Updated March 30, 2022 1.1K votes 578 voters 26.8K views
Need recommendations for what anime to watch after Hyouka? The series follows Hotarou Oreki, a teenage boy whose main goal in life is to avoid expending energy. When his sister forces him to join the Classics Club, he isn't planning on getting too invested. When the club turns out to be less about its intended subject than it is about solving local mysteries, he's ready to bail - but Eru Chitanda's enthusiasm gets the better of him, and makes him want to invest energy into something for the first time in his life. It's a great series - but are there other anime like Hyouka out there?
The answer to that question is a definitive yes. Anime similar to Hyouka can vary in what exactly it shares with the series. If you liked its focus on mystery but are craving something a little darker, you should check out Heaven's Memo Pad or Detective Conan. If what drew you to Hyouka was the protagonist's journey from depressed to engaged as he connects with an enthusiastic girl, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU and Bungaku Shoujo will fill your needs perfectly. Do you relate to Oreki's desire to conserve energy and want to watch more of the same? Tanaka-kun is Always Listless is right up your alley.
If you enjoyed these anime, vote them up to let other Hyouka fans know what they should watch next.
Like Hyouka, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU centers around a school club that's dedicated to helping people with complicated problems - but what truly connects the two series is actually the protagonists. Both Oreki and SNAFU's protagonist Hikigaya have maladaptive ways of approaching the world. Both boys are antisocial introverts who for various reasons feel that they're better off not forming bonds with other people. Through their involvement with their respective clubs - and those clubs' eccentric members - they're able to form genuine bonds with other people and gain brighter perspectives on their worlds.
Both products of Kyoto Animation, Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions! and Hyouka explore similar territory by centering on a teenage boy who wants to lead a calm, normal life, but who is shaken out of their complacency by an eccentric girl who recognizes that beneath the veneer, he isn't as normal as he claims to be. Both shows will touch your heart through cuteness and romantic intrigue - though Chunibyo takes the romance further than Hyouka does.
Though Hyouka and The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall have little in common in terms of their content, but they have some major thematic similarities. Specifically, both of them deal with the question of genius. Who is born with it? Who isn't? Which circumstances create genius and which don't? Is it more painful to continuously try and fail at something because you just aren't born with the right talents, or to have unreasonable expectations placed on you because you are? Can you still achieve genius through hard work? If you liked Hyouka for its take on those questions, try The Pet Girl of Sakura Hall.
Gosick is what you get when you take Hyouka and flip around the details. Both are anime about solving mysteries, and both feature a brilliant protagonist with a cheerful and enthusiastic sidekick of the opposite sex. The difference? Oreki is a boy who has no real desire to solve cases and has to be persuaded into it, while Victorique is a girl who has her sidekick find cases for her entertainment. That and the fact that Gosick is set between the two world wars, while Hyouka takes place in the modern era. Despite these differences, the show's structures and premises are quite similar.
Tanaka-kun is Always Listless features a protagonist who has a lot in common with the Oreki of Hyouka. Both boys want to lead peaceful, uneventful lives that never compel them to actually do anything, and put a lot of effort into avoiding activity of any kind. Fortunately or unfortunately, both boys are surrounded by people who want them to do just the opposite - in Oreki's case, it's solving mysteries, while in Tanaka's case it's keeping up with his rambunctious classmates.
If you like the idea of high school students solving mysteries but found the mysteries in Hyouka to be a little too tame, try Heaven's Memo Pad. It features a team of high-school aged kids who are too busy being hackers to actually go to school. Rather than attempt to solve relatively safe mysteries out of curiosity, these characters are dealing with serious criminal matters.
