Review of Horimiya

Here’s a quite endearing rom-com with an un-cool guy who’s actually secretly a cool unusual guy somehow meeting and developing a relationship with the class idol, who’s secretly a responsible homebody. I love romance stories and Horimiya is very special. In my opinion, here are the good features of this anime: 1) The story illustrates one “happenstance” is all you need 2) Being able to bear a bad/sad situation with hope of a better future Both above are related and also these concepts have valuable application IRL 3) Acceptance by your girl’s family is quite flatteringThe situations shown were quite amusing to me.
4)The characters of both Hori-san and Morimiya-kun…
Simple Izumi
•being attentive and doing anything for Kyoko
•being proactive and going for it at opportune times
Kyoko, the group standout
•with her strong & demanding personality
•with her charming jealousness
Both Izumi & Kyoko appealed to me because they had chemistry (i.e. completed each other) and also partly reminded me of my similar past.

In my opinion, here are my criticisms:

1)Towards the end, maybe 3 or so episodes (too much) almost totally ignored Horimiya so maybe either the pacing/mix earlier was not efficient or perhaps a short focused 10-episode season would have been better ?
2)I understand the honorific way of addressing each other in Japan and that the story is titled Horimiya but doesn’t intimacy mean
Kyoko calls Izumi Izumi and
Izumi calls Kyoko Kyoko
more often,
particularly later on ?

Last note: very bright opening theme --- specially the instrumental chorus.