Houtarou Oreki

Houtarou Oreki is the protagonist of the Hyouka anime and light novels.

Houtarou a student of Kamiyama High School belonging to class 1-B at first, and later to class 2-A. He is a member of the school's  Classics Club. Houtarou is an apathetic person who prioritizes energy conservation above all else. However, he possesses brilliant deduction skills and he is often forced to use them by the ever-curious Eru Chitanda.

Appearance
Houtarou is of average height that stands at 172 cm (5'8") and weighs at 62 kg (137 lbs). He has unruly short taupe-brown colored hair, with bangs that reach just below his eyes. Houtarou's eyes are asparagus-green in color. Usually after waking up, Houtarou's hair in the state of a mess.

In school he wears his school uniform, while out of school he dresses in a rather neutral fashion. Satoshi once said that if Houtarou wasn't so lazy, he could be popular because of his appearance.

Personality
Houtarou is an apathetic and calm person. Along with his passive demeanor, Houtarou seems to always "conserve energy" and never exerts effort on anything unless absolutely necessary; thus coming off as sluggard.

Also, because of his attitude, Houtarou doesn't talk much, and he rarely gets angry, though he does appear to get irritated often. In general, Houtarou doesn't express his emotions much. On the other hand, he is surprisingly smart and clever, having a brilliant deduction skills which allows him to solve different mysteries. Houtarou always can find a solution if he gives it enough thought. Ironically, during his attempts to avoid wasting his energy, he only ends up wasting it more. For example, once he made a bet with Eru about being able to make a theory for any situation, in that case for strange school announcement. Houtarou was right, however he spent whole day trying to figure out what the school announcement was about. In addition, it is so rare for him to be interested in something, that when he really wants to do something on his account, his friends become concerned and think he is sick. In anime, Houtarou also has a quite overactive imagination, which is responsible for having frequent hallucinations when Eru asks him for a help (for example, he imagines that Eru entraps him with growing flowers or he sees many Eru-like little angels surrounding him saying "I'm curious").

Despite all of that, Houtarou is capable of appreciating praise, and has shown to have a tendency of exerting more than what he would do usually when given positive feedback.

Also, he can be kind and he does care about his friends, which is shown is case of Mayaka's Valentine chocolate when he got angry at Satoshi for stealing and breaking it, as Satoshi disregarded Mayaka's feelings and tried to avoid answering her confession. During all of that, Satoshi hurt Eru because she blamed herself for her negligence that allowed that theft to be done. As Eru states, Houtarou is actually a kind person who often helps others including herself and rarely does things for himself. He does show a sense of maturity and shrewdness, understanding Fuyumi's true motive for wanting the Classics Club to help with he group's independent film by writing the whole script but being manipulated to think otherwise and understanding Mayaka's cousins relationship and being able to explain it to Eru. Also Houtarou respects other people which is shown when he wanted to learn why his former English teacher wanted to look at helicopters outside (having known the reason but wanting to make sure because not doing so would be insensitive to his teacher's feelings).

Trivia

 * Houtarou has a habit of holding his front bangs with crossed arms whenever he is in deep thought. Certain characters have caught onto this habit.
 * He doesn't care about his rank in the school. When he was ranked 175 out of the 350 students, he considered it a school 'prank' that he was actually ranked right in the middle.
 * Due to the lack of exercise and other related activities, he gets carsick easily. This is shown during his trip to Seizansou, when he got carsick although it was only been an hour and a half of travel.
 * Before he entered the Classics Club, he already had some interest in reading. As a proof, He has a bookcase in his room which he shares with his sister.
 * When he is angry or upset, he usually shakes his left leg.
 * It is implied that he might be able to reach (or actually already has) the same level of deductive reasoning ability and intellect as his sister's (who was implied to have been on top of things). This was during the time he tried to compete with Eru, Eru to prove that anyone can just make up any theory for any situation. During the said scene he was able to completely unravel a mystery regarding the school announcement made after-class hours, using only the announcement itself and the fact that he saw an article about fake bills going around town. Surprisingly, he is able to completely solve the mystery (albeit he was treating it as a game and was biding his time slowly, probably due to his nature of conserving energy.) as shown when the next morning, he reads on the newspaper the very same conclusion he came up with. It may possibly just be his lack of motivation and self-awareness that keeps his true abilities from coming out.
 * According to the original novel series, his birthday is 28 April 1984. In The Approximation of the Distance of Two, his 17th birthday anniversary was celebrated in the last Saturday of April 2001, which is 28 April. However, there was not any mention about his birthday in anime series as well as in the first four books. In that book, Chitanda also said that Houtarou was the first member of the Classics Club who was 17, which can be implied that he was older than other main characters.
 * Houtarou has a resemblance to Hachiman Hikigaya from the Yahari Ore no Seishun Love Come wa Machigatteiru light novel. Both of them are the protagonists, lazy but smart and they do their own works in time, they were also being forced to join the club, and both are introverts. They also have their messy hair trademark, but Hachiman's "dead-fish" eyes are differently compared to Oreki's drowsy eyes, and they have different perception of people who surround them.
 * He was the featured detective of Volume 83 of the Detective Conan manga.
 * Yuichi Nakamura, Houtarou's seiyuu, and Daisuke Sakaguchi, Satoshi's seiyuu, also voiced two characters in Clannad anime series, Tomoya Okazaki and Youhei Sunohara respectively. Like Houtarou and Satoshi, Tomoya and Youhei were also close friends.