Review of Horimiya
To give out a 1 out of 10 score to something in the entertainment industry implies that whatever you just consumed is the bottom of the barrel of its respected medium. I would not necessarily state that Horimiya is the bottom of the barrel of anime outright, as there are better candidates that are more fitting of such a title due to being very aggressively bad. It’s not that this is offensively bad like some would consider School Days to be, or very in your face bad and gross such as Green Green. There is an abundance of low budged and obscure show’s like Marsof Destruction that one would consider more „objectively“ bad. However, out of anything that has come out that doesn’t have piggy bank budget or offensive/disturbing themes, Horimiya is easily the single worst anime I’ve ever had to sit through. What makes the 1 out of 10 score warranted for this show is that in its 5 hour overall runtime, it completely fails to do a singular thing right while committing dozens of writing sins in the process. Sure, Horimiya has great art, but appearance alone can’t salvage a streamline and generic show that is executed terribly and has one of the singular worst scripts in anime.
Story[2/10]:
Horimiya is just your run of the mill romance/comedy show with a fairly strong focus on the romance aspect. Horimiya does nothing new to shake up this somewhat over-saturated genre. Every situation falls somewhere within a cliche or is flat out one, which alone makes Horimiya feel unoriginal and rather boring. The fact that Horimiya is formulaic is not the detractor in this regard, however. You absolutely can make the usual romcom formula work again, depending on how you go about executing it. The issue lies in how this anime is so outshined by all of it’s romcom contemporaries in every conceivable way to the point where it really doesn’t feel necessary to watch it. Everything that this show attempts has been done before and better in an abundance of other romcoms, and Horimiya doesn’t have a singular aspect it excels in. This is of course considering when the anime actually attempts to do something thoroughly anyway, as most of the time Horimiya takes a typical romcom situation and barfs it out without any regard of how it will turn out.
The only situations in the show that were unique, were so for all the wrong reasons. Occasionally, Horimiya will inject a situation into the narrative just to go practically nowhere with it, even when the bent all logic to force the situation in. An abundance of situations in Horimiya are so out of touch with reality that the moments themselves are ruined, and it’s not due to the anime wanting to be over the top. This is a result of the writer trying really hard to evoke a particular emotion but without the skill to do so in a seemingly natural way. He; as a consequence, has to bend a situation to evoke his desired emotion, thus ruining everything around it. Contrivances to the point where a high school romcom becomes completely unrealistic is something that I never thought I’d see nor care about until I saw Horimiya. Episode 9 in particular has mindboggling writing gymnastics the likes of which I have never seen. In this instance reality is distorted only for the sake of creating 2 situation, one that ends up going absolutely nowhere and another that was melodramatic, boring and left no impact. Contrivances aren’t an immediate detractor of a romcoms quality either, provided they enhance the anime otherwise if they were to be necessary to utilize. Horimiya have contrivances that aren’t just next level forced and stupid, but often each contrivance contribute to a situation reaching an undesirable outcome, which is a gigantic double-whammy. This makes paying attention to Horimiya constantly punishing, as they all too often end a convoluted contraption of a subplot in a halfhearted manner that just fizzles out into thin air as if none of it mattered.
The pacing of the show is also a tremendous problem. Everything moves at mach speed pacing, which is likely a source of many of the issues in how the story of Horimiya is constructed. What in my opinion is the best parts of most romcoms is completely ignored just so that the anime can make it’s way to the actual romance faster. You don't have the time to want Hori and Miyamura to start seeing each other before the anime suddenly forces them together. At one point they blaze through 6 months of time in the span of an episode when judging by everything that happens during this time, it feels like only a week passed.
The only time the anime was a fraction of a care as to how something would turn out, was how they ended the show. The resemblance of a positive emotion I feel towards the ending might only derive from the joy I felt that the anime was finally ending, however. Otherwise, everything that the anime covers is done in such a careless manner where nothing goes anywhere, and it’s a consistent problem throughout the anime’s runtime.
Characters [1.25/10]:
Even when everything that Horimiya does has been done before, you can still make this show great with good character writing, good direction of key scenes and maybe even some funny jokes along the way. When you take this path of focusing more on the romance than on the comedy when writing your anime, the characters are bound to be the sole foundation that will make or break the show. This show’s cast has to be blandest and most shallow set of characters I’ve ever seen, as they are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other on a 2-dimensional scale, with few exceptions. The issue is not that they're unlikable people, because most of them are okay human being. The problem lies in how none of the characters feel real in any sense of the word, thus making me care about them and their endeavors a truly difficult task. The two main characters of this show are Hori and Miyamura, and while being the best and „deepest“ characters in the show, aren’t much better than the rest.
Hori is your typical popular high school girl. She is beautiful, good academically, and is otherwise responsible, good at housework and I suppose she’s strong-willed as well. This is really the extent of her traits, which is sad because only 2/5 of these can be linked in some way to personality. She has high conscientiousness, a trait never really focused on outside trying to make her look like good wife material. Aside from this, she is trite and completely uninteresting. She has no motivation aside from her love for Miyamura and her likes and dislikes are mostly unknown, aside from the occasional trait practically every teenage girl has, which doesn’t help her with standing out. The issue is not that she is too normal, it’s just how completely undefined she is. She is without form, without a direction, an abstract unknown entity too out of this world for my brain to properly comprehend.
Miyamura is probably the best character of the show, and he sucks. Miyamura is your typical quiet, gentle and reserved guy with the insane twist of having piercings and tattoos as if he was a bad boy!!!!!! Miyamura is presented as being very reserved and gloomy, while simultaneously being hinted at having a cool or edgy side to him. His piercings and reckless behavior in episode 1 gave me early hopes and expectations that this would be a hint at a different side of him. This made him at first glance really interesting, as the possibilities to make an interesting character based on this foundation is nearly endless. Sadly, the tattoos/piercings are just a gigantic red herring, as he got these on a whim and therefore mean absolutely nothing to his character, other than that he might have bad impulse control? He’s presented to have 2 sides to him, one that is cool and one that is shy and reserved, but the cool side had completely vanished by like episode 4. This isn't due to him developing as a person either. He doesn’t act recklessly in the slightest throughout the rest of the show, which makes his initial characterizations completely vaporize. It felt like half of his established character was a lie, a planned one at that, which made him go from interesting and back to trite, thereby joining the rest of the cast. Strip the piercings away, and what is revealed is a character that is reserved and gloomy, which is precisely what we’re consistently shoved down our throat by the rest of the cast the whole way. There isn’t much else to his personality other than this. He does however, want to change to become more open, which provides for this show’s only non-love related motivation. It was nice to see some sort of personal goal in the show, but the execution of this arc is so lazy and half-baked that it makes little to no impact. This is despite of him getting a backstory, a backstory which had little to no actual care put into it in addition to being totally fake and unbelievable. It’s plainly obvious the writer just wants to write something that people can feel for just by relating to it, without making it good for people who don’t relate to it. This makes the writing in this show come off as extremely lazy and incompetent. When Miyamura’s arc finally resolves, it becomes obvious that the only thing that changed was his environment, not himself as a person.
The fact that this is all that the main couple has to offer in terms of characterization is quite an appalling state for a romcom to be in. This is maybe a passable state for main characters to find themselves in after a couple of episodes, but to have them cross the finish line in this state is an absolute joke. We spend so much time with them, and yet I know so little about them by the end that it’s like the anime hasn’t really been focusing on them. They also start seeing each other way too early in the show, as I have no reasons to care about them seeing each other after only like 10 minutes into the anime. I couldn’t care less if they got together, broke up, got married, got children, got divorced or died. There are literally no emotional stakes at works concerning the two main characters thanks to the godawful character writing, which is why this anime completely and utterly fails. The entire foundation of the show is rotten, which makes it have absolutely nothing to stand on as a show. These two characters and their personal matters take the spotlight for a great portion of the show, so this show absolutely begs for them to be good. There is also a moment at the tail end of the show that completely shatters them as characters and as a (potential) couple that is so abhorrent and unbelievable that I have a really hard time believing it exists.
The remaining unidentifiable creatures in this show that; after many hours of research seems to have been classified as „supporting-characters“, are some of the worst of its kind ever written. The supporting cast all consists of characters that follows some sort of trope which is never in any way made interesting and never breaks out of.
Tooru: A dude
Sakura: The hard working student council member that thinks she’s unattractive.
Yuki: Shy and emotionally closed off.
Shuu: Insane.
Remi: Cute
Akane: (blank)
All side characters follow their attached on trait the whole way through, and none of them change throughout the show. Every single character in this show constantly come off as shallow as they only have their one superficial trait to themselves. I have loved shows with this bland of a supporting cast, so it’s not like this is a sin in an of itself. What Horimiya does that makes this so problematic is that we are expected to deeply care about these flat and drab characters as they go through long-winded dramatic arcs as if the end result even remotely matters. This makes Horimiya’s latter half completely unwatchable as it invests way too much of its runtime in these characters while slogging through some of the most forced and lamest drama conceivable. There isn’t a singular emotional stake present within any of the arcs, and they don’t try to develop any character as the arc is happening either. Not one supporting character has any resemblance of a motivation not related to love to make them more interesting. This is aside from Sakura who wants to work hard for the student council, which is literally following her trope anyway. The show never tries to convey anything of personality using visuals and their mannerisms other than the very obvious „Miyamura keeps his head down because he’s gloomy“. This show also has easily the worst love triangle I’ve ever seen. Both of the resolutions for the opposing characters within the love triangle is so utterly pathetic it begs the question as to why I had to sit through all this. Not that I can complain too much though, since one of the resolutions is absolutely hilarious in how totally awful it is, to the point where watching this whole show was worth it for this one moment.
Shuu also deserves a dishonorable mention as his character is downright alien. Him acting incredibly open and extroverted at school while extremely cold, quiet and dismissive to her sister while at home is a really interesting concept for the anime to handle. The anime just completely fails to address why he is like this, as in, what drives him to be borderline emotionally abusive to his little sister while so upbeat at school? I can’t care about him because he’s at odds with reality as I know it as no person would under any circumstance behave like this, and besides he’s completely unlikable. It’s like the anime (or the manga, if this was present there) ran through a random character generator twice, and decides to glue the 2 generated characters together without caring if it made any psychological sense.
The only character that I have some positive regards towards is Hori’s dad, but only for the fact that I found him somewhat funny. He is not vastly more developed than the rest of the cast or anything, but he has a fairly clear and distinct personality and vibe due to his dialogue, which is an incredibly rare achievement for the writer of this show. It’s also strikingly obvious that we aren’t supposed to take him seriously, which made me judge his existence less.
Otherwise, every single side-character in this show is zero-dimensional and trite beyond comprehension, and the fact that we’re expected to even remotely care about them is utterly asinine. Same goes for the main duo, which has to be the blandest main duo I’ve ever seen. Apparently the anime skips over a lot of the manga’s character development. While I haven’t read the manga, I can totally believe that due to this show's lack of care to how the characters are developed.
Dialogue/writing [1/10]:
What ultimately ruins this anime completely is it’s god awful dialogue. Most characters just feel the exact same when they’re on screen, but this is not solely due to their complete lack of depth. If the characters were well developed to begin with, the dialogue would completely suck all the life out of them. The character interactions all feel the same, thus making them boring and lifeless. Aside from maybe Hori and Miyamura on occasion, not one character has any sort of chemistry with the others. In actual chemistry terms, this is not because the elements can’t react with one another, but because every character is the same element. The anime fails to truly distinguish each character in any way that doesn’t relate to their trope. Shuu being loud and Yuki being somewhat timid doesn’t add to their depth when that’s the only way the characters act differently from each other. The dialogue being in this awful state is rather unfortunate considering how the entire show is dialogue, making the whole show extremely tedious.
The dialogue never tries to develop the characters in a more indirect manner to compensate for how little we know about each character as people. Even when we’re given a laughably lazy laundry list of Miyamura’s traits in episode 1, there was literally nothing of substance, not even here. Hori pointing out that Miyamura likes manga and that his parents own a bakery is not interesting, it’s not something that gets further explored, and it’s not characterization. As for Miyamura liking manga, I don't think it's even mentioned at any point past episode 1. The only attempts of characterization through dialogue that we get are moments when they point out traits that are plainly obvious to everyone. It’s as if the writers think the audience is too stupid to realize that Miyamura is gloomy and reserved, or that Yuki is holding back her thoughts and feelings.
Several characters act as if the only things that is of value in life are all the superficial aspects. Sakura is especially guilty of this since her whole character dissolves into a person who feels less attractive than one of her friends. It’s true that they are teenagers and therefore makes this behavior understandable to a degree, but I still don’t buy that excuse. Especially when compared to romcoms where the characters are of the same age as these ones. Tsuki Ga Kirei have middle school students act less shallow than Horimiya’s high school students, and that show made it feel like their behavior belonged in the show. In actuality, the dialogue in Horimiya reinforces the argument about the characters being shallow, since so much of the dialogue in this show concerns shallow subject matter. There is so much talk about appearance alone in this show compared to anything „deeper“, that mostly everyone appear as shallow humans, not only because they’re underdeveloped but because they constantly behave and think in a shallow manner. Otherwise its all talk about who has good grades, who is good in sports, all the typical superficial traits that don’t mean anything to a persons behavior or character. I don’t typically like shallow people, so this whole ordeal made this show incredibly hard to consume. If having the characters be shallow somehow was the point, then that’s not showcased well, as no one reacts negatively to someone’s shallow nature or does anything else of the sort to support this argument.
The biggest issue when it comes to the writing is how constructed and manufactured this show feels on top of all the other negative aspects. As mentioned, the sheer length that this anime is willing to go in order to construct situations that hardly go anywhere anyway is utterly insane. Due to how all logic and reason is bent backwards in order for something to happen, any sense of reality is sucked out of any scene that does this, which makes me feel like I no longer see an anime happening before me. All that this anime is reduced to, is just a series of injections by the writers into a skeletal romcom template, where these injections are meant to bring out something from the anime that will check off the typical anime romcom boxes and then call it a day. None of the injections harbor any consideration in how the situation they’re injected into plays out, and of course all these injections all give half-baked results to boot. Everything is just a means to an end, an end desired by the writer and an end that always end up producing dissatisfying results. Miyamura’s backstory and his random emo phase early in the anime are also examples of this, and I know there are more instances of this that I can’t recall well enough to give my thoughts on. They don’t feel like they belong in the anime, they feel inserted by the writer for the sake of whatever reaction the writer find desirable in the moment.
Obviously, this is technically how many romcoms work if you shift your viewpoint on an anime enough. Usually though, these structured situations come seemingly naturally in good anime so that they make sense withing the context of the shows they take place in. Creating a new reality where interesting evens occur and in which I can invest myself into is what anime is typically so good at doing, but Horimiya constantly shatters the walls of immersion. Never have I ever felt these insertions to be merely insertions by a writer as an attempt to manipulate the viewer more than what I have with Horimiya. I shouldn’t be able to feel the presence of the writer(s) when watching an anime unless it’s because the writer in question is very good at a particular thing that I am a fan of. Here however, I had whoever wrote this show breathing down my next for most of its runtime, and that is something that I’ve found to be strictly unique to Horimiya. Naturally, this makes any feeling of immersion a pipedream, which; accompanied by the shallow characters and bland and lifeless dialogue that also contribute to this problem, makes Horimiya impossible to watch. This world they’ve created is so distorted, it’s honestly one of the least realistic anime I’ve ever watched, despite trying to be a down to earth romcom. I have an easier time believing there is a world of shinigami with notebooks that has the capability of killing people than believing that anything that happens in this anime would ever take place in real life.
Occasionally they mix this up though. While they sometimes opt for utilizing brute force in making a plot point happen while shattering everything surrounding it, sometimes they go the opposite route by making a mountain out of a molehill. For instance, we spend a good portion of episode 2 by watching Hori making a gigantic deal of not knowing Miyamura’s first name. Her pursuit of getting to know his name without asking was really awkward to watch, with what might be attempts at comedy, I honestly can’t be certain if it was. The fact that the idea of making a fuzz about Miyamura’s first name came to life in an anime that has to rush through the source material just to finish it, is completely baffling. You must have a lot of material to work with, yet this is something you’re willing to spend precious minutes awkwardly presenting, while neglecting likely better anime material?
Another instance of this is when Miyamura goes through a painful emo phase early on, because the writer knows hes incapable of causing drama and tension in a natural manner. He just makes Miyamura unreasonably doubt himself to an insane degree, and it’s plainly obvious that this is merely insertion of drama into the show without any regards to how the scene plays out. Miyamura had no good reason to be doubting himself this hard and this confidentially, and this same ordeal goes on for way too long and good lord baby Jesus is it boring. What I’m implying here is that the drama is equally forced and lazy as everything else, however, the drama is mostly bad because the anime gave me no reason to care about anything that occurs. In addition, the drama is often half-assed in some way, not unlike how they half-assed the developments of the characters, both main plot and sub plot, as well as Miyamura’s backstory.
Comedy [3.5/10]:
The comedy is honestly the best part about this shows writing, though that’s not to say it’s any good. The comedy has a 20:80 hit/miss ratio with one common detractor for the jokes that miss: The timing. And I do mean timing in both senses of the word: 1. The timing of the movements in the slapstick and any comedy that revolves around the animation usually miss its timing, rendering the joke unfunny. 2. The timing; as in what point in time and in what situations they decide to make a joke, is actually a couple of steps below disgraceful. I seriously don’t want an emotional moment to be completely shattered by some dumb slapstick, but this is constantly happening throughout the show and it’s absolutely horrendous. A good portion of the comedy is this kind of slapstick, usually in the form of a punch from Hori directed at Miyamura, which from what I can recall was unfunny every single time. They never manage to find a time and place where this punch gag would be funny, probably because punching people isn’t funny, and I’d argue that this shouldn’t be considered comedy at all. The only reason I bring it up is because the anime thinks this is comedy. Not only is this running gag unfunny, but it’s also unbelievably lazy comedy. Not only is this unbelievably lazy comedy, but it’s also extremely jarring to go from wholesome to abusive in the span of a single frame. Not only does this comedy fail as comedy but it ruins its respective scene on top of it.
Another awful yet continuously repeated joke early on is Ishikawa Tooru getting cucked and him being upset about it, which was not only consistently unfunny, but lame and extremely grating as well. SOmeone having their love be unrequited is by no means a basis for comedy, and I honestly cringed at some of these scenes. It felt like the same joke was being told repeatedly like with the punching gag, yet another instance of the comedy being lazy. Mercifully, most of these running jokes are more concentrated within the first leg of the show, meaning the comedy indirectly improves over the course of the anime by gradually sucking less.
Otherwise the comedy is a series of mostly unforgettable jokes that weren’t all bad, but the good jokes were so few and far in between one another that it wasn’t enough to make me invested. This is partly attributed to the show not attempting these kinds of jokes all too often, though maybe the jokes were so unremarkable that I just forgot that they occurred. I will give this show that it did have a couple of moments that genuinely made me laugh out loud. The one time Hori (I think it was her) dropped Yogurt on the floor as she heard something surprising was one of the few moments that the comedy landed its timing absolutely perfectly.
Also, Hori’s dad; despite being a "random = funny“ character for most of his screentime, did make me laugh a few times, and provided for the only time the anime had something fairly consistently good going for it. Sure a good portion of his funny moments were due to his complete absurdity, but it was nice to see something that wasn't completely streamline. He was that lone unpredictable element of the show that made the show feel alive, instead of a dead corpse of what was once a vibrant romcom anime.
Overall, the comedy is mostly very bad, but not entirely devoid of quality, and is leagues ahead of the rest of the writing. It actually manages to evolve into being decent over the course of the show, though this doesn’t make up for the comedy in the former half of the show being beyond awful.
Visuals [9.25/10]:
The visuals is where Horimiya truly shines. What is easily Horimiya’s greatest aspect, Horimiya’s art is colorful, vibrant and full of life, drawing a stark contrast between it and the anime’s actual substance. The animation is mostly smooth and has a nice attention to detail, the backgrounds are nice and well detailed and every character is strikingly attractive. It’s hard to describe this accurately, but Horimiya’s art feels very watery (and I don’t mean like paint). There is just something with the way the colors are used that not only makes it very refreshing, clean and appealing to the eye, but also very unique to this show in particular. This is what gives Horimiya it’s own identity as a romcom, as everything is drawn with equal amounts of realism as most romcoms, but simultaneously looks and feels completely different from anything that I’ve ever seen. The characters and environments feel very warm due to the anime’s perfect sense of brightness. Everything has the right amount of brightness (or darkness, if you will) unlike what some might find No Game No Life to be. The anime also tries to take a page out of Scum’s Wish’s book by having colored panels run across the foreground with the characters doing something fitting to the situation inside of it while something else is going on in the background. This could be anything from talking, looking a certain direction, opening their mouth, etc. While not having the same level of execution and frequency as Scum’s Wish had, it was a nice touch that made some scenes feel more dynamic and dense. The anime also truly knows how to set the tone of each scene using lighting, even if it has to use brute force on the narrative itself to make the scene take place in its preferred environment.
If there is anything that holds the visuals back, its how the animation doesn’t have a great sense of timing when attempting slapstick. Thankfully, this is something that gradually improves over the course of the show, but never perfects. I also don’t find several of the characters’ hair appealing. Hori’s hair; somewhat contradictory to what I said earlier, looks dirty in some scenes (and even once in the opening), Tooru just looks uncanny without me being ably to put my finger on why, and literally any character in the show with green hair should consider coloring it or to start wearing a wig. There is a reason as to why no barbershops in the real world offers „dying christmas-tree green“ as a color option.
Overall though, the visuals are very unique and in most aspects excellent, and considering how Wonder Egg Priority turned out, the art and mostly excellent usage of colors seems to be CloverWorks’ greatest asset as an animation studio currently.
Sound [5/10]:
The sound in Horimiya lands on the less flattering side average. I don’t remember a single composition utilized during its runtime (though that’s not too uncommon with me). I went back to rewatch some scenes, but this did little to improve my opinion on it, as it’s pretty basic as far as romcoms go. The opening song is excellent and sets the tone I assumed they were going for very nicely. The ending theme is pretty good, but didn’t warrant me spending 1 minute and 30 seconds listening to it. The voice acting is good, and especially Miyamura’s voice actor does his gloomy trait justice. If a voice actor where to deliver a immersion breaking performance at any point, there is a great chance I would miss it anyway due to previously covered statements about this show’s failure to immerse me.
Enjoyment / Overall [1/10]:
Would I consider this the bottom of the barrel of anime, like what my 1 out of 10 score would suggest? When taking all anime’s respective budget into account, it absolutely is without a shadow of a doubt. Despite having great visuals, this anime is one of the singular worst shows I’ve ever seen. This anime is everything of what I don’t want in a romcom, don’t want in an anime and so much more. An anime that expect the viewer to care about undeveloped characters, and then build the entire anime upon this assumption. An anime where literally nothing that happens matter, often not even because the characters are trite but because the writing is horrible. An anime where everything feels like it has come out of a factory, and is focusgrouped to appeal to as many anime viewers as possible by doing as little as possible to check of this focus groups’ required boxes. An anime that just wanna do the bare minimum to be what it seeks out to be, then fail miserably in doing so. All this accumulates the most unnatural-feeling and downright alien anime that I have ever watched, which is such an achievement for an anime going under the school and slice of life genres. This anime’s complete failure all comes down to the absolutely appalling writing. Character writing, dialogue, drama, preserving basic logic and immersion, all these aspects are as bad as they can humanly be, and the comedy can’t cover up this fact as it’s bad and lazy. Trying to invest myself in this world of Hori and Miyamura felt like ramming my head into a brick wall, hoping I would somehow pierce it, as there isn’t a single entry point for me to jump onto. It’s not even just about how bad this show’s negative sides are. There is an absolute abundance of bad aspects about this show that ruins its chances with me, but the real kicker is how this show is completely devoid of anything good or interesting with 5 hours to work with. This is aside from the art, but saying that the art could make up for content this bad is like saying that an impaled heart can be healed with a bandaid. Unless it's an action show, good visuals has never made a poorly written anime good, let alone an anime that is the worst written show I’ve ever seen.