Review of Horimiya

I was struggling with a 9 or 10 for this anime, but chose to give it a 9. Did it deserve a 10? I give 10s to anime which I benchmark other anime of the same genre against - So is Horimiya a benchmark for school romance anime? No. The overall plot is quite similar to others in the same genre, except a distinct lack of pointless fanservice, cliched beach episode, school trip episode, forced conflicts, mass misunderstandings etc. Horimiya takes the best parts of the school romance genre and condenses it into a 12 episode run. It feels rushed and some couples/characters are notexplored but considering they adapted the whole manga, it's to be expected.

The jokes land most of the time, the characters feel realistic, like they're actually high school characters - a good balance of maturity and lack thereof. I don't pay attention to soundtrack and stuff but I liked the OP and ED, and the animation was nice.

The best and worst part of Horimiya is it's characters - Some are way too relatable and in some instances you can see yourself in them, but then they act like your typical cliched anime characters. It's this dichotomy which brought down my score and impression. There were so many interesting things the show could have explored - Parentification, dealing with grief over death of a loved one, self-harm, insecurity, and feelings of loneliness but only the last two are superficially touched upon.

Personally, I don't look for these things in a school romance anime but the fact that these issues were present and mentioned elevated this anime from your regular anime of the same genre.

Are there any negatives? Yes.

Apart from the ones mentioned above, especially during latter part of the series Horimiya worsens in it's storytelling. Without spoiling anything, some characters act completely different from what the show established them to be. This that should not be overlooked, were and it felt like the show was rushing to adapt the ending rather than tell the story.

Should you watch it? Absolutely.

I am not a fan of the romance genre, but I had a blast watching this one.