Review of Horimiya

I've watch a good few romance anime, and this one is the one that pushed me over the edge. I've become extremely tired of seeing the same exact formula over and over again. I'm well aware that people say the manga is better, but in this case I feel like it doesn't apply. THE ROMANCE GENRE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO CONSIST OF DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT FICTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS. Let me elaborate. Horimiya is an anime about a conventionally attractive shy boy (Miyamura) dating a conventionally attractive and uninteresting girl (Hori). Meanwhile, all of their friends are busy having subplots that should've beenthe main plot. Throughout the series we see Hori and Miyamura take further steps in their relationship while they both continue to stagnate as individuals. In a real romance story, you'd expect the relationship to cause the protagonist(s) to self reflect on their issues or to overcome some kind of internal conflict. In Horimiya, however, they just use the relationship as a comedic device, and occasionally slip in one of those generic blushing moments that you see in every romance anime. While all of this NOTHING is happening, the side characters get only a few dedicated episodes to actually have development. Said development is.... okay at best. Certainly not groundbreaking.

At the end of the show Miyamura has a little flash back and says something along the lines of "look at all of the friends I've made". This would be really touching if those friends actually affected him in some way, shape, or form. But, no. They were just kind of... there.

Anyway, with my rant out of the way, I can at least say the art for this show looks nice. I guess the opening's pretty good too. Other than that though, this show was an absolute waste of time.