Review of Horimiya

This anime starts out with a very interesting premise that it soon forgets. Resident school beauty Hori finds out that the gloomy Miyamura from her class has several piercings and badass tattoos and is overall a pretty decent and nice guy. They become friends and soon more than that. Add other class- and schoolmates who have the hots for each other, but never for the one who has the hots for them. Sounds like a fine premise? Right. Except that the main premise is never again spoken of and the other characters all only get mini arcs, after which their issue is resolved. Or not. But it'sdone with, queue next mini arc.

Don't get me wrong. I liked the show, and I liked all of the characters to varying degrees. But it's quite uneventful and a slice of life in the most basic sense. There is almost no conflict beyond someone longing for somebody's love, brooding over it and accepting that it won't happen. It strikes me as a little too realistic, in the sense that we probably all experienced something similar in school or witnessed someone experiencing it, but it does not make for an interesting story. At most, it's a short character study of how this character copes with it.

As I already said, the main premise is quickly abandoned in favor of random scenes from their everyday life, with no real plot. There is still the main focus on Hori and Miyamura, but it fails to provide a coherent story. We just get to observe highschoolers sorting out their feelings for each other.

I just read something in another review that describes my feelings about what this show is in summary pretty well: Get a cup of coffee and watch it on a Sunday morning, don't expect anything you have to think about. It starts great, it continues okay. I wish it had stayed as strong as it opened.