Hyouka: Eru Chitanda (ENFJ)

Fe:

“Today was supposed to be a happy day for Mayaka. She deserved that.”

“That’s not a nice thing to say!”

“Kindly give us back our chocolate.”

Eru Chitanda appears to be a dominant extraverted feeler. Her extraversion is fairly clear in the way that she not only appears socially extraverted, but she also tends to invade people’s personal space. However, moving beyond that, she shows a lot of signs that specifically point to dominant Fe.

Chitanda is people-oriented. In the different mysteries that she gets involved in with Houtarou, Chitanda typically focuses on the human element when drawing her own conclusions. When the human doll parade gets rerouted due to unanticipated construction on the bridge, she determines the culprit based on who would willing to cause such trouble. In comparison, Houtarou makes his determination in a more technical way. In addition, when they’re trying to figure out the ending for the student movie, Chitanda draws her conclusions based on what she’s able to surmise about the author herself, rather than on the partially recorded product.

Chitanda is deeply concerned with the feelings of others, and tends to speak up when she sees rude or unfair behavior. At one point, she rebukes Houtarou for making a comment about Mayaka gobbling up a bunch of chocolate. She also gets extremely upset when Mayaka’s homemade chocolate gets stolen, feeling terrible that the girl wouldn’t get to offer the gift to Satoshi. Lastly, when a teacher treats a student unfairly, Chitanda gets visibly triggered and speaks up for the student.

Chitanda adapts her behavior around others for the sake of getting along. This is most clearly demonstrated when Satoshi tells a story about his former teacher getting struck by lightening. He repeats the same statement multiple times in a row, and she repeats her response each time with equal enthusiasm. Houtarou then observes that: “It looks like Chitanda’s learned to play along with Satoshi.”

Finally, Chitanda is service-oriented and hospitable. She invites everyone over to her home to work on a mystery, and impromptu makes everyone Onigiri after they’d been there a while. She also politely declines help from Mayaka during this visit on a couple of occasions, ensuring that her guests were never inconvenienced. Chitanda also brings snacks for everyone to other meetings on varying occasions, and tries to de-escalate a fight between Mayaka and Fukube with cookies.

Ni:

“That’s very… I don’t know. I can’t think of the right word.”

“I can’t say what exactly, but something about it feels a little off to me.”

“Chitanda can tell where this going.”

While Chitanda does appear to fall into some common ESFJ stereotypes, we ultimately concluded that she makes more sense as an ENFJ. The first indication of this is her tendency to struggle to place precise wording to her thoughts. On multiple different occasions, the only explanation she can produce is that something isn’t quite right, but she’s not sure what or why. In addition, when confronting Oreki about him getting the ending to the student movie wrong, she doesn’t explain why or give any details, she simply says that Hongo wasn’t that type of person. This tends to be more indicative of Ni rather than Si.

Chitanda is described as having an extremely good memory, yet when it comes to her past, her memory seems more focused on impressions rather than details. This is demonstrated clearly in the mystery involving what her uncle told her. She remembers some general information surrounding it, and the emotional impact the moment had on her, but she can’t remember the most critical detail of the entire event.

While Chitanda is often easily distracted, she also tends to fixate on one thing to the detriment of everything else, essentially displaying Ni tunnel vision. This is often what’s driving each mystery Houtarou ends up solving. Chitanda proclaims that she “needs to know” and won’t drop it until he promises to solve the mystery.

A good example of Chitanda’s Ni can actually be seen when Mayaka’s homemade chocolate is stolen. The entire time Chitanda talks about it, she never frames the tragedy with possibility that Mayaka would be rejected, which could have been demonstrated with a statement like ‘Mayaka will never know’. Instead, she frames the tragedy as Mayaka having had her moment stolen from her, implying that she had never considered various possible outcomes. Rather, she leapt to an assumption that Satoshi would accept the gift. This assumption points to Ni rather than Ne, and shows some classic NF idealism.

Se:

“I want to live my life in the present not the future.”

“Her patience is incredible. No matter what, she always rolls with the punches.”

“Impulsiveness is definitely one of my shortcomings, after all.”

Chitanda describes herself as impulsive, which is more fitting of tertiary Se than tertiary Ne. When they were likening themselves to tarot cards, Chitanda claims the fool as hers because impulsiveness is a weakness of hers. A good example of Se impulse can actually be seen when she accidentally gets drunk on whiskey-filled chocolate. She explains: “I couldn’t decide if I liked them so I kept trying them to see if I could make up my mind.” She essentially fails to moderate herself and ends up drunk. This also points away from Si, since Si users can often determine their sensory preferences much quicker.

Chitanda expresses a general desire to live in the moment, which suggests low Se. She also occasionally gets lost in the moment. This is shown by how distracted she gets by the various events at the Culture Festival. When trying to make her way somewhere specific, she gets drawn into various physical experiences and ends up taking way longer than anticipated. The cooking competition is another good example of Chitanda losing herself in the moment. She forgets to save up ingredients for Mayaka and uses nearly everything, almost costing them their victory.

We never really see Chitanda speculating about potential outcomes for the various mysteries to any significant degree, but typically outsources that process to Houtarou. She seems much more interested in going along for the ride, and finding out the conclusion. This points away from having Ne in her stack.

Ti:

“It’s really hard to understand ourselves sometimes.”

You can see Chitanda’s inferior Ti in her struggle to understand herself. When a teacher of hers starts berating the students in the classroom without cause, Chitanda is confused as to why it made her so upset. She expresses this to Houtarou and the others, wanting them to help her figure out why, since she feels incapable of doing so herself. This struggle to understand her own reasoning and motivation suggests a weak connection with herself and her reasoning process.