showing up with a shirt branding them Standard Human Being? My brain wouldn’t take long to start assuming that they’re a mass murderer, an alien, or both. This isn’t quite the same as experiencing Shoushimin, as the show excels at convincing you that Osanai never did anything wrong, but it’s true that the accumulation of neutral delivery feels performative in an unnerving way. What’s often a vague feeling is sometimes dragged into the foreground, when the pretense of normality is brought to such an extreme that it begins to crack. We can look, for example, at the scene that follows the moment in episode #06 that we highlighted earlier. As Osanai visits Kobato to push him to accompany her during the summer, we’re bombarded with another succession of neutral shots… until her definitely-not-weird obstinacy twists the scene into something more surreal, making use of those Kanbe-approved background swaps.
On rare occasions, it’s not a hint of distress that we get, but a full-on pivot into ominous vibes. Shoushimin’s magic wouldn’t work the way it does if every episode had a moment that completely departs from its norm of grounded, seemingly standard framing. And yet, the show is aware of the power in occasionally sprinting in an unexpected direction. The aforementioned third episode offers one of the most memorable instances, with the first taste of Osanai’s anger. After finding out a bit too much about the student who has inconvenienced her ideal school life, another sequence of initially neutral shots gets violently dyed red; it’s worth noting that the color ended up being more intense than planned but Kanbe found that mistake to be a positive one, and that Osanai is most definitely in the right.
Even beyond these pivotal moments in the narrative, which are given extra punch by diverting from the down-to-earth norm, other special sequences also stand out. For an obvious example, we have an exceptional series of openings and endings. Tao Tajima’s overlay of cel, live-action, and lighting that appears diegetic is always an excellent recipe for magical realism. Within Shoushimin’s ending sequences, a physical setting being granted a vaguely fantastical feeling is a great escalation of its usual style. The first opening, directed and storyboarded by Keisuke Hiroe, uses even more overt fantasy to depict the true nature of its two lead characters.
While Hiroe does it in a soothing way, the masterful opening for the second half of the show—this time led by Kyouhei Ishiguro—goes all out on the aggression. Ishihama influences are mixed with emulation of techniques you’re more likely to find in independent works, pivoting away not just from Shoushimin’s norm but from commercial animation altogether. And yet, a link is maintained with the show’s storytelling, even providing clues for the show’s mysteries to those who pay attention to the eclectic storyboarding. These are excellent sequences in their own right, and they shine all the brighter in contrast to a show that wants to convince you that it’s modest and ordinary.
Besides heightening those special moments, it’s also interesting to appreciate the occasional interaction between the show’s well-defined identity and the directors with a particularly strong flavor. Namely, and because of studio Lapintrack’s relationship with Kunihiko Ikuhara, Shoushimin happens to be the TV project where Nobuyuki Takeuchi has been most active since Sarazanmai; and before that, we’d have to look as far back as Bakemonogatari. With his pedigree, he has no problem adapting to the idea of framing so clearly staged that even the ordinary on paper reads as unnatural. And yet, the way he gets around to executing that in episode #02—where he’s the director, storyboarder, as well as a supervisor and key animator—is not quite like the rest of the show. He does lean on Kanbe’s general ideas every now and then, but departs from them through storyboards with more overt intent just as often. While not necessarily intentional, this episode gets away with having a different feel to it with its focus on Kobato’s pal Kengo. His straightforwardness is totally unlike the main characters, also serving as the punchline for one of Yonezawa’s most charming episodic puzzles.
Across those seemingly self-contained riddles, the author manages to tell larger stories that illuminate the true nature of the lead characters. Despite the mundane scenarios, the second one in particular gradually grows into a pretty serious incident… that turns out to be Osanai’s orchestrated revenge. Between her reckless actions and Kobato’s self-serving detective roleplay, the two have spectacularly failed to pretend to be normal, so they decide to go their separate ways for everyone’s sake. This resets the relationship, and most relevantly for this adaptation, it coincides with the storytelling structure also shifting gears.
Whereas the first 10 episodes of Shoushimin follow that recognizable Hyouka cadence, the 12 following ones shift away from the episodic focus. By the end, it has effectively morphed into a standard serialized story. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that this later material was published many years after the series had been put on hold; the sixth novel was only released in 2024, two decades after the beginning of the series and effectively 15 years after the previous fully-fledged novel. Everyone who liked the preceding arcs should still find enjoyment in them, but as a writer who thrives in mundane mysteries more than with overarching ones, it doesn’t feel like Yonezawa is at its best. Additionally, the production stress begins rearing its head; the truth is that every single episode barely made its final deadlines, and it was only thanks to superlative animation directors like Yayoi Takano that the show manages to have some stunning episodes regardless.
Although it’s slightly lacking and a bit strained in some areas, the second cours of Shoushimin makes up for it with its big character moments being as rewarding as ever. As usual, it’s those select scenes that shatter the naturalism in favor of presentation that’s overtly fabricated. A particularly memorable one happens in the third episode, yet again storyboarded by Nagatomo. The two leads have, at this point, started relationships with other students in an attempt to find that normalcy elsewhere. And in Osanai’s case, her partner is the rash Takahiko Urino, currently investigating a mysterious arson. In the midst of that, she approaches him in a deliberately lit hallway. It’s clear that there’s a separation between their worlds, but she makes an attempt to approach him with advice… that falls into deaf ears, repeatedly. His response and the violation of her personal space are elegantly shown through the contrasting light and shadow, as is her final move. Having made up her mind about him after he didn’t respect her boundaries, it’s Osanai’s arm that crosses the barrier between the two—already with revenge in mind, making him kneel in the process. His execution has already been settled.
It’s Takeuchi who beheads him at Osanai’s request, just like he’s the star storyboarder who increases the tension tenfold right before the final climax of the show. For Shoushimin S2 #11, his pivot from the norm is in the portrayal of space itself. The most remarkable aspect of the episode (apart from Takano’s incredible character art under such tight circumstances) is the unsettling implications of Takeuchi’s shot composition. Within an anime that has embraced flat shots so often, this episode always feels like something malevolent is lurking behind the corner—right as Kobato and Osanai are baiting the final antagonist.
While that villain’s ploy by itself isn’t the most compelling piece of writing in the show, the conclusion to their relationship oozes undiluted Shoushimin charm. They’ve tried blending into expectations, even branching out into relationships that could nudge them in that direction. But at the end of the day, the two are weirdos on the same wavelength and no one else’s, fated to play their petty games together for eternity. More romantic than a kiss culminating a regular relationship, if you ask me; and if you ask Yonezawa too, given that he refuses to give traditional romantic closure to his works. Just like the precepts of this series’ direction that we’ve discussed at length, the author is fully committed to a highly specific register that makes his work stand out. If you’ve never experienced Hyouka and Shoushimin, call yourself Osanai, because you’re in for a sweet treat.
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