Review of Horimiya
Going into this review, I had a hard time coming up with a quick way to sum up my thoughts on HoriMiya. I love the premise of the series, which focuses on the relationships between the teens of a large (and growing) friend group, but something about HoriMiya doesn't sit right with me... Let's get into the ratings: [ Story : 6/10 ] I think the main problem I have with this series is it's poor pacing. It's so goddamn fast that I can't tell when certain parts begin and end. Doing some research led me to finding out that HoriMiya adapted 122 chapters into 13 episodes,but skipped several chapters/mixed the order of chapters and skipped some entirely (specifically a time skip). I knew loosely that this was the case, but I didn't realize how bad it was until I watched it.
However, all this being said, I still really enjoyed the story itself. I loved watching the different relationships begin, evolve, and unfold. I bumped this score down a ton simply because the pacing is extremely off.
(one thing I'd like to note is that I think this show could have benefitted more towards a short-form episode style similar to Saiki K... just a thought, and we can't do anything now to change it)
[ Art: 8/10 ]
I'm really big into art, especially in anime, and HoriMiya is a beautiful anime to look at. I love the character designs, and the backgrounds and animation movement always seemed to be pretty decent. However, when I first watched the ending theme, I was thrown off by the CGI because I wasn't expecting it. I still think it looks nice, but CGI really isn't my preference in anime.
[ Sound: 7/10 ]
As for sound, I really liked the OSTs a lot. I fell like the fit the show and I don't have any qualms about them. The opening is a certified bop and I never fail to dance along when it played. I wasn't a big fan of the ending theme song, but it didn't deter my enjoyment of the series.
[ Character: 6/10 ]
Like I stated earlier, I think this anime severely suffered from the pacing. I feel like I wasn't able to learn about more of the characters due to the cut n' paste nature of each episode. For example, there were several characters introduced towards the end that definitely didn't get as much screen time as other characters even though they were (seemingly) added to the main ensemble cast. Then, by the end of the last episode, everyone acted as if the new characters had been there from the beginning.
I think that overall, each character had their own arcs (whether big or small), but I don't think that I was able to see it all due to the pacing. Personally, I really don't want to watch an anime and then feel like I have to go read the manga because I want to learn more about the characters. If I want to read the manga, I do it because I love the story so much and I want to catch the *small* details that were possibly left out for the sake of time (or, I go to the manga because the anime hasn't adapted all of the series yet/is a continuing series). However, in this case, I'd need to read the manga to get what feels like a quarter more of the story (at least) that was left out.
(*POSSIBLE SPOILER* : but in the Christmas episode, I noticed that there was a little red-head girl with Hori 's family, but she was never introduced prior OR mentioned/shown on-screen ever again...?? Like who is she? Where did she come from?)
[ Enjoyment: 9/10 ]
With all of my points about the pacing aside, I still very much enjoyed this series. I had a blast following the characters and learning more about them in and out of school.
[ Overall: 7/10 ]
I think for most anime fans today, anything below an 8 seems to mean that you hate the series. Little do they know, I always try to rank anime based off of MAL's word description of each number. That means that for HoriMiya, I find this series to be "Good," and I stand by that.
For my final notes, I definitely would recommend this anime to anyone who likes a good slice-of-life rom-com, but I would probably point them in the direction of the manga first rather than the anime.
Thanks for reading! <3