Review of Horimiya

Hello there, you have found one of my rare spoiler free reviews. It's a thing that I do once in a while, where I give my thoughts on an anime in many areas like story, characters, artsyle and so on. Also, I know the manga, new one and original one, but I'm writing only about the anime. And I guess if you are reading this, you might be looking for answers, for whether it's good or not. The short answer is of course that it's good, but I wouldn't necessarily say that it's the best romance anime, like some people might suggest. And here's why: Wedive into the main problem/issue that it has and that is in it's story. Now don't worry I'm not saying that the plot is bad or anything of that sort, so you can put your swords and pitchforks away. The thing that I want to address is the pacing of the story, I thought that it was just me who felt that something was off when watching it, but there were others also, like there were times when out of nowhere you would just suddenly get depressed which is weird, when watching a particular anime with these kind of genre tags. But the problem isn't exactly that you get depressed, it's that it happens like for example a graph that has a more or less straight line, but suddenly drops straight down for a little bit and then bam it just jumps back into place. I think this because it needs another tag "Drama", but even then it wouldn't justify it. I think what happened was that the writer couldn't decide what he wanted to do, a rom/com, drama or both and it's sad because the story can easily be any of those, since it's plot is written really well, but the indecision led to this. That's why you get comments where half say it's the best, while the other half is just depressed, but both watch it because the plot is really good and I'm not gonna lie, it's weird. :D Of course I could find nitpicks like, for example, plot armor on one of the girl characters, which kinda made sense, but sucked ass, since there was barely any character development or backstory or story overall. That kind of thing. :D But I won't do that okay, since it's good a decent anime and I don't want to be looked at like I'm just trashing it. :D

NOW, let's talk about some other things. Characters, really good, great design, each have such a defined personality that they almost feel realistic and they go really well with the story. The slice of life aspects are done really well, you get to see every character's pretty much daily life, there are dozens of places where characters meet up and it makes the whole world really wide and engaging. I also like how well the emotions are being portrayed, the studio did a really good job on that, but it also doesn't surprise me, when I checked what titles they have done before. But I'm glad that we had a good team of animators for this title, because it deserves it. The quality is top notch, same goes for the sound guys and of course the groups playing the opening and ending songs.

Finally, we are at the end and my energy level is also. So, I guess after everything that I've said, I give it a solid 8, since you can write the best plot, best characters, but if you don't make a proper choice for the story, it will not come together as well as you might have hoped and people will end up seeing the rough edges. It had the potential for being one of the best and you can definitely see it. I hope that this helped atleast a little bit and have fun watching! Peace I'm out! ^^