Review of Horimiya

Horimiya Review Watching a rom-com like Horimiya was an uncommon move for me, who loves OPMC anime series but I couldn't help come back to this series with all it had to offer. The story starts out with gloomy main character getting belittled by his class, miraculously helping a popular Hori's younger brother after school. Little did we know, that gloomy character was actually an attractive, friendly and approachable young adult with piercings and tattoos. As the connection between Miyamuri and Hori progressed, it opened a way for Miyamuri to undergo personal development and open up more at school. Furthermore, this led to more available connectionswith the people at their school and eventually Miyamura ended up reconciling with his middle school classmates in a friendly way and making ends meet with his past gloomy self thanks to the help of his newly found friends and lover.

The art and sound are as expected of a Winter 2021 anime series, great visuals fluid animation and high quality voice acting and music.

Character development is where I think this series shined the most. Horimiya's characters had rational personalities which made their choices realistic and agreeable from my point of view. There wasn't much meddling between relationships and the degree of characters misunderstanding situations is satisfyingly low. Even with the small scale love triangle between Tooru, Sakura and Yuki was at a satisfying level to not degrade the overall romance among the main characters love interest. Satou and Kyosuke's development throughout the series was also very heartwarming and wholesome, seeing how they grow to approve of Miyamura should also be a feat in gaining ground in a relationship. And lastly, Miyamura and Hori's personalities are in the ideal set, they don't embarrass easily or shy away too fast like in many romance comedy series and when they are interrupted Hori gets upset at Kyosuke which is a good characteristic of a lover. The fact that they are mature enough in the sense that they can dictate their choices without that shounen-style conflict made this worth seeing to the end within itself.

I thoroughly enjoyed this series, this is what a romance comedy should truly feel like. Conflct should exist in a series but when conflict overrules the main narrative or drives the main narrative, it becomes a dull watch. Also mature comedy and characters made this shine well.