Review of Horimiya

Being adapted from the 11th most popular manga on myanimelist.net, you would expect Horimiya to be a good show, or at least have something that makes it stand out. Sadly, this anime adaptation is average and is pretty much your typical high school romance anime, with some exceptions. In terms of animation and sound, this series performs fairly well. The art-style looks good, the character design are pretty decent, and the backgrounds are well drawn. The face expressions and distortions (moe and chibi faces) are well done. The background music is forgettable but fits the various situations. There is nothing wrong with the voice acting.The opening is also alright, both in terms of music and in terms of visuals, though it’s nothing incredible.

Just like a lot of high school romance anime, Horimiya is about an asocial protagonist who somehow manages to make the top girl of his school his girlfriend. There are however a couple of differences that makes it somewhat less unoriginal. Firstly, the protagonist has a pretty interesting character design. Instead of looking like your average self-insert protagonist, Miyamura is an effeminate boy with long hair. Secondly, he confesses his love to the top girl in his school, Hori, as early as episode 4, and she becomes his girlfriend soon after. Thirdly, the secondary characters are not mere background decoration, they get a lot of character development and play a more important role than in the average high school romance, with many episodes (at least 5) focused on them.

There is also some decent comedy, coming mostly from misunderstandings and the like, which helps making the show a bit better. Even so, that isn’t enough to make the show good, as there are three major flaws in the story and characters.

The first flaw is that Miyamura and Hori become a couple too early, that is to say, after the fourth episode. After they become a couple, their relation does not evolve a single bit, and when they appear on the screen it’s only to show boring couple stuff about holding hands, saying “I love you”, using first names instead of family names, and so on. Thankfully, the series does not focus only on the relationship between Miyamura and Hori, which prevents it from being completely boring, but this also means that in the second half of the series, the secondary characters – the relationship between Yoshikawa Yuki and Ishikawa Tooru in particular – were more interesting to watch than the main characters.

The second flaw is that nothing actually happens in this series. The show tries to be wholesome and cute, but that alone can’t make it good. There are no conflicts, as pretty much all the characters are altruistic and kind and have no particular objective, and as a result there is little evolution in the characters and in the relationships between them, and absolutely no plot progression. While watching the show, you will wait for something to happen, for an antagonism to rise between the characters, but nothing happens. The biggest “conflict” between the characters happens when a pink-haired girl who is member of the student council drops an important paper in the hallway but doesn’t want to admit her mistake, and so her boyfriend who is also member of the student council puts the blame on Hori. Miyamura intervenes to clarify the situation, everything is forgiven, end of conflict. There’s some stuff about social anxiety and bullying but the approach is too naive, with some idealistic bullcrap like “you can be friends with everyone”, and the protagonist befriending one of his former bullies.

The third flaw is that nothing stands out in this anime. Though they aren’t extremely stereotypical, the characters aren’t particularly likable, original, or relatable, and so it is hard to care about them. Miyamura’s background is pretty unoriginal: being seen as gloomy and creepy by his classmates, he has suffered from bullying and loneliness for most of his school life. He then meets Hori by chance outside of school, they grow closer and form a couple, and he manages to befriend Hori’s friends and some other classmates.

To conclude, Horimiya is what I would a “neither good nor bad" show. There’s nothing particularly annoying in it, so it can be watched easily, and there’s some comedy that can be enjoyed, but it doesn’t have anything new or groundbreaking either.

SUB-SCORE EXPLANATION:

Animation: good art-style; decent chara design; good backgrounds; visually good OP → 8/10

Sound: good VA; fitting BGM; good OP song → 8/10

Story: no plot progression; nothing important happens; some decent comedy → 3/10

Character: some character development; little character evolution; protagonist has an unoriginal background → 5/10

Enjoyment: I enjoyed the comedy a bit; no historical or sentimental value whatsoever; low re-watch value → 4/10

Overall: 5/10