Review of Horimiya

I'll try to keep this as spoiler-free as possible so if there are any spoilers in this review I truly apologise. To keep things brief, imagine the most generic romance anime but take away the common tropes in those romance anime. Horimiya is an interesting romance anime as I never expected anything from it at all as I thought it would be a romance anime with crazy misunderstandings and that one friend that comes in to interrupt the moment between the two lovers just as they are about to confess extending the anime by another 15 episodes. Horimiya however does things differently and takes away allthose common tropes most of us found annoying. Instead of the love confession happening at the very end and forcing us to watch the seemingly painful and long episodes, Horimiya gives us the confession and the lovers getting together way too early and I'm not too sure if everyone enjoyed that but I did. Another romance anime trope they drop is the misunderstandings. When it comes to romance anime there will always be misunderstandings to create a challenge that the characters must clear out of the way to progress the story, however, in many cases, the misunderstandings can get repetitive and annoying and instead of the characters just talking it out and clearing out the misunderstandings, they just create even more unnecessary amount of drama and in some cases extend the anime longer than it should. Horimiya doesn't do that and there are rarely ever any misunderstandings, even if there was one the characters do something that has never been done before, clearing the misunderstanding by talking.

In most romance anime, the side characters for the most part are cast aside and not focused on as much as the two lovers fail to confess their feelings because they fear the other will reject them. Anyways Horimiya can be compared to an anime like "Kaguya sama love is war" because of their multiple character point of view aspect. As a whole Horimiya focuses on more than the lovers and instead focuses on the other characters and develops them as well. For the most part, however, because the anime couldn't cram in all the content the manga had to offer so most of the character development is in its manga if anyone wishes to see the characters have more development it is recommended you read the manga.

Now as for the story there isn't much to say. The reason being is because Horimiya is what I think to be the most realistic romance anime out there. Of course, there are those runner ups like Toradora and Fruits basket which are really good romance anime not gonna lie, but they are flawed for having the supernatural or overly exaggerated moments so in a sense they kind of fail to showcase what real teen romance should look like. Horimiya has a simple plot and simple characters making it a more or less feel-good anime that is satisfying and fun to watch.

I would recommend this to people who don't like overtop romance anime with unnecessary romance tropes but just want a romance that feels good and is entertaining, however, I do recommend anyone to watch it as it is in my opinion at least a very good romance.

This is the first review I have ever written so if there is anything I can improve on please feel free to tell me.