Review of Horimiya

I remember the first time I read Horimiya on a rainy night three years ago, how my chest pounded and eyes fixated upon the panels. Finding the last paperback of the first volume in the Barnes & Noble at Prudential Center while touring colleges in Boston had me grow a few inches. I have reread Horimiya three times, and in the near future that tally will probably increase to four. I absolutely adore the series, and it isn’t simply some flavor of the month popular ani/manga series that will be put aside for the next shiny narrative. It has been with me as I’ve becomea much better person in a much better place and all the challenges that such transition entailed. Horimiya is always the first manga recommendation I give, because it brings me joy like few objects do.

Likened to stories of the caliber, craftsmanship, and care of My Neighbor Totoro and Paul King’s Paddington films, Horimiya extracts the details from normal life that find the human experience at its most, well, liveable. Roger Ebert lauded My Neighbor Totoro as “the world we should live in, rather than the one we occupy.” This is a line of thought that I can’t help but think perfectly captures the vision and beauty of the manga, which unusually thrives through inspection of the special area within a vacuum of these endorphin laden spaces. Horimiya is like Eric Rohmer reincarnated -- his penchant of finding sophistication in the minute -- without the French New Wave philosophical ponderings.

At the core of the series is how relationships can relinquish much of the impact to be had of stress, anxiety, and trauma. Miyamura grapples with an unrepresentative physical appearance that leads credence to social stagnation, isolation, and dysphoria. Hori sinks into stoicism with furthered responsibilities in her home life. Perhaps most apparent is Yuki’s interladen trauma (which probably will never be explained to manga readers/anime watchers, the dark tonal connection will remain exclusively tied to the original webcomic Hori-san to Miyamura-kun). Each member of the ensemble has varying degrees of inner turmoil, and the relationships they make do not undo their problems, nor fix, shift, or augment them. None of the relationships are infallible, and the criticisms of the character’s actions within their dynamic groups are quite easy to observe. Instead, these relationships vindicated their worth as human beings -- and nothing more.

However, it is necessary to note that the Horimiya anime’s qualities are distinct from the manga’s. I have always taken issue with an anime (or story of any medium) being praised for being ‘different’ than the accustomed motions of a high school romance, with deviations including but not limited to: the confession acting as a tool to jump into the next act as opposed to the conclusion, detailing the developments and difficulties of the relationship, exploring sexuality in any meaningful capacity, approaching love triangles in a manner not emphatically deranged, eluding melodrama, having a cast different from the handful of archetypes that have become overwhelmingly prevalent, having couples eradicate all of their problems at the advent of their union, the leads being too socially stunted to talk to someone of the opposite gender, and a truck conveniently placing a character in a comatose state for the plot to accelerate. You get the idea. This praise of being the ‘other’ just isn’t a high bar to set, and deviating from these trappings is not particularly indicative of the story’s quality. To say that Horimiya is great because it is ‘different’ is to not really understand what has given it an audience that has found an undying resonance with what it offers. It’s all too prevalent, easy, and epitomic of a lazy writer. The Horimiya manga is distinct, and because of that the anime is too. That says nothing of the adaptation’s prowess. To that point, I have a duty to the stories that I cherish to be as brutal as I can to those where the perceived value is not as pronounced.

What I’m alluding to is that this adaptation just doesn’t seem to get Horimiya. If I were to choose one scene that exemplifies this point, it would be the height of episode 7. When Miyamura goes on a family trip while forgetting his phone charger, Hori becomes distraught at the passage of time -- the days without him are too slow. This buildup continues for a series of microcosms into each of the following days, with Hori becoming more and more desperate for Miyamura to return to her. In her gloom, she recognizes how much he means to her. She misses him because he matters. This scene’s buildup is perfect, the audience yearns for their reunification as much as they do. Miyamura returns home, plugs in his phone, notices Hori’s missed calls, frantically leaves his apartment to meet her, and then it happens. They bump into each other in the elevator, and the moment is pacifying. Or, rather, it should be. Instead of having an accompanying score to set a serene atmosphere, after a brief moment, an abrasive, dramatic violin overtakes the entire scene like an overbearing film score from half a century ago. The scene -- meant to be one of the most visceral moments of the season -- falls flat. And it didn’t have to.

This was not entirely unexpected. From the first few seconds of the show’s opening theme, the dramatic undertones that were going to be overdone upon were immediately apparent. While the shot composition of the theme is relatively dynamic, the opening entirely focuses on latent conflict, and not the remedies of conflict and the calmness that follows -- the latter two of which make up a vast majority of the source material. My stomach turns every time the show cuts to the opening, but I can’t even tell if the song is bad, or if it’s just, well, all too different from the story I have become familiarized with (In further research the lyrics are equally jarring as what was implied from my emotional response).

Is my expectation the adaptors were going to interpret the source material faithfully to my personal (therein subjective) interpretation of the manga fair? Absolutely not, but it's important in explaining why I come away from the show with ambivalence, as opposed to ecstaticism. I could point to the OVA which is more atmospheric as opposed to dramatic, but that’s not notably relevant, nor is it important. However, this becomes indicative of a much larger problem. By episode six the show has soared through the 31st chapter (after writing this, user KANLen09 posted a forum thread outlining the chapter to episode adaptations. If you’re interested, do give it a look). From the first episode, a majority of the second chapter is cut to adapt through the third chapter, and from there this cherry picking of chapters only gets more apparent. For fairness, Horimiya’s eighth episode brings forward chapter 70 to reinforce the relationship with Remi and Sengoku, which I found to be an excellent flourish. This skillful reframing is more of the exception, not the rule, unfortunately. Excluding and rearranging chapters isn’t always bad, and is often utilized to fit in the television format more succinctly; Kaguya-sama: Love is War Season 2 is a good example of this. But unlike Kaguya-sama, the sections Horimiya skips are detrimental to the story.

Imagine that each inconsequential moment in your life was removed. What remains would be what is the (arbitrarily) eventful. Any casual moment evaporates into thin air. Sound tiresome? There’s a reason for this -- it is memory’s job to filter through our experiences, not the person’s immediate perception of moments unfolding. This adaptation is like memory, a selective approach to the past furnished as the present. Stories are like plants, they need room to breathe, develop, and grow. It is the little moments where the audience finds resonance with the characters. Small things, like Miyamura interacting with Souta’s friends, flesh out the events that follow. By removing these moments, the rushed ‘eventful’ moments don’t have the substantial familiarity to back them up. Supplemented by the forceful nature of this rendition, what remains is an unrecognizable show with recognizable faces.

And the faces do look fantastic. As HERO’s artstyle matures throughout the manga, the character designs are positively euphoric. Call me a sensualist, but admittedly, my main concern with the adaptation was botched character designs. I initially thought the pupil’s looked misplaced on the anime’s promotional art (and still do), but was shocked by how well the character art comes together; in that regard, it looks near perfect in almost every frame. The backgrounds are about as empty of thought as carbon copied visual novel backgrounds, and the animation is limited, but the overall visual presentation doesn’t really take away from the experience. Most of the direction is quite subdued, although there is a visual motif where the character’s have a pastel colored shadow countered with a white, textured background. This motif is probably overused, but is representative of (some) effort put into the aesthetic. Ishiama’s direction isn’t as stylized as his work on Shinsekai Yori, but it similarly has some clunky odd moments yet is above the pale.

The music, as I referenced earlier, fulfills its intended purpose just about never, and is woefully inadequate. The less abrasive tracks all seem clunky and out of focus, and the more pointed, directive parts of the score are more pathetic than I can begin to divulge. Possibly the worst offender is one the tracks that is supposed to connote rising tensions has a base so densely layered it sounds like the Trap/EDM I listened to back in middle school. There are a few moments of praise in the score. For instance, episode 11’s climax, which brings the show together has a calming piano as an accompaniment. My only comment on the voice acting is that having Hori’s voice being effeminate seems to be an inappropriate choice for her character.

A thought that I keep coming back to is that it would have been possible for the anime to be among the stratosphere of some of the premiere romcom titles. As Charlie Kaufman wrote in his script of Adaptation: “There are too many ideas and things and people. Too many directions to go. I was starting to believe the reason it matters to care passionately about something, is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size.” Horimiya thrives at compartmentalizing and rearranging the things that make people imperfect, yet redeemable, complex, yet understandable. The Horimiya anime does not ruin my endearment for the manga, nor do I think it is particularly horrid. It does, however, have its faults, more so than the manga. It will remain a less manageable, watered-down story, and that isn’t the end of the world.