To give a good example of the things that propelled The Bros up the ranks, here's what Pon saw in Hyouka:

What you need to do now is pick out specific examples. Like, it’s interesting how Oreki’s thought processes, even considering that the show has to convey them visually because it’s a TV show, are based in language. You get instances of people whose bodies are partially or entirely replaced by kanji. And then Chitanda is the notable exception to this. She’s always a jorogumo or a dog or has light shining out of her face, but she’s never occluded by language. There’s something more primal about his attitude toward her. Which, you know … makes sense.

Long time ago, I saw an article that collected descriptions of their thought process by several intellectuals and scientists. Very few used language-based symbolic thinking, surprisingly. Most tended to employ the visual cortex and see the abstract thoughts and objects, only using the language to "tape out" checkpoints and final results. The advantage of kanji in such use is that one can imagine them where Western advanced mind has to invent the whole apparatus from scratch. One of the article subjects, for example, used collections of dots.

When I watched Hyouka, I missed the meaning that Pon collected, in part because assgning kanji to people is rather commonplace. Here's an example from Shiroboko: