Review of Horimiya
tl;dr: An anime with good relationship development in the main couple, but that hit’s it’s peak pretty early and is largely unfocused and lacking afterwards. Horimiya is for the most part a pretty typical anime about high school romance between a mismatched couple. The main differentiating highlight is the main couple, Hori and Miyamura, being a bit different from the usual. While they do still play into the standard tropes of there being a guy that’s a loner that ends up getting pulled by his eventual girlfriend into being a more social person, both Hori and Miyamura are pretty different from the typical character types thatfit into those slots. Miya is not an otaku or anything like that, he’s just really bad at socializing and also seemed to be somewhat of a rebel at first, though that just sort of fizzled out beyond the first episode. Hori also doesn’t really have any special plot forced reason for her to spend time with someone she’s mismatched with, she just kind of likes him and does because she wants to. It’s not that hard to see how a pair such as them would end up in a relationship based on the general way such stories go in anime, but I felt this anime had much better writing in regards to how it handled their relationship development and eventual relationship.
Their relationship is the focus of the anime at first, but they get together relatively quickly, and after that while there are some brief interesting highlights there’s nothing all that strong. It largely just felt like it was spinning its wheels but never going anywhere, and in the end it never did, nor was it particularly interesting or amusing, so it just felt like a pointless time sink. Hori didn’t really seem to have any sort of character arc at all. Miya definitely had one with him overcoming his past, but it wasn’t written all that well and in the end while it is clear what it was and that progress was made, the finer points weren’t focused on enough and felt badly conveyed.
The story instead focuses on the relationships of all the characters surround them, and those stories I felt were were for the most part lackluster. There are a number of relationships, but the one that took up the most time by far was one involving, Yuki and Tooru. It’s one of those relationships that moves incredibly slowly, or rather doesn’t really move at all, because one of the two is fine with how things are and doesn’t want to change things, and the other isn’t good at understanding their own feelings. It in and of itself is incredibly generic, but on top of that it ends up pulling in several side plot threads with each of the two having someone that’s interested in them which played out in an even more cliché manner.
As for the rest of the cast and their relationships, they’re comparatively minimal in term of content so it’s hard to really have all that strong of an opinion on them. They’re straight and to the point and generally pretty amusing, but in general it didn’t really feel like there was any sort of plan on where things would go, they would just kind of pop in and out at times without changing anything. Thus while I did like them, they were more the kind of thing that are used for pacing purposes and not the kind of thing that can hold up the narrative entirely, and thus they aren’t enough to make up for the failings of the narrative past the point where the relationship between Hori and Miyamura has been fully established.
I will also note that the ending felt incredibly rushed in that it just suddenly skips to graduation which it also rushes through. Graduation endings can certainly have incredibly strong emotional impact, but that requires being built up to properly, and to be honest I don’t think that’s possible to do in only 12 episodes. Thus, it should be no surprise that I don’t think the ending to this hit the mark at all. It was also surprisingly lacking in how little it actually said about anyone or anything. It just kind of showed the characters at graduation and that’s it. The only message I could really feel being conveyed was, “It’s nice things ended up like this, isn’t it?” It’s a really weak last impression. The episode before which focused on Christmas honestly handled things a lot better in terms of focusing on the relationships and especially the main relationship and I think would have been a better place to stop at to be frank. There’s also an extended metaphors involving the seasons and character’s names, and I’m not sure how well it came across in Japanese, but in English it felt incredibly forced at times.
The production values in general were excellent. The art and animation were really good. Character designs were simple as would be expected of the setting and realistic atmosphere, but each felt pretty distinct. The soundtrack wasn’t particularly standout but used really well. The OP and ED were both pretty unique and well made with songs that fit well.