Review of Horimiya

It's almost a little difficult to talk about this show. It's actually, in my opinion, a bit weird; it's pacing is very different to what you'd expect from a romantic comedy, it typically avoids a lot of the kinds of drama the genre is known for, and it ends up taking some slightly different directions to what you'd expect. And I mean every bit of that in the most positive way possible. "Horimiya" is a simple show, but it uses that simplicity to focus in on the things that make this genre what it is; watching two people growing closer and closer, rooting for them thewhole time, and, by the time it all ends, feeling a deep sense of satisfaction at seeing where they end up. And that doesn't just go for the titular protagonists, either. The supporting cast naturally get less focus than Hori and Miyamura, but by the end, you have a distinct sense that, in lots of nicely subtly ways, everyone has grown a lot more than you realise over the course of the series.

Honestly, I do feel like this show could have been longer. Give it a double-length run, and we could have expanded on some of those supporting characters a bit more, maybe squeezed a little more drama out of their relationship in the second half of the show; as it is, the protagonists fall a little bit by the wayside in the middle, as their relationship is (refreshingly) too mature and stable to be too worried about.

But, unlike some other shows that I've argued should be longer, that shouldn't be taken as me saying that the 13 episode we do have didn't work fantastically. Overall, it's a funny, heartfelt, and sensitive story, that is very, very easy to care an awful lot about.