Review of Horimiya
Introduction The romance comedy genre is filled with a lot of great shows, and often slice of life shows, so this in a way will include some slice of life shows to serve as a comparison Background Horimiya originated from a webcomic and it’s so good it already has 4 adaptations, in the forms of a manga series, two ovas, the anime that aired in 2021 winter and a live-action. The story is about Hori Kyouko and Miyamura Izumi being in loved and stuff and some other shit. Ok I know the background, so what’s the difference of this from the rest? Like any romance-based show, or as a mediain general, it revolves around our two MCs being in love, that’s where the similarities end.
Unlike other shows, instead of the tension being at the final confession after 200 chapters of nonsense (looking at you Komi), the confession happened, rather early comparatively, which already sets it aside from shows like Masamune Kun or Kaguya Sama, where the story is about characters working towards the confession individually, while Horimiya is about working together to change for the other person and to work together for a better relationship. One show that has a somewhat similar premise that comes to mind is Tsukasa Chan and Nasa Kun, but the two shows drift apart really quickly.
The show is also, much purer, not in the sense of virginity, but in the sense of romance. It’s not Bunny Girl Senpai or Kaguya Sama, or the 5 girl harem thing. It doesn’t have any mind games or any insane supernatural stuff, it’s pure romance. The gimmick of the show is that it doesn’t have a gimmick, it doesn’t need one. Unlike other shows, Horimiya portrays teenagers, as teenagers, doing teenagers’ stuff, worrying about teenagers’ problems, and being happy about teenagers’ things, and the blandness of it is the reason why I and many others love it.
Craftsmanship
Horimiya is an insanely effective work narrative mechanical engineering, a plot machine where each and every character is developed and fine-tuned like a Swiss Watch. If you’ve watched it, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The delicate, bittersweet of a teenage crush is a difficult feeling to accurately emulate in narrative media. “Realistic” romance shows like Toradora tend to go larger than life with their characters and emotional conflicts, drawing out the overly used will they/won’t they question to an absurd length and often leveraging the dynamism of melodrama to create a feeling that’s similar, but much more intense than the real thing. Butterflies and dokis dokis for sure, but the kind that a roller coaster would offer. Horimiya is different, as it’s more like a subtly thrilling ride, coasting downhill, watching the city afar on a bicycle for two.
The show tries to portray the fleeting yet in-the-moment all-consuming profundity of pubescent bullshit, which Kaguya Sama used to meme the heck out of it, this series tackles with unerring unembellished sincerity to shockingly powerful effect. The characters in the series don’t get overly hung up on absurd misunderstandings they could solve with a single message, or entangled in a love geometry. They get hurt by poorly chosen words, burden themselves and each other with irrational anxieties, and struggle to juggle life, school and family from one day to the next, you know, like actual teenagers. The series driving conflicts are things that will not matter to anyone in 10 years or even 10 seconds, yet matter more than anything to these characters in the moment.
In the climax of the first ep, an unwanted gesture of self-deprecation meant to help Hori “save face” with opinions from people that don’t matter to her, instead ends up making her feel like Miyaura’s abandoning her with a convenient excuse, which really hurts her feelings, and they just…… talk it out. It may not seem that interesting but trust me, it’s captivating when you’re there. In one later chapter, we see Hori on the verge of tears because of something Miyamura said in her dream, which sounds and is absurd, yet deeply human and believable. We’ve all done that. And in exploring the honest, complex emotions of this common, MUnDAne, nothing of a personal problem. Horimiya delivers both the doki dokis and the fuwa fuwas in copious quantities, along with some pretty heart chuckles. A lot of their conflicts are the sort of thing one laughs at when looked back upon, and Hormiya leans into that very specific feeling to allow its comedic elements to exist in close but comfortable proximity to its heavier emotional loads. The depth and nuance of characters required to make fundamentally small conflicts like this resonate so strongly and broadly is staggering, which is why most romance manga writer clings so long to the good old, universally relatable,” I think they like me, but I don’t know if they LIKE ME like me” Pre-relationship romantic tension, stretching it well beyond the breaking point of believability.
In the relatively uncharted territory beyond the confession, dating, and stuff, each couple’s story becomes their own, its forward momentum not fueled by formula but the unique chemistry between them. It’s hard to right, and Horimiya charges into it like the Reiner to the Wall of Maria. The central couple establishes that they’re special to each other in the first ep, hands held in the third, and confession by the fourth, which Hori’s dad, Kyousuke pressures her into answering in the middle of his character introduction in the 5th, simultaneously cementing himself in our minds as a childishly overbearing nuisance who makes everything about him, even the moment of climactic catharsis that the whale series was building to. The unexpected deviation into comedy right before the romantic climax makes that climax when it does arrive, feel fresh, exciting, and unexpected in a way that they can’t accomplish without the comedic relief.
Characters
Speaking on the topic of Kyousuke, he had a very memorable introduction, and significantly develop all of the characters in the Hori family, in the span of a few minutes. This one scene tells us everything we need to know about the character through how he reacts to and disrupts the story status quo, and how his daughter and especially wife react to him. On a side note, Yuriko(Hori mother) passive aggression is positively savage.
Learning about Kyousuke, in turn, tells us a great deal about Kyouko, why she is the way she is, who she’s so drawn to reliable, kind, and unassertive Miyamura, and why she’s so possessive and anxious about the prospect of being abandoned by him out of the blue. Thoughtfully layered, efficient writing like this is what allows the show to move so swiftly through its opening arc without feeling rushed, or softening the emotional impact of key moments.
When you break it down, there aren’t a lot of scenes between Horimita’s meet-cute and big relationship status update, but it makes the most out of each one, using them to simultaneously develop and advance the central romance, deliver solid, self-contained jokes, and emotional beats, and expand upon the vast supporting cast in equal measure to the characters with Hori and Miya. By the tie you reach ep 5 climax, you’ve experienced a greater density of emotions and meaningful character developments than you’ll find in long, boring as shit dragged out shows, and the transition to a full-blown relationship feels well-earned. We understand perfectly what these characters mean to each other, why they need each other, and how exactly they’ve grown ready to be together. And from that point onward, they continue to grow together, around each other, as we discover more about both of them alongside each of them. This is one of the most fun stages of a relationship, and for obvious reasons, fertile ground for character-driven comedy and storytelling. Hard to write, but HERO(writer of the said show) writes it well, and it’s the essence of what makes Horimiya so complex and compelling.
Hori and Miya are orbited by other teens in their own states of Will-They-Won’t-They entanglement, who provide complementary flavors of forlorn, cross classroom glancing, and allowing the series to indulge in proper romantic storytelling when it wants to, cooking lessons, love triangles, that whole bit, but Horimiya never uses cliche as a crutch. It does use it as effective shorthand, though, allowing for moments that other manga might soak in soliloquy to pass without comment. Take the moment Sakura falls for Tooru, not a lot happened. Papers are dropped and picked up, a single compliment delivered with them, and we don’t hear either character’s internal monologue. But the framing, the very shoujo directorial flourishes, and the fact that these characters are along together for the first time tell us this is the start of something. We can infer from this that Tooru’s acknowledgment of her hard work means more to Sakura than she lets on.
The characters help the show with the don’t-tell approach to their development by wearing their hearts on their sleeves, for the most part. Based on their expression, how they feel about any given development, even if they try to hide it. In fact, their attempts to hide things only tell us more about what they are really thinking. The nature of the medium means the anime can’t be quite as precise in illustrating these emotions as the manga, but bold, evocative direction allows it to convey whatever info’s lost to lower fidelity through cinematic language. As a result, Horimiya doesn’t need a running inner monologue to be fully understood. Instead, it can instead use the device sparsely, stylistically, in contrast to its abundance of dialogue to convey when characters are feeling lonely or stuck up in their own heads. Of course, none of that would work if the characters themselves weren’t interesting and worth exploring in depth. Were the tired cliches simply used to acquaint us with more tired cliches, they wouldn’t amount to much at all. Horimiya states its central thesis up front, that we all have sides of ourselves that we don’t show the world, and we’re all looking for someone to share them with. Every character makes good on that promise of hidden depth and duality.
The Cast
This cast doesn’t fit neatly into your typical anime archetypes. Sure, you could describe Hori as a tsundere, she does tend to bring you the bakes when romantically flustered, and she’s got a mean axe kick, but she’s not defined by her anger. She has severe mood swings, exacerbated by the day-to-day stress of being a surrogate mom to her younger brother, and a deep-rooted sense of separation anxiety that thus far, only Miyamura has been able to quell. She’s not an anime trope, she’s a neurotic girl coping with the trauma of parental abandonment.
For Miyamura’s part, crouching dweeb, hidden himbo is a self-conscious bundle of raw nerves only just now emerging from a shell of shyness and pessimism that he’s carried since grade school as a defense against bullying and exclusion. Push past those defenses, and you’ll find a kind easygoing, slightly clueless kid who’s eager to help others, and that just happens to think so lowly of himself that never bothering them or making them look bad by association with him is his go-to way of doing that. Thanks to Shindou, the concept of people actually liking him isn’t foreign to Miyamura anymore, but he’s still getting used to it. He’s clearly got a lot of pent-up anger, but he mostly directs it at himself, we learn early on that those cool piercings are a product of self-harming impulse. That said, with the people he’s closest to, he is a little more willing to be brutally honest and let his feelings loose. And while he’s not the type to start a fight, Ishikawa fucks around and fins out he’ll sure as shit finish one. Though again, the motivation for that conflict is rooted in Miyamura’s diminished sense of self-worth.
Speaking of Ishikawa, the friendly, jocular jock, is a surprisingly sensitive guy, prone to unseemly emotional outbursts at times, but generally respectful of his friend’s feelings and willing to go out his way to protect them. Once his initial jealousy toward Miyamura subsides, he really warms up to the gloomy weirdo, to the point Hori almost starts getting jealous of them. Though the obliviously forward Shindou poses more of an imaginary threat on that front.
Yuki Yoshikawa, their friend group’s fourth member, seems at first blush to be your typical Genki girl, and is generally possessed of a positive outlook and go-getting disposition. But she rarely, if ever, actually goes to get anything she really wants, and tends to smile the hardest when there’s something she doesn’t want to be asked about.
Then there’s the student council, who have their distinct dynamics as a friend unit. President Sengoku plays it cool, but he’s an anxious dork not so deep down, and a not-insignificant portion of that anxiety traceable to his traumatic history as the violent Hori-San’s childhood friend.
His girlfriend Remi, seems flighty, capricious, and ditzy, which is in fact those things, and perhaps a little over willing to joke about stealing boys from other girls, but she loves Sengoku deeply. She’s even dumber than Miyamura and Shindou, but she understands people as well, those closest to her best of all, and tries her best to encourage them to do theirs.
Sakura has to pick up a lot of Remi’s slack, and the president slacks, too. But her bestie, Remi makes up for it by constantly affirming her self-worth and telling the insecure vice president how cute she is, which is very cute.
Those seven form what I’d call the series’ main cast, though that’s a distinction made purely based on total screentime. Everywhere you look in Horimiya, you’ll find equally complex and compelling characters, each of whom, somehow, makes you wanna give them a big hug. Some take longer to spark that impulse than others, but deserve it when all’s said and done, except for maybe Kyosuke. As much thought has gone into how these characters express themselves and interact with each other as was spent shaping their inner worlds. It feels like you could put them together in just about any combination and have comedy emerge from their chemistry, especially if Iura or Shindou are involved Across the manga’s many chapters, you’ll get to see just about every combo you can imagine, and practice proves that theory out.
Flaws and Redemptions
The anime doesn’t have time for all those diversions, it’s a much more focused version of the story that optimizes the dramatic utility of these characters. There’s still plenty of laughs, it is a Rom-Com after all, but just about every humorous aside that doesn’t feed into a central character arc has been cut, as have a few entire characters who don’t add much to the mix, like a little girl from Souta’s class who’s implied to have a crush on him. A subplot about Yoshikawa having a crush on casual Miyamura, not realizing who he is, also gets the axe. There are downsides to this approach, big ones, like a criminally significant reduction in Shuu Iura’s total screen time. But he really makes the moment he still has count.
Though, I do think the other omissions are for the better. They probably could’ve kept that content without making the show feel padded, pushing back the crystallization of Hori and Miyamura’s relationship by a few episodes to compensate, but that would likely mean the anime wouldn’t reach some of the manga’s best movements and characters, Sawada for example, and it would put a little more narrative weight on the confession and response than they were designed to bear by extending the gap between them, and drawing out the question of what the two mean to each other. Those moments would simply hit different coming in episodes 6 or 8 out of 13, compared to 4 and 5, throwing off the delicate balance that sets the series apart from other romances, Horimiya treats relationship, not as goals for its characters to work toward, but rather a project for them to work on, together, as I said. Significant parts of their lives, to be sure, but never the whole picture.
Friendship status is often as essential to the stakes of the narrative drama, if not more so, and individual characters’ growth always matters most of all. Hori and Miyamura aren’t interesting because they love each other, they’re interesting in ways that result in them loving each other. Other characters are interesting in different ways that set them down different paths romantically, academically, and personally.
I don’t find myself watching, or obsessively binge-reading this series constantly thinking “Now kiss” as I do with a lot of entries in the same genre. I just want to learn more about these characters and see where they end up, regardless of whatever it results in romantic catharsis for me as a viewer. Like Ishikawa’s reaction to his two best friends making it official, some of the series’ strongest emotional moments are rooted in realistic, understated heartbreak. Such moments come right on the tail of the happiest story beats, underscoring them with quiet sadness.
Conclusion
This isn’t a series where the resolution of a romantic rivalry represents the triumph of a good guy, or girl, over a duplicitous villain. It just means the two protagonists get to enjoy each other’s company with another protagonist, while the other protagonist suffers alone.
Real relationships of all kinds are messy like that, we often cause each other undeserved yet unavoidable pain in pursuit of our own happiness, or just by existing in proximity to each other. With so many people in one place, and all of their hormones out of whack, high school represents the height of that aspect of human experience, and Horimiys captures it perfectly. Finding a companion amid it all doesn’t magically set everything right, it just means you’ve got someone to hold onto as you both weather the storm, and that you have someone to laugh with looking back.
Horimiya is a love story built from mundane moments of intimacy and problems that seem bigger on the inside atop a realistically rocky foundation of equally mundane generalized adolescent angst. It’s a story about looking past how the people around you present and seeing them for who they really are. It’s not particularly novel, innovative, or subversive, but it is true and honest in the way that all the best art is. We can see bits of ourselves and people we know just in its main characters, but all of them, and the feeling of attachment that fosters in what’s kept its fanbase coming back, and growing, across four iterations now.
Like the webcomic and manga that inspired it, romance appreciators are gonna be talking about and revisiting this anime for many years to come.