Horimiya ホリミヤ

2021 winter | Episodes: 13 | Score: 8.2 (915994)

Updated every Sundays at 00:30 | Status: Finished Airing

Type: TV

Synopsis

On the surface, the thought of Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura getting along would be the last thing in people's minds. After all, Hori has a perfect combination of beauty and brains, while Miyamura appears meek and distant to his fellow classmates. However, a fateful meeting between the two lays both of their hidden selves bare. Even though she is popular at school, Hori has little time to socialize with her friends due to housework. On the other hand, Miyamura lives under the noses of his peers, his body bearing secret tattoos and piercings that make him look like a gentle delinquent. Having opposite personalities yet sharing odd similarities, the two quickly become friends and often spend time together in Hori's home. As they both emerge from their shells, they share with each other a side of themselves concealed from the outside world. [Written by MAL Rewrite]

Voice Actors

Tomatsu, Haruka

Uchiyama, Kouki

News

Reviews

WestHeather
01/25/2025, 11:14 AM
The actual titular Horimiya romance is good. A little fast paced at the beginning but dawg I'm here for that shit. As long as it goes somewhere. Problem is that it doesn't. The longer the show goes, the less about them it gets. By around the halfway mark, most of the series is giving whole episodes to side characters of side characters. Like man I do not give a single fuck about one of the side character's sister (that I met an episode ago) getting into a good school. So yeah, the show is good as long as it's focusing on what it's meant tobe focusing on. The two main characters. And maybe Yuki and Tooru too, like 'Your Lie in April' styled four friends turns into two couples. But once the show moved past that it lost me.
Shinobu25
08/19/2024, 08:45 AM
Hori and Miyamura was one of the most toxic relationships I've seen in a while Hori is an angry girl with masochistic tendencies, but it didn't matter to me. The problem started when she forced Miyamura to beat her against his will, and how did the director show this? what a cool guy!! His schoolmate admires him! But the problem is even deeper. In another scene, Hori's father asks her not to treat Miyamura so badly and not to yell at him, and Hori's reaction? Yes, as usual, she said to shut up and continued to rant, which she does throughout the series Contrary to what the series wantedto show, Miyamura did not change at all. Miyamura remained the quiet and secretive young man who allowed the demands of others to prevail over him. That's why he was able to tolerate Hori so much. Why should it be shown that making many friends will change you? In a healthy relationship, you give something to your partner and you get something. But Miyamura only gave from the beginning to the end of the series. The end of this show is very cliched and superficial. Hori and Miyamura's relationship did not last long The rest of the characters do not have much to say. They get lost in the shell of the story and cannot make room in the heart of the audience as they should Maybe iura can be considered as a good character. People start a series with different goals, but if you are looking for a deep and lovely romance, Horimiya is not a good choice.
bambooo_ooo
08/10/2024, 09:02 AM
This show.. I frankly don't know what to say.. I have so much conflicting thoughts about it. It's kinda good but not quite nails it for some reason. It's like it pushes the right keys but the melody comes out of tune. There are also alot of cliches and the show felt artifical at points. Like the first name, last name stuff. I am tired of this being a problem in about every romcom. Some things are suspiciously convenient like the parents being almost completely absent from home because "work", so they can hang out. Some things pop up at random and feel forced, likethey are ticking the checkboxes from a romcom checklist. One minute I was engaged and happy but the next minute was "oh, we're doing this trope now". It was refreshing and pleasant at times but there was often a feeling that the show is lost and doesn't know where it's going or what it wants to be. There were not much tension and cliffhangers. Somehow they didn't end episodes in that way. MC relationship is very mature. It's the refreshing part, the best part of the show. Sorry if I'll write this too many times. It's how it could be with real people. Gosh I so like this part of the show.. They process their feelings externally instead of obsessing in lenghty internal monologues and then being misunderstood/silent/offended/angry/sulking/running away/whatever. THEY JUST TALK!! Just get to middle of ep3 to know what I mean (plus the tea brand Ripton LOL). There's no friends conspiring on how to hook the x and y MC, because they dont know! MCs just handle their shit on their own. I love how they just accept thigs and move on and not bring it back dozen times over. There's no AAAAAA I TOUCHED HER SHOULDER OMG HE LOOKED AT ME SUCH AN EVENT CAN'T SLEEP FOR A WEEK. Nope. I WANNA GIVE HIM A CHOCOLATE ON VALENTINES DAY BUT I'M TOO EMBARASSED AND I WILL RUN AWAY AND BITCH ABOUT IT FOR 3 EPISODES. Nope. AAAA HE DIDN'T PICK UP MY CALL I'M GONNA FLIP OUT AND STOP TALKING TO HIM AND LOSE MY MARBLES OVER THAT INSTEAD OF JUST ASKING. Nope. I FINALLY CONFESSED BUT LET'S RETCON THIS AND PRETEND IT DIDN'T HAPPENED. Nope. May be even too perfect for some.. For me - fking awesome. There is some weird stuff that may set some people off (ep 8-9, you'll know..). For others it can be just a sign trust and dedication. Quite a personal judgment. For me, eh, you guessed, mixed feeligs. But not something I'd ditch the show over. It feels like they rushed some things too fast (breakneck pace in fact..) and didn't know what else to do with the runtime left. Overall I liked the main relationship, it worked for me. Though I admit I'd like there have been more time devoted to MCs relationship(*). Some shows center too much on main characters and leave supporting ones underdeveloped. And here I feel the opposite is happening. Almost like MCs are not entirely MCs, they're pushed to background. Supporting characters got alot of time and, surprisingly, more emotional dillemas than MCs. And in hindsight, the distribution of events for main ship through the whole show is just bonkers. It races waaaaaay too fast forward for first half. Wait I said that already.. Honorable mention goes to Kyousuke, the most irritating, out of place, misfitting, ham-fisted, interrupting, arrogant, stupid, unneeded, useless, random, moron, asshole, unexplained, no background piece of sh..acharacter in the show. Yes I don't like him. Yes I know he's canon. Still don't like him. Silver medal for the pedo teacher in the very first scenes of the 1st ep - what a way to start a show, congrats. English dubbing. I don't know.. acceptable ? Hori's voice actress is like.. it's like the whole show, I can't quite feel it. It's not bad, she does a decent job and is unique, but something's off with her voice. Her sentences feel rushed and not containing enough emotions, like the priority was to fit something long into too short timespan. See around 21 min of ep7 to know what I mean.. it should be emotional and spoken from heart but comes off as a dry statement like a fucking voice mail. I just saw an interview with the voice actress and.. she just is like that. I'd expect a bit more from a pro voice actor than to just play herself. I liked the music. Mostly just typical romcom tunes (no complaints here, good quality). Some pieces catching my ear (Spring is Miles Away, Hottest 36.5 Degrees - good stuff). Soundtrack seem pretty diverse - dozens of tracks. No complains. Animation was nice. Can't really say much, decent work, enough frames, nice backgrounds. Well, maybe Kyoko's eyes looking like a fireplace - kinda strange. Ending was eh.. overdone. They should put a period at 12th ep and it would be better. Lord of the rings ending vibes. To sum up. I really loved some parts of the show (I think it's obvious which) but other not. Very, very mixed feelings. Feeling of a missed opportunity. I tried to watch Missing Pieces but I mostly skipped through it, it was all over the place with chronology. There are multiple ways to view the show to be more coherent. People even made edits to combine the main season with missing pieces in chronological order. That shows peoples dedication but also how messed and confusing it is. **The show is worth watching for the MC relationship alone.** If I am to judge by my "rewatch factor" (the desire to watch again, be it full or just fragments) - I'd rewatch that part alone and pretty much skip everything else. I think OVA did a better job here, with main focus on MCs. Sadly, no eng dub and completely different caliber of the production.
Sandy_lol
05/14/2024, 01:39 PM
With this anime pretty much being my first dip into the SOL romance rabbit-hole, I'm obviously a little biased with this rec but, I still love this show as much during the first watch. one of the reason its so high up on my list is the replay value steming from the fact that the anime making it so cool to just see the characters interact in the simplest moments because of the way of interacting keeps the viewer engaged into the conversation that they are having. one of clover works masterpieces as it feels like the manga panels starting moving, with magnificent colors toback it up. But the main reason of this show being so good is the characters themselves. all the supporting characters are still fleshed out and feel like human beings, and have flaws that hinder their surrounding relationships. and as Hori and Miyamura make more friends, it shows that these high school anime characters feel real without being boring, which many anime have not really pulled off from what I watched .(I know others have done it do come at me 😭) horimiya is a good watch for newcomers to the genre and hardened romance veterans alike.
beingraaandom
03/03/2024, 05:28 AM
I don't get how this anime ended up on anyone's favorites list. Is it the animation, art style, or voice actors? Because it definitely can't be the plot—it's nothing special. No climax, just a regular couple with a plain story about a quiet boy and loud girl. Usually, I'm so in love with those kinds of plots but this anime somehow managed to ruin it. I found myself more interested in the side characters' romantic stories, which says a lot. It feels like those who love this anime haven't watched many other romance anime before. It's more slice of life than romance—something you can casuallywatch, but it doesn't grab you. Somehow, it managed to keep me bored throughout all 13 episodes. I only finished it because I wanted to know what the hype was about, but honestly, I still don't see why people talk about it.
Raijin_-_
02/18/2024, 09:48 PM
Horimiya's debut season is a captivating journey through the complexities of love and self-discovery, captivating viewers with its genuine charm and sincerity. At its core, the evolving relationship between Hori and Miyamura resonates deeply, portrayed with authenticity and depth that draws viewers into their heartfelt journey of connection and acceptance. What sets Horimiya apart is its sincere portrayal of romance, eschewing melodrama for genuine, heartfelt moments that explore the nuances of love and friendship. The animation and art style enhance the series, infusing each scene with warmth and intimacy. Beyond its central romance, Horimiya celebrates the power of friendship and self-acceptance, enriching the narrative with a diversecast of lovable characters. With its endearing characters and heartfelt storytelling, Horimiya's first season is a must-watch for fans of romance and genuine emotion.
lastnameEver
12/14/2023, 12:52 PM
Horimiya causes the sort of boredom that causes people to believe in hell just so they can have something to look forward to. To describe what happens in Horimiya would be like one of those zen koans because watching the show all the way through and not watching it is the exact same thing. To find enjoyment in Horimiya would be to find enjoyment in watching paint dry. Characters are bland, flavourless, flat, and uninteresting. The show’s animated by Cloverworks. Like everything Cloverworks touch, it is absolutely hollow. I don’t like wishing ill-will upon anyone, but if Cloverworks were to go bankrupt, I don’t thinkanything of value would be lost. The story’s the usual misunderstandings, fights over the girl, the boys kiss and make up and make up aimless conversations that go nowhere, with a lot of bad comedy that isn’t unfunny but isn’t funny either. I don’t think there’s anything egregiously wrong with the show but the story has no objective. It’s not the romantic development between the two leads, since that wraps up without much fanfare. It’s not the school, since the place is too boring. It’s not the people in the school either, they’ve got nothing going on in their lives. There’s no conflict, no stakes, no direction, no message, no spark of creativity, and still better than Oregairu, that’s crazy.
animedork95
07/27/2023, 06:48 AM
I was really looking forward to this anime, especially since it was so positively received by the anime community on TikTok, but unfortunately it falls short in critical areas, namely: pacing, storytelling, and the overall anime direction. I'm a big fan of the manga. That being said, I'm not usually one to tout the source material to say it's always better than the adaptation. In many cases, I actually prefer the anime over the manga because there are certain scenes that are just better animated, like fight scenes which can get pretty confusing in black and white panels. Animes also have the unique opportunity to fixissues that existed in the manga, such as pacing and transitions, or improve certain aspects to make scenes more impactful such as as adding character development or subtle visual elements. All of that to say--I came into this anime excited to see it translated into the anime medium. Unfortunately, I think the director and storyboard staff misinterpreted Horimiya. The manga is a rom-com, with unique and funny characters, that occasionally have deep and moving interactions and backstories. Those serious moments are very much interspersed throughout the lighter, funnier, happier, and slice of life moments so it never felt too serious or dramatic. It made sure that you saw a lot of these fun, daily interactions not only to keep a lighter feel to the story, but to also better acquaint the reader with the characters, show in depth character development, and make readers feel a deeper connection to the characters. All of this groundwork and thoughtful pacing led to the serious climaxes being very impactful. If Hori was crying, I was crying, if Miyamura was in pain, I felt my stomach sinking. From the opening to the very last episode, the anime skips all of this important groundwork, making Horimiya into an edgy drama that occasionally has funny moments instead of the mature rom-com it was written to be. The vibes are completely off. The opening song and animations are way too serious and depressing. The first episode cuts what feels like an entire volume of Hori and Miyamura getting to slowly know each other, and exposition about the characters, and jumps straight into internal conflict and deep relationship emotions. There's just no way I'm going to be connected enough to characters in the first episode to care about them crying, especially if it's pieced together in a way that makes it seem like they've only known each other for like a week. This is a reoccurring issue throughout the anime, where they cut exposition and minor character development to quickly get to climatic moments. I guess the director didn't realize how important those small moments were, and how cutting them would lead to anticlimactic, confusing, and quite frankly jarring dramatic moments. The anime is faithful to the manga in that all of the content of the anime was technically in the manga. But the way they pieced it together and the elements they added to certain parts turns it into a very different story. It looks like they tried to make this into an edgy, we're-not-like-other-shoujo's anime by their sound choice, animation choices, and story choices, and then failed at even doing that. Another side of the pacing issue aside from the selection and emphasis of certain scenes, is the transition between them. Some scenes lingered on screen for way too long, to the point we thought our TV was frozen, while others were cut so abruptly short I just couldn't help but wonder if they were having problems making it within the time allotment for the episode. It felt and looked clunky. The order of the story clips did not aid in this. The manga is a collection of short stories, with longer ones requiring more exposition interspersed into the shorter stories. Which stories are where and the order of them in the manga is very international. I always thought that every story, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, was absolutely necessary, and I had thought at the time that if you got rid of even one of them, the story overall just wouldn't be as good. And I was right. Whether for time purposes or drama purposes, the anime cut out almost EVERY single one of these smaller stories. Outside of ruining the exposition, connection to characters, and character development like I mentioned before, it makes the transition between stories so jarring. The smaller stories in the exact order they were in were necessary as buffers, as transitions, and as pieces of information for character development and for the bigger, more climatic stories to flow naturally, make sense, and be more impactful. Every single climatic scene (of which there were many crammed into each episode) in Horimiya felt anticlimactic at best and downright jarring and confusing at worst. So these scenes that are supposed to have high emotional impact just completely miss. And then after one of these high tension scenes, without any warning, it cuts to a comedic moment. In the manga, it was clear when we were switching from one story to another. It's a lot clearer and easier to understand due to panel and page structure. In anime, if you want to keep this same structure, you have to do something similar to indicate to the viewer that we're switching to something else now or else it looks like you're just randomly cutting between seemingly unrelated scenes. A title/break card is sometimes used for that and I think would have worked well in this case. But no. One moment a character would be plagued by their past, and the next there would be a joke about Hori's kink, and the next would be a different scene of the same character being plagued by their past. If they didn't want to use title cards, they should have reordered the scenes so it made more sense as a comprehensive story. It makes more sense to have larger sections that tell a full story rather than trying to maintain chronological order when you've cut so many little pieces out. That being said, there are some positives. The voice actors are great and so is the general animation. Unfortunately, even with good individual elements like voice acting, animation, and source material, the directing really fumbled this one. The director and storyboarding team misinterpreted the essence of this story, which turned it into an overdramatic mess. With all of the great shoujos coming out now and getting anime adaptations, I would recommend skipping over this anime. If you'd like to see a proper adaptation where you can tell the director and studio not only loved the story, but really understood it, I'd recommend Skip to Loafer. It really does seem like a love letter to the Manga from the Studio. If you read and watch Horimiya and Skip to Loafer in a short time frame, you'll really see the difference a good director who understands the story and the mangakas intention makes.
RebelPanda
12/22/2022, 06:55 PM
On the surface, Horimiya is a finely polished anime—Glistening character art, bright lighting, realistic backgrounds, glittery visual effects. Every voice actor's suited their character, and their performances are convincing. Both the opening and ending credits are slickly animated with the utmost care and talent. The original soundtrack is average, but it fits every scene. Though I was immediately drawn to this anime for its impressive technical qualities, they weren’t good enough to overlook the subpar writing. Beneath the superficial presentation, Horimiya is a computer-generated romantic comedy story that thinks in cliches: It merges tropes from the mediocre rom-com anime with the worst parts of sappy shoujodramas. I should start by saying, I have never read the manga and this subpar anime didn't convince me I should. Chances are you've heard this premise before: A male high school student with no friends meets a girl through a chance encounter. She's popular at school; still, she works hard to take care of her family, and she doesn't have time to socialize: The pair bond over their secretive lives. Despite his edgy appearance, the girl does not judge the boy. She encourages him to come out of his shell and find friends. In return, he does everything within his capability to make her happy. While it is a bog-standard plot, Horimiya was my kind of show. It had a simplistic trajectory: Make progress on Hori and Miyamura’s first love, tackle sexual awakenings, develop the side characters, and develop the themes of self-acceptance. That’s not quite how it went. Instead, they rushed through the story at a breakneck pace while repeating identical jokes and throwing in endless cliches. Fake dating scenarios, love triangles, perpetually pissed off heroines, and a tidal wave of misunderstandings. Even though the premise was simple, I liked seeing Hori and Miyamura together. Their relationship felt genuine; beginning as playful friends who got along despite their differences. Miyamura was a cipher at first—Quiet and introverted, he does not like school, cliques, and social requirements. He spoke very little about his personal life and he stood out from every other generic character design. Simply looking at him raises questions: Why does he have tattoos, nine piercings, and such long hair? All of these questions are answered in a very cut and dry manner. About two minutes of each episode is saved for flashbacks to his dark past. His backstories are presented with washed-out colors, quiet background sound, and darkened backgrounds to highlight his depressed state of mind. The solid presentation makes his melodramatic past seem more interesting than it is. With Hori's help, he overcomes his trauma, depression, and isolation (rather quickly). Miyamura's most significant obstacle was his inability to say how he truly felt. Characters joke about it because they reference how stereotypical his behavior is. If your story makes fun of a genre cliche, then repeatedly uses it, you are not subverting anything. The story is aware it is annoying and it does not care. Miyamura is a respectful guy; he's not possessive of Hori. He does everything she asks, and then some. When his friend Toru asked him for permission to date Hori, he said 'it's her choice' because he's a decent person. Most importantly, he had plausible reasons for falling in love with her. His first reason was, "She doesn't judge people based on looks." She embraced him even though society frowns up students with long hair, piercings, and tattoos. In reality, kids would be lining up to be friends with someone like him—but we need anime high school drama logic! So let's say being Cool makes him Uncool. Hori's classmates made fun of her for dating Miyamura since he's so uncool. Though she never let their words bother her. She accepted him, which made his high school experience better. He's the perfect guy for her. Yet in love stories, there's a problem if one of the partners is a little too perfect. Miyamura does anything he can to make Hori happy, even at his own expense. Though the story frames his selflessness as something good, his dedication strips him of individuality and all intriguing aspects. Such as to prevent Hori from getting teased, he cut his hair and stopped wearing his piercings because people looked down on him for them. However, Hori never needed help. I hate how the show frames his edgy appearance as a problem he must fix to have a good relationship. Part of what made this show so appealing was Miyamura's distinct appearance from generic high-school anime protagonists. As we found out, that amounted to little more than a marketing gimmick. In the first few episodes, it pitched itself as an emotional portrayal of bullying and depression, but those themes were bait. When it comes down to it, this show doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “Not judging people by their appearance.” When Miyamura tells his friends about people talking behind his back, they tell him to man up—in a show about bullying that we’re meant to take seriously. The only problems in their relationship that weren't Hori's fault were caused by contrivances. Miyamura's phone dies for five days, so Hori goes into panic mode and assumes the worst. The grand reunion is played up with dramatic slow motion, loud, emotional music, but it rings hollow. It's meant to feel like they've been apart for a long time, but to us, it was only five minutes. What should've been a significant turning point for their relationship felt inconsequential. Alone, this one contrived moment isn't a big deal; however, it is a persistent problem with the anime. The pacing issues are more noticeable the longer the show drags on. However, no amount of adaptation magic could've saved Hori from being an awful person. She treats Miyamura like sewage water—yet no one ever meaningfully criticizes her, so she is never redeemed! No matter what Miyamura does, she’ll yell at him, whack him, or get silently pissed off. Girls compliment him? WHACK! She's feeling nervous? WHACK! He compliments her? WHACK! There's no winning with her. She's like every bad shoujo author's idea of a strong female character. Making your heroine hit and berate her boyfriend totally makes her a girl boss. These 'issues' only got worse the longer they dated. First, she became possessive, then jealous, angry, and creepy. Mind you, Hori's short temper is not a character flaw. No, it's merely a sign of her love! Because this is how sane people act when they're in love, right? Hori could work on solving her anxiety and jealousy by communicating with her boyfriend. Or better yet, she could confide in her parents, who occupy background space for no reason. Her little brother acts as a bridge between the two when they're having one of their misunderstandings. When Hori finally expresses why she is upset about Miyamura getting attention from other girls, it is revealed to be all in her imagination! If they were able, to be honest, then these misunderstandings would stop. But we can't have that. We need Hori to be jealous because that's one of her three jokes! If I remember this show three months from now, it will be for those God damn misunderstandings. Relationships are about compromise. Loving someone requires giving and taking. Hori takes, Miyamura gives. Some relationships are acceptable this way, but this one is toxic. Miyamura is the glue that keeps them together because he's always patient and submissive. When Hori asks him to act dominant by berating and hitting her, he tries. Expectedly it didn't work, but it's not just played off as a joke. Hori asked him to be dominant, and she always gets what she wants. This is the level of humor in the second half of the show. She constantly asks Miyamura to hit her and insult her. He says no, and that he's not into that—yet she continues to pester him! I would've ghosted her at this point, but he is perfect; therefore, he mustn't reject his queen. He even tries S&amp;M it for her sake, but it makes him uncomfortable. Even stranger, they do their S&amp;M shit in public. Their classmates just watch it happen and say "Wow Miyamura is so cool..." for calling his girlfriend a bitch. What kind of bizarre alternate reality is this writer living in? Still, Hori keeps asking him. If you're a masochist, and your partner isn't a sadist, don't force them to be one! To make her happy, he ignores his discomfort to berate and slap her. The writer must've assumed S&amp;M just meant consensually abusing your partner in broad daylight. No, that is not how it works, nor is it good humor. Miyamura confides in Hori's father, saying he feels uncomfortable with the S&amp;M dynamic and asks for help. Finally, he spoke his mind! Hori's father tells her how Miyamura feels and to be considerate of her boyfriend's feelings. I felt blessed; finally, the show listened to my cries: Please stop being boring! You'd assume this would be enough to get through to her… but no, she responds with, "Stop blabbing about stupid crap and help me out with the chores." This could've been a problem they resolved to strengthen their relationship, but no, it is played off for humor. I knew for certain Hori wouldn't get any worse than this. Right? Wrong. It's time to address the worst joke. Miyamura expresses attraction and considers dating other guys; it's apparent he's bisexual. That's cool! Bisexual people are great partners... though Hori would disagree. At the slightest implication that Miyamura is bisexual, Hori says, "Gross," with a nauseated expression. A little bromance? "Gross." To get the joke, we have to understand it from the way she does, and that is to believe it's gross. Very cool, girl boss. Toru's entire character encapsulates this joke. He was in love with Hori, but he got turned down in the first episode. Afterward, he stuck around to support Miyamura. The thing is, he's into guys too! He'll call a guy attractive, then everyone will go, "Whaaaaat?" How quirky! I swear some of his dialogue was ripped straight out of a BL manga. This isn't just a Hori thing. Random extras act disgusted when they see Toru being friendly with Miyamura. They tease romance with full intention of never making it happen because it's bait. So what's the point of the joke? There is none—the show tries to have its bisexual cake and eat it too. Every supporting character can be placed in at least one of three categories: 1. Nice on the outside, mean on the inside. 2. Constantly acts happy to avoid burdening others. 3. Too dumb to understand what's happening. Although some of them get a few seconds of characterization, it is skipped for the sake of dramatic romance. Ultimately none of their side plots mattered. They're simply a diversion from the primary couple, who could use more screen time because the anime skims through dozens in the blink of an eye. You probably won't remember all of their names, but thankfully their candy-colored hair makes it easy to tell them apart. Hori's friend, Yoshikawa, falls into all three. Her character flaw is that she has trouble communicating. She acts sweet to make everyone around her happy, but she actually does it because she's a spiteful person underneath. Like most of the cast, she narrates her thoughts and puts herself down because she lacks self-worth for unknown reasons. She hides her emotions for the sake of others to not be a bother. Aside from Very Original character writing, this doesn't make her unique. Everyone in the show is terrible at communicating—not because this is true to actual high school students, but because it's repetitive writing. It's never a mystery what a character is thinking, and if you can't tell, the directing makes it even simpler. When they don't know how to communicate the characters' thoughts, they just put a text box on-screen. Adapting a manga involves more than copying and pasting panels—you creatively develop ways to show emotions through body language, music, camera angles, and editing. The extent of Horimiya's visual storytelling is by focusing on a character, slow motion, changing the backdrop to a white wall, and adding a colorful shadow. The first time, it was unique. It conveyed Hori and Miyamura's thoughts. Even though they were evident without the sudden art style change. Then they kept doing it. Eventually, it would happen five times per episode for each side character. It lost its effect right away and became forced. There are numerous more ways to convey the character's thoughts without recycling this mindless visual effect. It just made me roll my eyes. Before it felt personal like I intimately knew who these people were. But then it happened again. Then again. And before I knew it, every irrelevant character had their little introspective moment and I realized I didn't know these people at all. By the end I still had big questions, even about the main characters, for one—why does Miyamura continue to date Hori even though she's a toxic asshole? Nearly everyone has said Horimiya is a masterclass romance, that it is the anime of the season. All I saw was a subpar, run-of-the-mill anime weighed down by superfluous characters, annoying misunderstandings, rushed pacing, and a viscerally unlikable heroine. After sprinting past over a hundred chapters, the story screeches to a halt at the thirteenth episode with a tearjerker ending. I enjoy watching shamelessly corny love stories that make me tear up with joy. But I don't like anime that are so cliche that they do the tearing up for me. If you're new to anime, a lover of romcoms, and have a high tolerance for cliches, you'll get a kick out of this. To everyone else, there are much better choices than Horimiya.
DynamoShinzou
05/30/2021, 02:43 AM
To give out a 1 out of 10 score to something in the entertainment industry implies that whatever you just consumed is the bottom of the barrel of its respected medium. I would not necessarily state that Horimiya is the bottom of the barrel of anime outright, as there are better candidates that are more fitting of such a title due to being very aggressively bad. It’s not that this is offensively bad like some would consider School Days to be, or very in your face bad and gross such as Green Green. There is an abundance of low budged and obscure show’s like Marsof Destruction that one would consider more „objectively“ bad. However, out of anything that has come out that doesn’t have piggy bank budget or offensive/disturbing themes, Horimiya is easily the single worst anime I’ve ever had to sit through. What makes the 1 out of 10 score warranted for this show is that in its 5 hour overall runtime, it completely fails to do a singular thing right while committing dozens of writing sins in the process. Sure, Horimiya has great art, but appearance alone can’t salvage a streamline and generic show that is executed terribly and has one of the singular worst scripts in anime. Story[2/10]: Horimiya is just your run of the mill romance/comedy show with a fairly strong focus on the romance aspect. Horimiya does nothing new to shake up this somewhat over-saturated genre. Every situation falls somewhere within a cliche or is flat out one, which alone makes Horimiya feel unoriginal and rather boring. The fact that Horimiya is formulaic is not the detractor in this regard, however. You absolutely can make the usual romcom formula work again, depending on how you go about executing it. The issue lies in how this anime is so outshined by all of it’s romcom contemporaries in every conceivable way to the point where it really doesn’t feel necessary to watch it. Everything that this show attempts has been done before and better in an abundance of other romcoms, and Horimiya doesn’t have a singular aspect it excels in. This is of course considering when the anime actually attempts to do something thoroughly anyway, as most of the time Horimiya takes a typical romcom situation and barfs it out without any regard of how it will turn out. The only situations in the show that were unique, were so for all the wrong reasons. Occasionally, Horimiya will inject a situation into the narrative just to go practically nowhere with it, even when the bent all logic to force the situation in. An abundance of situations in Horimiya are so out of touch with reality that the moments themselves are ruined, and it’s not due to the anime wanting to be over the top. This is a result of the writer trying really hard to evoke a particular emotion but without the skill to do so in a seemingly natural way. He; as a consequence, has to bend a situation to evoke his desired emotion, thus ruining everything around it. Contrivances to the point where a high school romcom becomes completely unrealistic is something that I never thought I’d see nor care about until I saw Horimiya. Episode 9 in particular has mindboggling writing gymnastics the likes of which I have never seen. In this instance reality is distorted only for the sake of creating 2 situation, one that ends up going absolutely nowhere and another that was melodramatic, boring and left no impact. Contrivances aren’t an immediate detractor of a romcoms quality either, provided they enhance the anime otherwise if they were to be necessary to utilize. Horimiya have contrivances that aren’t just next level forced and stupid, but often each contrivance contribute to a situation reaching an undesirable outcome, which is a gigantic double-whammy. This makes paying attention to Horimiya constantly punishing, as they all too often end a convoluted contraption of a subplot in a halfhearted manner that just fizzles out into thin air as if none of it mattered. The pacing of the show is also a tremendous problem. Everything moves at mach speed pacing, which is likely a source of many of the issues in how the story of Horimiya is constructed. What in my opinion is the best parts of most romcoms is completely ignored just so that the anime can make it’s way to the actual romance faster. You don't have the time to want Hori and Miyamura to start seeing each other before the anime suddenly forces them together. At one point they blaze through 6 months of time in the span of an episode when judging by everything that happens during this time, it feels like only a week passed. The only time the anime was a fraction of a care as to how something would turn out, was how they ended the show. The resemblance of a positive emotion I feel towards the ending might only derive from the joy I felt that the anime was finally ending, however. Otherwise, everything that the anime covers is done in such a careless manner where nothing goes anywhere, and it’s a consistent problem throughout the anime’s runtime. Characters [1.25/10]: Even when everything that Horimiya does has been done before, you can still make this show great with good character writing, good direction of key scenes and maybe even some funny jokes along the way. When you take this path of focusing more on the romance than on the comedy when writing your anime, the characters are bound to be the sole foundation that will make or break the show. This show’s cast has to be blandest and most shallow set of characters I’ve ever seen, as they are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other on a 2-dimensional scale, with few exceptions. The issue is not that they're unlikable people, because most of them are okay human being. The problem lies in how none of the characters feel real in any sense of the word, thus making me care about them and their endeavors a truly difficult task. The two main characters of this show are Hori and Miyamura, and while being the best and „deepest“ characters in the show, aren’t much better than the rest. Hori is your typical popular high school girl. She is beautiful, good academically, and is otherwise responsible, good at housework and I suppose she’s strong-willed as well. This is really the extent of her traits, which is sad because only 2/5 of these can be linked in some way to personality. She has high conscientiousness, a trait never really focused on outside trying to make her look like good wife material. Aside from this, she is trite and completely uninteresting. She has no motivation aside from her love for Miyamura and her likes and dislikes are mostly unknown, aside from the occasional trait practically every teenage girl has, which doesn’t help her with standing out. The issue is not that she is too normal, it’s just how completely undefined she is. She is without form, without a direction, an abstract unknown entity too out of this world for my brain to properly comprehend. Miyamura is probably the best character of the show, and he sucks. Miyamura is your typical quiet, gentle and reserved guy with the insane twist of having piercings and tattoos as if he was a bad boy!!!!!! Miyamura is presented as being very reserved and gloomy, while simultaneously being hinted at having a cool or edgy side to him. His piercings and reckless behavior in episode 1 gave me early hopes and expectations that this would be a hint at a different side of him. This made him at first glance really interesting, as the possibilities to make an interesting character based on this foundation is nearly endless. Sadly, the tattoos/piercings are just a gigantic red herring, as he got these on a whim and therefore mean absolutely nothing to his character, other than that he might have bad impulse control? He’s presented to have 2 sides to him, one that is cool and one that is shy and reserved, but the cool side had completely vanished by like episode 4. This isn't due to him developing as a person either. He doesn’t act recklessly in the slightest throughout the rest of the show, which makes his initial characterizations completely vaporize. It felt like half of his established character was a lie, a planned one at that, which made him go from interesting and back to trite, thereby joining the rest of the cast. Strip the piercings away, and what is revealed is a character that is reserved and gloomy, which is precisely what we’re consistently shoved down our throat by the rest of the cast the whole way. There isn’t much else to his personality other than this. He does however, want to change to become more open, which provides for this show’s only non-love related motivation. It was nice to see some sort of personal goal in the show, but the execution of this arc is so lazy and half-baked that it makes little to no impact. This is despite of him getting a backstory, a backstory which had little to no actual care put into it in addition to being totally fake and unbelievable. It’s plainly obvious the writer just wants to write something that people can feel for just by relating to it, without making it good for people who don’t relate to it. This makes the writing in this show come off as extremely lazy and incompetent. When Miyamura’s arc finally resolves, it becomes obvious that the only thing that changed was his environment, not himself as a person. The fact that this is all that the main couple has to offer in terms of characterization is quite an appalling state for a romcom to be in. This is maybe a passable state for main characters to find themselves in after a couple of episodes, but to have them cross the finish line in this state is an absolute joke. We spend so much time with them, and yet I know so little about them by the end that it’s like the anime hasn’t really been focusing on them. They also start seeing each other way too early in the show, as I have no reasons to care about them seeing each other after only like 10 minutes into the anime. I couldn’t care less if they got together, broke up, got married, got children, got divorced or died. There are literally no emotional stakes at works concerning the two main characters thanks to the godawful character writing, which is why this anime completely and utterly fails. The entire foundation of the show is rotten, which makes it have absolutely nothing to stand on as a show. These two characters and their personal matters take the spotlight for a great portion of the show, so this show absolutely begs for them to be good. There is also a moment at the tail end of the show that completely shatters them as characters and as a (potential) couple that is so abhorrent and unbelievable that I have a really hard time believing it exists. The remaining unidentifiable creatures in this show that; after many hours of research seems to have been classified as „supporting-characters“, are some of the worst of its kind ever written. The supporting cast all consists of characters that follows some sort of trope which is never in any way made interesting and never breaks out of. Tooru: A dude Sakura: The hard working student council member that thinks she’s unattractive. Yuki: Shy and emotionally closed off. Shuu: Insane. Remi: Cute Akane: (blank) All side characters follow their attached on trait the whole way through, and none of them change throughout the show. Every single character in this show constantly come off as shallow as they only have their one superficial trait to themselves. I have loved shows with this bland of a supporting cast, so it’s not like this is a sin in an of itself. What Horimiya does that makes this so problematic is that we are expected to deeply care about these flat and drab characters as they go through long-winded dramatic arcs as if the end result even remotely matters. This makes Horimiya’s latter half completely unwatchable as it invests way too much of its runtime in these characters while slogging through some of the most forced and lamest drama conceivable. There isn’t a singular emotional stake present within any of the arcs, and they don’t try to develop any character as the arc is happening either. Not one supporting character has any resemblance of a motivation not related to love to make them more interesting. This is aside from Sakura who wants to work hard for the student council, which is literally following her trope anyway. The show never tries to convey anything of personality using visuals and their mannerisms other than the very obvious „Miyamura keeps his head down because he’s gloomy“. This show also has easily the worst love triangle I’ve ever seen. Both of the resolutions for the opposing characters within the love triangle is so utterly pathetic it begs the question as to why I had to sit through all this. Not that I can complain too much though, since one of the resolutions is absolutely hilarious in how totally awful it is, to the point where watching this whole show was worth it for this one moment. Shuu also deserves a dishonorable mention as his character is downright alien. Him acting incredibly open and extroverted at school while extremely cold, quiet and dismissive to her sister while at home is a really interesting concept for the anime to handle. The anime just completely fails to address why he is like this, as in, what drives him to be borderline emotionally abusive to his little sister while so upbeat at school? I can’t care about him because he’s at odds with reality as I know it as no person would under any circumstance behave like this, and besides he’s completely unlikable. It’s like the anime (or the manga, if this was present there) ran through a random character generator twice, and decides to glue the 2 generated characters together without caring if it made any psychological sense. The only character that I have some positive regards towards is Hori’s dad, but only for the fact that I found him somewhat funny. He is not vastly more developed than the rest of the cast or anything, but he has a fairly clear and distinct personality and vibe due to his dialogue, which is an incredibly rare achievement for the writer of this show. It’s also strikingly obvious that we aren’t supposed to take him seriously, which made me judge his existence less. Otherwise, every single side-character in this show is zero-dimensional and trite beyond comprehension, and the fact that we’re expected to even remotely care about them is utterly asinine. Same goes for the main duo, which has to be the blandest main duo I’ve ever seen. Apparently the anime skips over a lot of the manga’s character development. While I haven’t read the manga, I can totally believe that due to this show's lack of care to how the characters are developed. Dialogue/writing [1/10]: What ultimately ruins this anime completely is it’s god awful dialogue. Most characters just feel the exact same when they’re on screen, but this is not solely due to their complete lack of depth. If the characters were well developed to begin with, the dialogue would completely suck all the life out of them. The character interactions all feel the same, thus making them boring and lifeless. Aside from maybe Hori and Miyamura on occasion, not one character has any sort of chemistry with the others. In actual chemistry terms, this is not because the elements can’t react with one another, but because every character is the same element. The anime fails to truly distinguish each character in any way that doesn’t relate to their trope. Shuu being loud and Yuki being somewhat timid doesn’t add to their depth when that’s the only way the characters act differently from each other. The dialogue being in this awful state is rather unfortunate considering how the entire show is dialogue, making the whole show extremely tedious. The dialogue never tries to develop the characters in a more indirect manner to compensate for how little we know about each character as people. Even when we’re given a laughably lazy laundry list of Miyamura’s traits in episode 1, there was literally nothing of substance, not even here. Hori pointing out that Miyamura likes manga and that his parents own a bakery is not interesting, it’s not something that gets further explored, and it’s not characterization. As for Miyamura liking manga, I don't think it's even mentioned at any point past episode 1. The only attempts of characterization through dialogue that we get are moments when they point out traits that are plainly obvious to everyone. It’s as if the writers think the audience is too stupid to realize that Miyamura is gloomy and reserved, or that Yuki is holding back her thoughts and feelings. Several characters act as if the only things that is of value in life are all the superficial aspects. Sakura is especially guilty of this since her whole character dissolves into a person who feels less attractive than one of her friends. It’s true that they are teenagers and therefore makes this behavior understandable to a degree, but I still don’t buy that excuse. Especially when compared to romcoms where the characters are of the same age as these ones. Tsuki Ga Kirei have middle school students act less shallow than Horimiya’s high school students, and that show made it feel like their behavior belonged in the show. In actuality, the dialogue in Horimiya reinforces the argument about the characters being shallow, since so much of the dialogue in this show concerns shallow subject matter. There is so much talk about appearance alone in this show compared to anything „deeper“, that mostly everyone appear as shallow humans, not only because they’re underdeveloped but because they constantly behave and think in a shallow manner. Otherwise its all talk about who has good grades, who is good in sports, all the typical superficial traits that don’t mean anything to a persons behavior or character. I don’t typically like shallow people, so this whole ordeal made this show incredibly hard to consume. If having the characters be shallow somehow was the point, then that’s not showcased well, as no one reacts negatively to someone’s shallow nature or does anything else of the sort to support this argument. The biggest issue when it comes to the writing is how constructed and manufactured this show feels on top of all the other negative aspects. As mentioned, the sheer length that this anime is willing to go in order to construct situations that hardly go anywhere anyway is utterly insane. Due to how all logic and reason is bent backwards in order for something to happen, any sense of reality is sucked out of any scene that does this, which makes me feel like I no longer see an anime happening before me. All that this anime is reduced to, is just a series of injections by the writers into a skeletal romcom template, where these injections are meant to bring out something from the anime that will check off the typical anime romcom boxes and then call it a day. None of the injections harbor any consideration in how the situation they’re injected into plays out, and of course all these injections all give half-baked results to boot. Everything is just a means to an end, an end desired by the writer and an end that always end up producing dissatisfying results. Miyamura’s backstory and his random emo phase early in the anime are also examples of this, and I know there are more instances of this that I can’t recall well enough to give my thoughts on. They don’t feel like they belong in the anime, they feel inserted by the writer for the sake of whatever reaction the writer find desirable in the moment. Obviously, this is technically how many romcoms work if you shift your viewpoint on an anime enough. Usually though, these structured situations come seemingly naturally in good anime so that they make sense withing the context of the shows they take place in. Creating a new reality where interesting evens occur and in which I can invest myself into is what anime is typically so good at doing, but Horimiya constantly shatters the walls of immersion. Never have I ever felt these insertions to be merely insertions by a writer as an attempt to manipulate the viewer more than what I have with Horimiya. I shouldn’t be able to feel the presence of the writer(s) when watching an anime unless it’s because the writer in question is very good at a particular thing that I am a fan of. Here however, I had whoever wrote this show breathing down my next for most of its runtime, and that is something that I’ve found to be strictly unique to Horimiya. Naturally, this makes any feeling of immersion a pipedream, which; accompanied by the shallow characters and bland and lifeless dialogue that also contribute to this problem, makes Horimiya impossible to watch. This world they’ve created is so distorted, it’s honestly one of the least realistic anime I’ve ever watched, despite trying to be a down to earth romcom. I have an easier time believing there is a world of shinigami with notebooks that has the capability of killing people than believing that anything that happens in this anime would ever take place in real life. Occasionally they mix this up though. While they sometimes opt for utilizing brute force in making a plot point happen while shattering everything surrounding it, sometimes they go the opposite route by making a mountain out of a molehill. For instance, we spend a good portion of episode 2 by watching Hori making a gigantic deal of not knowing Miyamura’s first name. Her pursuit of getting to know his name without asking was really awkward to watch, with what might be attempts at comedy, I honestly can’t be certain if it was. The fact that the idea of making a fuzz about Miyamura’s first name came to life in an anime that has to rush through the source material just to finish it, is completely baffling. You must have a lot of material to work with, yet this is something you’re willing to spend precious minutes awkwardly presenting, while neglecting likely better anime material? Another instance of this is when Miyamura goes through a painful emo phase early on, because the writer knows hes incapable of causing drama and tension in a natural manner. He just makes Miyamura unreasonably doubt himself to an insane degree, and it’s plainly obvious that this is merely insertion of drama into the show without any regards to how the scene plays out. Miyamura had no good reason to be doubting himself this hard and this confidentially, and this same ordeal goes on for way too long and good lord baby Jesus is it boring. What I’m implying here is that the drama is equally forced and lazy as everything else, however, the drama is mostly bad because the anime gave me no reason to care about anything that occurs. In addition, the drama is often half-assed in some way, not unlike how they half-assed the developments of the characters, both main plot and sub plot, as well as Miyamura’s backstory. Comedy [3.5/10]: The comedy is honestly the best part about this shows writing, though that’s not to say it’s any good. The comedy has a 20:80 hit/miss ratio with one common detractor for the jokes that miss: The timing. And I do mean timing in both senses of the word: 1. The timing of the movements in the slapstick and any comedy that revolves around the animation usually miss its timing, rendering the joke unfunny. 2. The timing; as in what point in time and in what situations they decide to make a joke, is actually a couple of steps below disgraceful. I seriously don’t want an emotional moment to be completely shattered by some dumb slapstick, but this is constantly happening throughout the show and it’s absolutely horrendous. A good portion of the comedy is this kind of slapstick, usually in the form of a punch from Hori directed at Miyamura, which from what I can recall was unfunny every single time. They never manage to find a time and place where this punch gag would be funny, probably because punching people isn’t funny, and I’d argue that this shouldn’t be considered comedy at all. The only reason I bring it up is because the anime thinks this is comedy. Not only is this running gag unfunny, but it’s also unbelievably lazy comedy. Not only is this unbelievably lazy comedy, but it’s also extremely jarring to go from wholesome to abusive in the span of a single frame. Not only does this comedy fail as comedy but it ruins its respective scene on top of it. Another awful yet continuously repeated joke early on is Ishikawa Tooru getting cucked and him being upset about it, which was not only consistently unfunny, but lame and extremely grating as well. SOmeone having their love be unrequited is by no means a basis for comedy, and I honestly cringed at some of these scenes. It felt like the same joke was being told repeatedly like with the punching gag, yet another instance of the comedy being lazy. Mercifully, most of these running jokes are more concentrated within the first leg of the show, meaning the comedy indirectly improves over the course of the anime by gradually sucking less. Otherwise the comedy is a series of mostly unforgettable jokes that weren’t all bad, but the good jokes were so few and far in between one another that it wasn’t enough to make me invested. This is partly attributed to the show not attempting these kinds of jokes all too often, though maybe the jokes were so unremarkable that I just forgot that they occurred. I will give this show that it did have a couple of moments that genuinely made me laugh out loud. The one time Hori (I think it was her) dropped Yogurt on the floor as she heard something surprising was one of the few moments that the comedy landed its timing absolutely perfectly. Also, Hori’s dad; despite being a "random = funny“ character for most of his screentime, did make me laugh a few times, and provided for the only time the anime had something fairly consistently good going for it. Sure a good portion of his funny moments were due to his complete absurdity, but it was nice to see something that wasn't completely streamline. He was that lone unpredictable element of the show that made the show feel alive, instead of a dead corpse of what was once a vibrant romcom anime. Overall, the comedy is mostly very bad, but not entirely devoid of quality, and is leagues ahead of the rest of the writing. It actually manages to evolve into being decent over the course of the show, though this doesn’t make up for the comedy in the former half of the show being beyond awful. Visuals [9.25/10]: The visuals is where Horimiya truly shines. What is easily Horimiya’s greatest aspect, Horimiya’s art is colorful, vibrant and full of life, drawing a stark contrast between it and the anime’s actual substance. The animation is mostly smooth and has a nice attention to detail, the backgrounds are nice and well detailed and every character is strikingly attractive. It’s hard to describe this accurately, but Horimiya’s art feels very watery (and I don’t mean like paint). There is just something with the way the colors are used that not only makes it very refreshing, clean and appealing to the eye, but also very unique to this show in particular. This is what gives Horimiya it’s own identity as a romcom, as everything is drawn with equal amounts of realism as most romcoms, but simultaneously looks and feels completely different from anything that I’ve ever seen. The characters and environments feel very warm due to the anime’s perfect sense of brightness. Everything has the right amount of brightness (or darkness, if you will) unlike what some might find No Game No Life to be. The anime also tries to take a page out of Scum’s Wish’s book by having colored panels run across the foreground with the characters doing something fitting to the situation inside of it while something else is going on in the background. This could be anything from talking, looking a certain direction, opening their mouth, etc. While not having the same level of execution and frequency as Scum’s Wish had, it was a nice touch that made some scenes feel more dynamic and dense. The anime also truly knows how to set the tone of each scene using lighting, even if it has to use brute force on the narrative itself to make the scene take place in its preferred environment. If there is anything that holds the visuals back, its how the animation doesn’t have a great sense of timing when attempting slapstick. Thankfully, this is something that gradually improves over the course of the show, but never perfects. I also don’t find several of the characters’ hair appealing. Hori’s hair; somewhat contradictory to what I said earlier, looks dirty in some scenes (and even once in the opening), Tooru just looks uncanny without me being ably to put my finger on why, and literally any character in the show with green hair should consider coloring it or to start wearing a wig. There is a reason as to why no barbershops in the real world offers „dying christmas-tree green“ as a color option. Overall though, the visuals are very unique and in most aspects excellent, and considering how Wonder Egg Priority turned out, the art and mostly excellent usage of colors seems to be CloverWorks’ greatest asset as an animation studio currently. Sound [5/10]: The sound in Horimiya lands on the less flattering side average. I don’t remember a single composition utilized during its runtime (though that’s not too uncommon with me). I went back to rewatch some scenes, but this did little to improve my opinion on it, as it’s pretty basic as far as romcoms go. The opening song is excellent and sets the tone I assumed they were going for very nicely. The ending theme is pretty good, but didn’t warrant me spending 1 minute and 30 seconds listening to it. The voice acting is good, and especially Miyamura’s voice actor does his gloomy trait justice. If a voice actor where to deliver a immersion breaking performance at any point, there is a great chance I would miss it anyway due to previously covered statements about this show’s failure to immerse me. Enjoyment / Overall [1/10]: Would I consider this the bottom of the barrel of anime, like what my 1 out of 10 score would suggest? When taking all anime’s respective budget into account, it absolutely is without a shadow of a doubt. Despite having great visuals, this anime is one of the singular worst shows I’ve ever seen. This anime is everything of what I don’t want in a romcom, don’t want in an anime and so much more. An anime that expect the viewer to care about undeveloped characters, and then build the entire anime upon this assumption. An anime where literally nothing that happens matter, often not even because the characters are trite but because the writing is horrible. An anime where everything feels like it has come out of a factory, and is focusgrouped to appeal to as many anime viewers as possible by doing as little as possible to check of this focus groups’ required boxes. An anime that just wanna do the bare minimum to be what it seeks out to be, then fail miserably in doing so. All this accumulates the most unnatural-feeling and downright alien anime that I have ever watched, which is such an achievement for an anime going under the school and slice of life genres. This anime’s complete failure all comes down to the absolutely appalling writing. Character writing, dialogue, drama, preserving basic logic and immersion, all these aspects are as bad as they can humanly be, and the comedy can’t cover up this fact as it’s bad and lazy. Trying to invest myself in this world of Hori and Miyamura felt like ramming my head into a brick wall, hoping I would somehow pierce it, as there isn’t a single entry point for me to jump onto. It’s not even just about how bad this show’s negative sides are. There is an absolute abundance of bad aspects about this show that ruins its chances with me, but the real kicker is how this show is completely devoid of anything good or interesting with 5 hours to work with. This is aside from the art, but saying that the art could make up for content this bad is like saying that an impaled heart can be healed with a bandaid. Unless it's an action show, good visuals has never made a poorly written anime good, let alone an anime that is the worst written show I’ve ever seen.
Ranivus
04/10/2021, 11:24 AM
"Hori is toxic" "Hori is a -phobe" "This anime deserves a 1 because of that ONE THING" Those are the words you hear often if you live past the year of 2020 mostly thanks to Twitter. This take is typically comes from western 'audiences'. Don't listen to those kind of takes for this anime/manga. Those come from close minded individuals who lack the understanding of context and most importantly, understanding that HUMANS ARE COMPLEX AND IMPERFECT PEOPLE. Especially in high school. If you are of High School age and STILL don't understand that people have different opinions, then you are going to fail in the realworld. Name one perfect human that has no flaws. I bet you $1 million you can't find one. Especially in anime. And that's the beauty of Anime. Subtlety and context are what create a rich and varying story/character. In order for any slice of life anime to sustain itself it has to invest highly in their characters to create a compelling story. The story revolves around two main characters Hori and Izumi. One is perfect, headstrong, and independent and the other has pretty much given up on the world and just going through the motions. Two extremes personalities of the spectrum "unexpectedly" cross paths and there is your foundation of this High School Slice of Life. The 6 supporting characters all fill in that personality spectrum in a good manner in my opinion. Like any HS Teen, they all have their strengths weaknesses and conflicts. It's so well rounded, you will most likely relate to 1 or 2 of the characters. For me, I had my Izumi phase during high school (bullied into depression) But I also had my Yuki phase (being SO considerate of others that you're willing to sacrifice your own happiness). I had felt the most connection with these two and actually experienced some of these experiences during High School and college. Being my age, I could write a 1000 page book of the highs and lows of my High School and College life. That's for another time of course. After being out of the Anime game for about 8 years, I wanted a soft hearted Slice of Life to ease me back in to the game. The website that i go to (not MAL) recommended this as apparently this is the most watched on their site. My all time favorite SoL is Toradora, and it completely has Toradora vibes. The formula set forth from Toradora is a great template if you are into this kind of anime. I don't know if its the nostalgia factor or my desire to do-over my high school life and not be that depressed guy that never had a true friend-for-life in school, but it kept me up all night wanting to finish the whole series in one sitting. That being said, the production value of the anime is pretty high and you can tell some serious money was invested in this series. I don't spoil myself by reading the manga first. Feel free to read the manga first if that is your thing, but as usual the anime not as fleshed out as the manga. If you are open-minded person that is smart enough to understand context, intent, and A JOKE, I highly recommend this anime if you appreciate the Slice of Life RomCom genre. It's very light hearted and invokes that typical "I wish my high school life was like this anime" vibe. If you are a closed-minded person that looks for reasons to be offended, don't come here. It's not for you. Read the 1 star "this is toxic" review for why. Its obvious they have never been in a relationship or ever had a human friend in real life. Don't be like this, it will make you a bitter and old. Learn forgiveness and find the good in everyone you meet. Its the first anime I've seen in 8 years and it definitely did not disappoint. If you are looking for a date night anime or an anime to introduce to your normie friend that enjoys RomComs. I HIGHLY SUGGEST HORIMIYA TL;DR - Not everything is perfect, and success comes through hard work. Relationships are not one sided and require support and compromise from both sides. Before quickly judging someone based on your emotions, understand the context and intent. Humans are complex animals.
maitawa
04/03/2021, 11:44 PM
First of all: do not be fooled, this is 100% shojo anime. If you ask why male character behave like idiots, start punching each other for no big reason, those are stereotypes of shojo manga. Bland, shallow and not memorable to the point that I was interrupted watching an episode and forgot about it for a couple of days to find out I did not finish it. This is a romcom that doesn't deliver neither good romance nor good comedy. Compared to Oregairu or Toradora... nothing to write home about except only one thing: they try to do the progress of a romance backwards. They meet and start playinghouse even before saying their names. They confess and introduced to parents before holding hands. Everybody thinks they are dating but they do not think so. And so on. Does it make it interesting? Well, a tiny bit but not to the point where the entire show is interesting. Story is ... well there is almost not story so far. It is a sitcom with half-funny or forced jokes. No intrigue. No cliffhangers. *** LITTLE SPOILER IN NEXT PARAGRAPH, not the plot, just some scene *** In Episode 4 they try to make it more funny. By adding a lot of dirty jokes. Like "Your tongue is long. I need to tell Sakura about it". Hahaha. So funny. Boi and girl go to get coke. They drop a can. Everybody: they took too long, they are boning. The couple returns with guilty looks. Secondary characters get the can. Boi says "sorry, she screwed me". The can explodes in the face as expected. Hahaha. Everybody is retarded? *** END OF THE SPOILER Art... normal. In between Oregairu season 1 and season 2. On par with Toradora (which is almost previous century). Sound. Nothing memorable. Some noise in background, OP and ED did not incite any interest. Lego-style doll house 3d art should probably mean something about they playing house or they are dolls but just looks out of place. Characters. Flat, cartoonish and not very realistic. Hardworking girl. Nice guy. Both hide something from school. Something that doesn't worth hiding or even interesting. He hides tattoos. She hides that she has temper and is bogged in chores. Both lack any depth. The girl is kinda has no time to do anything (and has time to get work from STUCO). We have no idea what boi is doing when not at school or sitting at the table in girl's house kinda helping with the kid. The bipolar girl sometimes a cliche tsundere, yelling and hitting the boi (sometimes with heavy objects). Sometimes just normal lovey-dopey shoujo heroine. Perhaps the only interesting thing about Ep5 is how boi's glasses remain intact after a girl throws 5cm think book full force right in his face so his head flies back. The girl was treating STUCO prez Toradora style in the past and now she is getting it back. Why is is so big dirt on her and why now, is not clear. The boi punches his best friends in the face for superficial reasons. instead of hitting him back or showing him the door, everybody agree that this is not a big deal. The secondary characters do not deserve a line about them. Except prez but he got a line already. Even in Wotakoi the secondary characters are more interesting. Mom is typical "always at work feeding kids with microwave dinner" but with Gahamama smile (there is mo than enough memes about it already). Enjoyment. Well it is a feel-good comedy. Not super funny. Our heroes win without much resistance or blow-back. There is a lot of bad romcoms with way more depth. Overall. Nothing original or memorable so far. 1 hour after an episode and it is hard to remember anything interesting or funny. Not waiting for a new episode marking the day in the calendar. If you are at the same age and any romantic story is a revelation for you, then any romantic story, any setup "boi meets girl" will get you excited. For the girls: Muyamura is idealistic husbandu, helping with the house and the kids, calm, obedient, pretty, loyal. You can yell at him, kick him, hit him with the heavy objects if you are in the mood to do so. He can be timid or brutal, as you choose. You can change his style to be a tattooed badass or glass-wearing nerd, as you please. He can be shy or violent but you are always in control. And he loves you and only you unconditionally and will do what you want. Basically he is a doll. Or a male personage of shojo manga. For the boys: Hori is good with chores, smart and pretty. How you get her: just help her with the house, help her our by violence couple of times, and let her kick you when she is having a temper. If your are not a teenager (mentally), you understand this is BS and a cartoon.
bulkyhog
04/03/2021, 12:10 PM
Overall: 5/10 Horimiya came in as a rom-com I've never heard of, but being so highly praised by many I decided to give it a watch. And I can safely say after 13 episodes, that this rom-com is just like many others, despite all the claims of being genre-subverting and unique. Horimiya had great potential, I'll give it that. But that could be explored with the story and characters were basically thrown out the window after 2-3 episodes, making it another run-of-the-mill rom-com. Story: 3/10 I didn't read the Horimiya manga until around EP 8, because that was when I started thinking to myself: are we ever going toexplore the themes the synopsis laid out? The idea of not judging others by their appearance, the potential for further exploration of themes of depression, bullying, societal norms/pressure, etc. were never brought up to the degree I expected. A lot of these problems were resolved way too quickly to be anywhere close to realistic or appreciable. On the topic of speed, the pacing for Horimiya is so fast that you don't get the chance to truly connect with many of the characters. Likewise, a lot of themes and messages felt under-developed because of this. Art: 8/10 I must say the art and animation were very nicely done: all the characters are eye-candy but it's not enough to mitigate the poor pacing and storytelling elements. Sound: 8/10 The OP and ED are both quite good, and the OST, while small, is also used effectively. VA is pretty good too, nothing to complain about there. Character: 4/10 If there's one thing the manga did somewhat decently, it was the development of side characters (although this also fell off a cliff after 40 chapters or so), specifically for Shu. Shu is basically non-existent as an actual character until like EP 9 or 10. I can't even remember and that's sad. 90% of the subplots for the side characters are rushed so quickly or just outright ignored, so they only end up taking time away from developing the main couple (which was also sorely needed). I will say a few moments were decent, namely the Yuki and Sakura episode. Now as for our main 2 characters, Hori and Miyamura, I gotta say their synergy is great. It's fun seeing them do their couple things together. That being said, they are also quite underdeveloped. Miyamura, for one, overcomes his depression and experience of bullying way too quickly, especially when you consider how severe it was. I'm all for forgiveness when it's earned, but this guy forgive that turquoise-haired kid way too quickly man, especially when you consider how he was willing to fight Sengoku and Toru over conversations related to Hori; I guess this reveals his primary character flaw of being overly selfless. And why is this a flaw? Because it's never really explained or justified, and overly relied upon as a crutch for plot/storytelling instead of as an actual character trait he's trying to overcome. The same can be said for the flaws held by every other character they "try to overcome." It just feels more like a plot convenience instead of an actual theme or message the show claims to set out to tackle. Enjoyment: 5/10 At the end of the day, I had a mediocre time watching Horimiya. It was alright. And that's about it. Nothing about it in retrospect stood out to me as fascinating, but likewise, there was also nothing there that made me despite it or want to drop it ASAP. Just another small rom-com in a big pond.
ren0080
04/03/2021, 12:04 PM
Welp, sasuga Cloverworks. Finishing all three of their anime this season without any future continuation other than the Special episode of Wonder Egg. If this season was longer, at least 20 episodes, then it would have adapted all the great and high points of the manga. But nah, cloverworks was like "let's just rush this thing so that we won't do another season later lol". The pacing of the anime is so rushed that anyone with more than two brain cells could see that they are skipping a lot of scenes. I'm not even a big manga fan because of how they beat the dead horse, justgoing on and on without any end insight. But if they did one thing correctly, then it's the characters. Here in the anime, there's nothing like that anymore. The characters here are all friends in a superficial level. There's no depth to them nor any development to their relationships. There's no real feelings to their friendship cause the steps in-between their friendship are missing, making their friendship look fake and superficial level. The animation let's talk about. It's good. But there's no great direction to the animation. A lot of scenes are straight up just from the panels. And in the last few episodes, there's a lot ot off-frames which isn't that noticeable. The music is pretty lackluster. The op is good, but the ed is pretty decent. The ost is... pretty lacking at times. There isn't one scene that I can remind where the ost is elevating the scene to be rememberable. Nothing. Overall, still a pretty decent anime. But I'd still recommend the manga over this. There's a lot of scenes where the jump from between them are pretty bad. There's also the fact that there are two story chapters in the manga that is pretty d*mn shame that didn't appeared here. (4.6/10)
Twumi
04/03/2021, 11:37 AM
[Overall Score: 8.5] Horimiya is one of the most anticipated adaption ever. After years, when everyone gave up on an adaption, there was an announcement. It might not be an exaggeration to say that Horimiya is Winter 2021 most anticipated anime right after SnK final season. After reading the manga for so many years, I was also happy to hear the news. Did it live up to my expectations? Yes. Horimiya feels like it’s about to cross that line between a light-hearted rom-com and an over the top romance drama, but it never does, which is a good thing (A reference from the Oscar winning film, Parasite).On one hand, we have stuff like overwhelming drama like White Album, on the other hand, we have Horimiya, which balances between drama and simplicity so elegantly. The simplicity of Horimiya is what makes it stand out from other rom-coms, and is part of the reason why the manga was crazy popular, long before the adaption. Horimiya (Full title: Hori-san to Miyamura-kun) at first glance, might seem like the typical “Popular girl dates unpopular guy” story, but it isn’t. Kyoko Hori is a popular girl at her school, almost like an idol for students. Everyone looks up to her, this pushes a burden onto her, she always has to maintain her perfect-girl attitude in front of everyone else. After all, its the people around us who decide our social standing, not us. She has a side she doesn’t want to show to others. In one scene, a bunch of girls saw Hori near the supermarket, one of them exclaimed how she resembles Hori, but then they say that she was too ‘simple’ to be Hori. You can see the burden that is pushed onto her. It’s not easy being popular and act perfect when you are not. Hori only shows her simple and imperfect side to those she cares about a lot—like her family, her close friends like Yuki. Miyamura on the other hand, is a gloomy student who barely converses with others. He can definitely pass off as a side character because he’s that unremarkable among students. In his flashbacks, we see Miyamura get bullied and ignored by his classmates, we also get to see him do his piercings by himself with a safety pin, side-by-side to those events. In this way, the act of piercing his ears comes as a response to the bullying. He also has tattoos on his body. So to hide all these features of him, he has grown shoulder length hair and wears a jacket, even in the hottest of days. He stands out among the other students in his school, but not in a good way. One day, both Hori and Miyamura just happen to meet, but not under normal circumstances. Both of them show their hidden sides to each other. Miyamura happily accepts the real Hori, just like she accepts Miyamura. Thanks to Sota, their wingman, they spend a lot of time together and slowly starts developing feelings for each other. The story is hardly remarkable at this point, so what is it that’s so good about Horimiya? The characters. I have to admit, the characters in this anime feel so much more genuine than I’ve seen in hundreds other rom-com. Horimiya is by far the most genuine feeling rom-com I’ve ever seen. The character interactions elevates this anime to another level. First off, the interaction between the quartet—Hori, Miyamura, Yoshikawa, Ishikawa, they feel so calming. There is a certain warm feeling in this anime, and it’s all thanks to the characters. It’s almost surprising how they can develop the side characters so well in an anime that focuses on two characters. Yoshikawa is a character that hides her true feelings. She won’t tell people what she truly desires. As said by Hori, “The less she wants you to know she’s upset, the bigger she smiles”. True feelings can not always been shown, there are many circumstances to people. Ishikawa is a long time friend of Hori and Yuki, he is also becomes good friends with Miyamura. Though he’s one of the more simple characters, he cares about others a lot. When Yoshikawa tried to make cupcakes but it didn’t turn out well, Toru was poking fun at her, he happened to glance at her fingers and notice some bandages, which is proof how hard she tried to make those cupcakes. He immediately starts eating those, even though it looks inedible, he eats all of it, with a big smile on his face. There’s the student council president, Sengoku and Remi who have their own unique dynamic. He is with her because he thinks she’s weak and he likes the feeling like he can protect her. But actually, she isn’t weak at all. Remi lets him feel that way on purpose because she likes him so much. Kouno is also very insecure because she’s always with Remi, who’s like an idol at her school, similar to Hori. They are together so much, that some students call them “Beauty and the Beast” beauty referring to Remi, beast referring to Kouno. Similar to how Miyamura felt that he brought down Hori’s image by being with her so much, Kouno also feels the same. Of course, not all the characters are good. There is Sawada, who’s the damsel in distress and cockblocks Miyamura for a few episodes. She’s annoying and doesn’t know the idea of personal space. She desperately forces herself into the cast and takes away screen time. There’s Yanagi, everyone pretends that he’s so hot and beautiful that in front of him, their own ugliness wants to make them puke. This whole bit with Yanagi is just not working at all and taking away the screen time. The characters are definitely what makes Horimiya so great, but is that the only aspect of what makes this anime great? Definitely no. CloverWorks is gaining a reputation because of their well directed anime. The Horimiya anime (much like Kimetsu no Yaiba) is a lesson in how to properly adapt a manga series. The anime’s direction, pacing and the excellent voice cast elevates every scene to the next levels. Ishisama is a great director who knows what he’s doing. The opening of Horimiya is possibly the most well-directed opening of Winter 2021. CloverWorks is quickly becoming one of my favourite studios. The camera work in this anime has been pleasant. Especially the moments of vulnerabilities, I was wondering how will they handle that, but it was handled amazingly. When the background goes white and vibrant watercolors shift their silhouettes, you know that they’ve given extra care to the more dramatic scenes of Horimiya. Horimiya is a treat, beautifully animated by CloverWorks. The beautifully animated scenes, combined with the OSTs, especially during the dramatic scenes, the sound is yet another aspect Horimiya thrives at. Starting from the mesmerizing opening sequence, which perfectly fits Horimiya’s theme, to the unique ending sequence. One other thing that I must separately mention is the dialogue delivery. This is one of the most important factors to me when I watch an anime. The dialogue delivery feels WAY TOO genuine. The casts are so talented because it is music to my ears. There is no girl who talks in a high pitched voice which is borderline annoying, even Remi talks in a normal way, I expected her to sound annoying. Dialogue delivery is definitely one of the thing I expect the anime to do well, since it doesn’t exist in manga. And Horimiya absolutely nailed it, starting from the conversations to how they were executed, all of it. In summary, Horimiya is a satisfying adaption. Many people will find plenty of reasons to hate it, since even I admit that this isn't a perfect anime or something. For example, people might not like Hori's masochistic side or how he often hits Miyamura. Honestly, it doesn't matter to me. I am well aware of the fact that Hori is a bit violent in nature, but it is explained why, and it's not like she's the Tsundere from Zero no Tsukaima (An actual bitch), she admits her mistakes and admits how she knows she was wrong but she blames it on Miyamura anyways, she can't help it. Miyamura chose to accept that side of her, so who am I to judge what's good for him? Besides, S&M is getting more popular day by day among people, I'm here to watch anime, not to kinkshame anime characters. After waiting for so long, I am nothing but happy to receive such a quality adaption. This definitely lives up to the manga. The manga ended weeks ago, and I was looking forward to the anime every week. This Winter season has been a pleasant ride, with a mix of almost everything, Horimiya takes the spot of the best rom-com. It adapts the starting few chapters, which is the glorious chapters of Horimiya, even in the manga, so naturally I enjoyed it to the fullest. This is as best as it gets, so if you didn’t like this, don’t go into another season or into the manga. As for me, Horimiya is all I could ask from an adaption. Through ups and downs, the anime has proven itself with the stellar direction, well written and likeable characters, and an acceptable story. It definitely became one of my all time favourites. Since I have no Horimiya chapters to look forward to every month now, I’m gladly waiting for a second season :)
Atlos
04/03/2021, 10:08 AM
(TLDR at the bottom, thanks for reading.) Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (often referred to as kare kano) is a 1998 rom-com anime from Gainax and J.C staff, it ran for 26 episodes but fell into production hell after episode 18 due to director Hideaki Anno leaving the production. On an unrelated note horimiya is an adaptation of a manga which in turn is an adaptation of a webcomic. Have you ever watched a romance anime, maybe you have watched more than 1 romance anime? In that case, you have seen horimiya. It is the culmination of every other romance anime that has come before it and becauseof this is completely creatively bankrupt. Even some of the less common trope horimiya uses don't affect the story in any meaningful way. It's great that Hori and Miyamura get together early but this doesn't make the anime any better, it's not really a surprise either because the title just gives it away, because after they get together the anime just becomes a slice of life and focuses on other characters. Do you remember earlier that I said that this anime is based on webcomic? It was not a normal webcomic, it was a 4-koma manga, meaning that the show doesn't aim to tell a story but to be an entertaining slice of life rom-com manga. But the manga adaptation tries to be a normal romance series while still being faithful to the webcomic, the anime tries to be both of these. It doesn't tell a long cohesive story because it wants to be a slice of life but it isn't an entertaining slice of life rom-com because it wants to long cohesive romance anime, it tries to have the best of both worlds but in the end get neither. For the visual the show is pretty standard because it is a romance anime there isn't much animation but the characters designs all look aesthetically pleasing. Although in some episodes the camera refuses to stay still, often slowly moving across the screen while characters are just talking, I appreciate that it is trying to make the anime more visually interesting but it just takes you out of the experience. I honestly have no clue what to say about the ost because I'm struggling to even remember if it exists (outside of 1 or 2 scenes) but aside from that the anime sounds fine. I'd be lying if I said horimiya wasn't at least some what enjoyable, what it has is fine and why my score is a 5 and not a 1. TLDR: Horimiya is just like every other romance anime that you have seen but changed in the most meaningless ways.
IrrelevantGuy
04/03/2021, 09:48 AM
Romcom is a tricky genre. It's hard to tell exactly what you are getting just by looking at the synopsis. Most of the times, you get your generic romcom with intolerable characters, and at other times, you find something like Horimiya. For quite a long time, Horimiya has been a pretty massive name in the manga community, but it wasn't until recently that it started garnering attention from the anime viewers. Despite what some people may believe, the 2021 adaptation of Horimiya isn't actually its first anime adaptation. Before this, an OVA based on the much less popular web comic was released 8 years ago, whichdidn't gain much attention. But after a new anime adaptation based on the more popular manga began airing, it pretty much immediately received widespread popularity among anime fans. Since then, Horimiya has also become somewhat of a divisive series—with people falling in love with the anime and others finding it very mediocre. As for me, I'm kinda in the first group. Now, before I talk about why I like Horimiya, it's necessary to point out the show's most notable flaw: the premise. Kyouko Hori is a smart and beautiful girl who is loved by all her friends. On the other hand, Izumi Miyamura is a rather gloomy guy who always stays isolated from others. When these two meet each other by chance, they discover each other's secrets or, as they call it, "hidden selves". Hori and Miyamura decide to hide each and grow closer as they interact. What are these secrets, exactly? Miyamura's secret actually needs to be kept a secret—dude's got piercings and stuff, you know? But Hori's secret is.... She is a normal girl who loves to do housework and takes care of her little brother. Yeah, I don't know what about it is unusual either. The premise here is an obvious gimmick, and it solely exists to get things rolling. It's not necessarily a bad thing in of itself, but Horimiya makes this painfully obvious. After the first few episodes, the premise is pretty much entirely forgotten. Aside from initiating Hori and Miyamura's relationship, it doesn purpose and doesn't affect the story in any way. As pointless (and stupid) as the premise is, though, Horimiya itself isn't actually a bad show. The narrative of Horimiya is mostly character-driven, so it mainly depends on its characters to move the story forward. This causes some obvious downsides, perhaps the notable one being how mundane the show can become at times. But fortunately, there is a cast of lively characters that compensate for the lacklustre story. The content is pretty light-hearted in nature, and while there's a fair amount of drama from time to time (which honestly need some work), the anime mostly maintains a wholesome and "feel-good" atmosphere that works very well for it. It should be obvious by reading the title (Horimiya = Kyouko "Hori" & Izumi "Miya"mura), but the main focus of Horimiya are the two titular characters: Hori and Miyamura. Hori and Miyamura initially started out as close friends, and they became lovers after they confirmed their feelings for each other. However, unlike many other romcoms, the series doesn't take an unnecessarily long time to bring them together, which gives it more than enough time to effectively delve into their romantic relationship and strengthen their bond through simple yet entertaining interactions. Hori and Miyamura's romantic relationship starts off as slightly toxic with Hori being overly possessive of Miyamura, but it becomes much, much less prevalent in the later episodes. Both Hori and Miyamura have genuine feelings for each other, and they reflect that through their heartfelt conversations. Their interactions are mostly bubbly and light-hearted, being proof their healthy relationship. They do engage in sexual intercourse in one episode, but it's only implied rather than being explicitly shown. Hori's first impressions may not be very promising. She is seemingly a typical tsundere character who is good at everything she does, but she soon develops into a more complex character. Like any normal girl, Hori has her own insecurities (her so called secret isn't one of them), and through Miyamura, she can expose her insecurities and be nonchalant about them. Miyamura is a very significant part of Hori's life and vice-versa; both of them complement to each other just by being themselves. Miyamura is almost the polar opposite of Hori. He doesn't stand out much (or stands out in a negative regard), he is pretty much always gloomy, and he barely has any "real" friends. He always stays isolated from others, trying to avert any sort of attention towards him. However, Hori's arrival in his life has changed him in more ways than one. Because of her, Miyamura has finally started to make friends and open up to them, and he is very, very grateful to her for that. His gloominess isn't all there is to him, though. He is genuinely a nice and funny guy who you would love to be friends with. (By the way, I really like his "gangsta" or "yakuza" type of attitude.) While strong in romance and comedy, Horimiya falls short in the more serious side of things. As I said earlier, there is a fair amount of dramatic content in the series, and more often than not, it comes out a bit sappy (to me, at least). For instance, Miyamura's past is one of the most prominent themes of Horimiya. Every now and then, flashbacks of his past school life are shown where we see him all dispirited, but any proper reason for him to behave like that is never given. We know Miyamura used to be a hella depressed kid, but we don't know why and how he became so depressed, which makes it difficult to find him relatable. However, Miyamura does confront his past later on in the anime, and how he comes to terms with it is wholesome and encouraging, and presented greatly. Horimiya's supporting cast is pretty memorable, predominantly consisting of Hori and Miyamura's friends, most of whom are quite likeable. From time to time, however, the focus of the story changes to the side characters from the main duo, from which a couple of issues stem. The shift of the focus mostly works well, but sometimes, they are rather abrupt and completely take the spotlight from Hori and Miyamura, especially apparent in the last half. At times, the dramatic content concentrating on the side characters can be very redundant. Like, what was the point of the love triangle between Yuki, Tooru and Sakura? Not much. Horimiya also has a tendency to suddenly introduce new characters (Sawada and Motoko for example) and focus on them right away, which does it more harm than good. The animation of Horimiya is fairly good. It isn't particularly breathtaking or the like, but it's more than satisfactory for the most part. The backgrounds are fine, but the artstyle and character designs are certainly noteworthy; they are simple but the clever use of vivid and flashy colors makes them stand out a lot (especially the hair colors). Though, the anime likes to use certain effects while showing specific character reactions (like overly saturated and shady backgrounds), which is aesthetically cool and all, but I couldn't find much meaning behind them. They came off as kinda tacky to me. In terms of soundtrack, Horimiya does a quite satisfactory job. While nothing too remarkable, the music overall complements to the experience of the show. The opening theme "Iro Kousui" is one of the catchiest songs of the season, paired with a gloomy sequence focusing on Miyamura. In the last half, the sequence changes a bit after Miyamura and Hori get together, highlighting the happy moments of his new life. On the other hand, the ending theme "Yakusoku" is fairly inferior to the opening song, but it is paired with rather unique and creative visuals. The voice acting is very good as well. Horimiya doesn't really bring anything new to the table per se, but it's good at what it does to say the least. Even with its flaws, it's mostly a humorous and heartwarming romcom that manages to be better than most of its peers. While I can't really recommend the show to everyone due to its rather mundane nature, romcom fans like me are likely to find something special in it and appreciate it for what it is. After all, a genuinely good romcom is hard to find these days.
slavemaster_1991
04/03/2021, 09:42 AM
Finally the hypetrain arrived to the final destination and I can write this: I don't get this anime. First of all I will say, I am a manga reader and I had a huge problem with the source material. And like in the source material, I just can't understand what this anime wants to be. First of all, it wants to be a slice of life AND a romcom. And here we get a problem of different pacings for those two things. For romcom you need progression, for slice you need a lot of fillers. So imagine my surprise when anime decided to speed throughcontent, cutting both slice of life interactions AND chopping the development of our main couple. Let me point out, that there was a big problem in manga in terms of pacing: first it ran through main couple, finished the main plot and went after the secondary cast. The problem here is obvious - there is zero progression after one point, all the secondary roots feel like they were made only for a cashgrab and the relationships feel very artificial. I expected that anime will take the source up to this "day X" and have secondary cast plots placed in OVA or S2. Instead they copied the exact problem that original had, but amplified by cut content, so the relationships between every couple seems even more artificial and dishonest. So while I could enjoy this title up to EP7, after that it had 6 more episodes of basically wasted time and opportunity. Even if those 6 episodes were spread midseason and EP7 was placed the last one - the whole pacing problem would be much less obvious due to extended time for relationships to develop. There is also some kind of tone shift from comedy in manga to more serious stuff in anime so some kink jokes feel horribly weird if not straight up disturbing. And the fact that Hori just bends Miamura over as she pleases does not really help in showing a "healthy relationship". To be honest, there is really not much left to talk about. Anime looks fine, some colourful panels were odd but whatever, sound was fine, the story (apart from horrible pacing) was as generic as one could get. If you are into basic generic romcoms - take a look at it, if you want something that is actually good - don't waste your time.
KANLen09
04/03/2021, 09:00 AM
"You are worth more than you know, capable of more than you think, and loved more than you can imagine." Undoubtedly the rom-com of the season, Horimiya has the potential to be great in every aspect of the genre, but the elephant in the room is obviously CloverWorks and the production team behind this show: the classic case of quantity over quality. I'd like to think that we're playing a baseball match with CloverWorks for Winter 2021: Strike 1 for the horrible adaptation of The Promised Neverland (Season 2), Strike 2 for the abominable business practices of hampering Wonder Egg Priority's Behind-the-Scenes tragedy of director ShinWakabayashi and his production team, and finally Strike 3 for what is a total-misfire repeat of Strike 1 of going for a loose and inconsistent adaptation of the original source material (since it's basically marketing for the already completed manga). And you're out! "You say "There's more to this than meets the eye" when you think a situation is not as simple as it seems to be." The main star of the show is the central couple: Hori Kyouko and Izumi Miyamura, two very distinct people, and so different-yet-alike each other. The former is a perfect social butterfly but the truth that she’s a brash homebody; the latter hiding a gentle heart, along with piercings and tattoos while under a gloomy façade. Both have things that don't want people to know that are best kept in secret, and a chance meeting proves to break the mirrors of their perceptions and in the perchance, solidify their relationship altogether within that short span of time. As time grows, both Hori and Miyamura learn of each other's quirks and what makes them tick that helps make their relationship grow stronger by the day. Kinda cute in spots, and to the people whom are having a relationship with their significant other will definitely feel those puppy-love moments that are relatable...well, except for some cringe S&M moments (unless the girls are like bad-ass Hori that secretly adores boys like bad-ass Miyamura, and vice versa) and the eccentric familial conditions. "If I look at the one thorn that is in my side of all my life, it is my weight. I fret about it, I'm anxious about it, being an actor on TV - it drives me insane. It just seems to be something that plays a central part in waking up in the morning and thinking: "How am I with myself today?" - Deborah Mailman You would think that for such a self-titled show that all you're gonna see is how these two central characters would blossom, right? But instead of the rose that we got with Hori and Miyamura's relationship, there are more thorns on the stem of the side characters, as significant or insignificant as they may be (that's to your POV that I won't judge). By themselves, the side characters can be taken as a side story altogether, but since they're connected to the main bubbly girl, I'd guess that this works primarily to advance their circumstances, rather than being tied onto the main couple, and for a rom-com that deems to be a romantic "drama" altogether, I'm not sure if mixing in too much of slice-of-life moments is a good choice. Pretty much like Tomozaki-kun, the best way to infer is through the clique method: - Toru Ishikawa, Yuki Yoshikawa, Akane Yanagi and Hori herself.Toru being avid about his prospects of getting together with Hori only diminishes when he sees that the central couple are getting closer, quicker than it looks on the outside. Instead, he tries his best to steer clear of that direction, leading him to Yuki...but not quite the "closeness" as of yet. It's with the fickle-minded Yanagi that consciously brings Toru and Yuki close together, despite both playing the friendship treatment of going so far as to notice the affinities they have for each other. A potential couple, but played off as one of friend-zoning. - Kakeru Sengoku, Remi Ayasaki and Sakura Kono (with a wild Toru on the side): the Student Council trio. For the most part, both Sengoku and Remi has had quite the relationship with each other: a weak but capable guy and a bubbly, playful girl whose differences match one another, and they're as close to being realistic and vulnerable towards each other in their moments of time alone. Sakura is quite the character that most people will feel quite frustrated about, but for those who've gone though the love ennui moments of noticing your crush from afar, you'll definitely find yourself in Sakura's shoes. She's an introvert through and through, but someone who's an extrovert when trying to reciprocate between the give-and-take of feelings, as such when she develops a crush on Toru, only to find that his kindness is returned, but not in the way she expected it to be. And it hurts real bad. - Miyamura, Koichi Shindo and Makio Tanihara (with a wild Hori on the side): the middle-school "Happy Three Friends" of a convoluted past. The reason why Miyamura is surfaced as a lonesome otaku geek at the beginning is because of Tanihara and his clique of friends who used to bully Miyamura for his ostracized looks, to the breaking point where what Miyamura once confided in was taken away from him, leading to the gloomy aspect. It's only through Shindo that Tanihara would come to start accepting Miyamura for who he is, with the heart talks between both cementing the reconciliation years later. Other than that, Shindo is the casual butt of a joker, and with Hori adding into the equation only makes the S&M aesthetic look more prominent. - The others who have significantly less screentime: Shu Iura is the objectively loud airhead of a character whom is exactly like Shindo, Honoka Sawada whom is seen as the detractor of the Horimiya relationship, and the Hori family of a beautiful, yet somehow kinda "broken" family (in particular to Best Dad Kyosuke). Ideally I would want to paint this picture as someone whom has been in a relationship, but for the general audience, whether you're in one or not, Horimiya is as bare-bones as it can be, trading the romance aspect for its comedy of the Pareto Principle: 80% comedic slice-of-life, 20% romance. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.” – Robert Fulghum I find it quite the fascination of not just the OST that Horimiya has, but more of less its visuals and the intended picture of how people are supposed to perceive both the small and big moments, and this is something that I have to give the animators credit for. Starting off with the OP, it's interesting that there's 2 variations of Miyamura's theme: the 1st half where Miyamura is just like his old self, from reaching for the cube alone to most characters feeling dejected and frustrated, to the 2nd half where Hori's hand reached out for Miyamura with the cube, to the director's credit roll of him slicing the monochrome feel to showcase the colours of life with happiness overflowing. Capping off with the ED, it's using the twixt of a mix of animation in a dress-up model style between the central couple. Even with scenes that are depicted in the style of the OP of the potential couple-like feels, it's these Easter Eggs that not everyone will notice, but I thought it's worth mentioning. As for both OP and ED, it sounds great, no faults there. If I can sum Horimiya up in a quote, it'd be this one by the famous Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley: “You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.” As mentioned in the beginning, it's a loose adaptation of HERO and Hagiwara Daisuke's manga of the same name, but if I'd reckon something that the anime lacked over the manga, it's good progression. The anime felt mostly like the typical slice-of-life situations of characters gone awry, and though the allegory of what got lost as the series progressed, so to did the anime that had to relinquish some good character development moments for simpler ones, and that to me, is a shame of how much Horimiya could've been on par with the manga, but it wasn't meant to be... ...or so could be best said: "The source material is so much better."
LilBoOfficial
04/03/2021, 08:43 AM
I have mixed feelings toward Horimiya, mainly due to its inconsistency. One day the comedies fine, the characters are likeable, and the extremely generic story doesn’t feel problematic; while the next day the comedies gone stale, the characters feel as basic as the storyline, and I’m dying at the contrived drama. Majority of the time, it’s the latter. It feels like they blatantly don’t know what they’re doing. But there’s still something in Horimiya that managed to keep me invested, despite the aforementioned complaints. I’ll try to break down both sides of the spectrum throughout this review, since I’m split down the middle. Horimiya started offsuper strong. At first glance, I was intrigued by the characters. The whole concept of “not judging people off their appearances” was interesting, and I wanted to see where they went with it. When we first see Miyamura, we’re made to see him as a gloomy shut-in without any social life. But it turns out he’s the complete opposite. I really liked this idea, because I think this is an important moral that can be used in the real world. But as each episode progressed, this unique concept turned bland and generic, to the point where it was hardly bearable. It’s an emulation of every rom-com in existence, and it fails to add anything distinctive to separate it from the countless contemporaries in its genre. A tsundere main heroine and a slightly dense MC fall in love. Sounds like most of the other rom-com anime I’ve seen. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it failed to engage me any further, and it had nothing memorable about it. The pacing was extremely irregular, adapting 15 volumes in 13 episodes. Along with that, rather than feeling intense or emotional, most of the drama added in felt forced and cringey. I feel like the story completely fell flat, and that’s where Horimiya gets the most criticism. On the plus side, there were infrequent times where I did enjoy the characters, regardless of how basic they are. I always love watching relationships blossom, whether it be romantically or not. In Horimiya, we see Miyamura build tons of relationships. Not only with Hori, but he builds friendships with people he never expected he would have. He fights back the previous hardships he had with his social life, and learns to overcome it. It’s hard to not like Miyamura, and I feel like Horimiya did a great job in making us feel connected to him. His interactions with others are fun, and sometimes super wholesome. We also get to witness things through some supporting characters’ point of view. Though I felt that the supporting characters were forgettable and uninteresting (besides Tooru and Yuki, I love them!), it was still great to see them develop. With better pacing, the character department could have improved to greater heights. One thing that I have no complaints about is the art. The art felt crisp, and it looked gorgeous. The character designs aren’t anything outstanding, but they’re still appealing in their own way. Each character stands out with their own, unique hair color/style. One of the reasons I felt any enjoyment to this show was due to the artsyle. As for the sound, I also have no complaints. Nothing in that department stood out, but it was passable enough to avoid any issues. Horimiya isn’t anything special, but sometimes a basic story isn’t a fault. But there were definitely times where the comedy ran dry and some arbitrary drama forced its way into the story. The pacing was also extremely bad, but compared to the massacre which was TPN S2 (which also aired during this winter season, also made by CloverWorks), this was a little less bad. But all that aside, by no means do I think Horimiya was terrible, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy some episodes. That’s where this inconsistency factor takes play. In short, if you’re planning to watch Horimiya, don’t expect anything too special.

Horimiya ホリミヤ

2021 winter | Episodes: 13 | Score: 8.2 (915994)

Updated every Sundays at 00:30 | Status: Finished Airing

Type: TV

Synopsis

Voice Actors

Tomatsu, Haruka

Uchiyama, Kouki

News

Reviews

WestHeather
01/25/2025, 11:14 AM
The actual titular Horimiya romance is good. A little fast paced at the beginning but dawg I'm here for that shit. As long as it goes somewhere. Problem is that it doesn't. The longer the show goes, the less about them it gets. By around the halfway mark, most of the series is giving whole episodes to side characters of side characters. Like man I do not give a single fuck about one of the side character's sister (that I met an episode ago) getting into a good school. So yeah, the show is good as long as it's focusing on what it's meant tobe focusing on. The two main characters. And maybe Yuki and Tooru too, like 'Your Lie in April' styled four friends turns into two couples. But once the show moved past that it lost me.
Shinobu25
08/19/2024, 08:45 AM
Hori and Miyamura was one of the most toxic relationships I've seen in a while Hori is an angry girl with masochistic tendencies, but it didn't matter to me. The problem started when she forced Miyamura to beat her against his will, and how did the director show this? what a cool guy!! His schoolmate admires him! But the problem is even deeper. In another scene, Hori's father asks her not to treat Miyamura so badly and not to yell at him, and Hori's reaction? Yes, as usual, she said to shut up and continued to rant, which she does throughout the series Contrary to what the series wantedto show, Miyamura did not change at all. Miyamura remained the quiet and secretive young man who allowed the demands of others to prevail over him. That's why he was able to tolerate Hori so much. Why should it be shown that making many friends will change you? In a healthy relationship, you give something to your partner and you get something. But Miyamura only gave from the beginning to the end of the series. The end of this show is very cliched and superficial. Hori and Miyamura's relationship did not last long The rest of the characters do not have much to say. They get lost in the shell of the story and cannot make room in the heart of the audience as they should Maybe iura can be considered as a good character. People start a series with different goals, but if you are looking for a deep and lovely romance, Horimiya is not a good choice.
bambooo_ooo
08/10/2024, 09:02 AM
This show.. I frankly don't know what to say.. I have so much conflicting thoughts about it. It's kinda good but not quite nails it for some reason. It's like it pushes the right keys but the melody comes out of tune. There are also alot of cliches and the show felt artifical at points. Like the first name, last name stuff. I am tired of this being a problem in about every romcom. Some things are suspiciously convenient like the parents being almost completely absent from home because "work", so they can hang out. Some things pop up at random and feel forced, likethey are ticking the checkboxes from a romcom checklist. One minute I was engaged and happy but the next minute was "oh, we're doing this trope now". It was refreshing and pleasant at times but there was often a feeling that the show is lost and doesn't know where it's going or what it wants to be. There were not much tension and cliffhangers. Somehow they didn't end episodes in that way. MC relationship is very mature. It's the refreshing part, the best part of the show. Sorry if I'll write this too many times. It's how it could be with real people. Gosh I so like this part of the show.. They process their feelings externally instead of obsessing in lenghty internal monologues and then being misunderstood/silent/offended/angry/sulking/running away/whatever. THEY JUST TALK!! Just get to middle of ep3 to know what I mean (plus the tea brand Ripton LOL). There's no friends conspiring on how to hook the x and y MC, because they dont know! MCs just handle their shit on their own. I love how they just accept thigs and move on and not bring it back dozen times over. There's no AAAAAA I TOUCHED HER SHOULDER OMG HE LOOKED AT ME SUCH AN EVENT CAN'T SLEEP FOR A WEEK. Nope. I WANNA GIVE HIM A CHOCOLATE ON VALENTINES DAY BUT I'M TOO EMBARASSED AND I WILL RUN AWAY AND BITCH ABOUT IT FOR 3 EPISODES. Nope. AAAA HE DIDN'T PICK UP MY CALL I'M GONNA FLIP OUT AND STOP TALKING TO HIM AND LOSE MY MARBLES OVER THAT INSTEAD OF JUST ASKING. Nope. I FINALLY CONFESSED BUT LET'S RETCON THIS AND PRETEND IT DIDN'T HAPPENED. Nope. May be even too perfect for some.. For me - fking awesome. There is some weird stuff that may set some people off (ep 8-9, you'll know..). For others it can be just a sign trust and dedication. Quite a personal judgment. For me, eh, you guessed, mixed feeligs. But not something I'd ditch the show over. It feels like they rushed some things too fast (breakneck pace in fact..) and didn't know what else to do with the runtime left. Overall I liked the main relationship, it worked for me. Though I admit I'd like there have been more time devoted to MCs relationship(*). Some shows center too much on main characters and leave supporting ones underdeveloped. And here I feel the opposite is happening. Almost like MCs are not entirely MCs, they're pushed to background. Supporting characters got alot of time and, surprisingly, more emotional dillemas than MCs. And in hindsight, the distribution of events for main ship through the whole show is just bonkers. It races waaaaaay too fast forward for first half. Wait I said that already.. Honorable mention goes to Kyousuke, the most irritating, out of place, misfitting, ham-fisted, interrupting, arrogant, stupid, unneeded, useless, random, moron, asshole, unexplained, no background piece of sh..acharacter in the show. Yes I don't like him. Yes I know he's canon. Still don't like him. Silver medal for the pedo teacher in the very first scenes of the 1st ep - what a way to start a show, congrats. English dubbing. I don't know.. acceptable ? Hori's voice actress is like.. it's like the whole show, I can't quite feel it. It's not bad, she does a decent job and is unique, but something's off with her voice. Her sentences feel rushed and not containing enough emotions, like the priority was to fit something long into too short timespan. See around 21 min of ep7 to know what I mean.. it should be emotional and spoken from heart but comes off as a dry statement like a fucking voice mail. I just saw an interview with the voice actress and.. she just is like that. I'd expect a bit more from a pro voice actor than to just play herself. I liked the music. Mostly just typical romcom tunes (no complaints here, good quality). Some pieces catching my ear (Spring is Miles Away, Hottest 36.5 Degrees - good stuff). Soundtrack seem pretty diverse - dozens of tracks. No complains. Animation was nice. Can't really say much, decent work, enough frames, nice backgrounds. Well, maybe Kyoko's eyes looking like a fireplace - kinda strange. Ending was eh.. overdone. They should put a period at 12th ep and it would be better. Lord of the rings ending vibes. To sum up. I really loved some parts of the show (I think it's obvious which) but other not. Very, very mixed feelings. Feeling of a missed opportunity. I tried to watch Missing Pieces but I mostly skipped through it, it was all over the place with chronology. There are multiple ways to view the show to be more coherent. People even made edits to combine the main season with missing pieces in chronological order. That shows peoples dedication but also how messed and confusing it is. **The show is worth watching for the MC relationship alone.** If I am to judge by my "rewatch factor" (the desire to watch again, be it full or just fragments) - I'd rewatch that part alone and pretty much skip everything else. I think OVA did a better job here, with main focus on MCs. Sadly, no eng dub and completely different caliber of the production.
Sandy_lol
05/14/2024, 01:39 PM
With this anime pretty much being my first dip into the SOL romance rabbit-hole, I'm obviously a little biased with this rec but, I still love this show as much during the first watch. one of the reason its so high up on my list is the replay value steming from the fact that the anime making it so cool to just see the characters interact in the simplest moments because of the way of interacting keeps the viewer engaged into the conversation that they are having. one of clover works masterpieces as it feels like the manga panels starting moving, with magnificent colors toback it up. But the main reason of this show being so good is the characters themselves. all the supporting characters are still fleshed out and feel like human beings, and have flaws that hinder their surrounding relationships. and as Hori and Miyamura make more friends, it shows that these high school anime characters feel real without being boring, which many anime have not really pulled off from what I watched .(I know others have done it do come at me 😭) horimiya is a good watch for newcomers to the genre and hardened romance veterans alike.
beingraaandom
03/03/2024, 05:28 AM
I don't get how this anime ended up on anyone's favorites list. Is it the animation, art style, or voice actors? Because it definitely can't be the plot—it's nothing special. No climax, just a regular couple with a plain story about a quiet boy and loud girl. Usually, I'm so in love with those kinds of plots but this anime somehow managed to ruin it. I found myself more interested in the side characters' romantic stories, which says a lot. It feels like those who love this anime haven't watched many other romance anime before. It's more slice of life than romance—something you can casuallywatch, but it doesn't grab you. Somehow, it managed to keep me bored throughout all 13 episodes. I only finished it because I wanted to know what the hype was about, but honestly, I still don't see why people talk about it.
Raijin_-_
02/18/2024, 09:48 PM
Horimiya's debut season is a captivating journey through the complexities of love and self-discovery, captivating viewers with its genuine charm and sincerity. At its core, the evolving relationship between Hori and Miyamura resonates deeply, portrayed with authenticity and depth that draws viewers into their heartfelt journey of connection and acceptance. What sets Horimiya apart is its sincere portrayal of romance, eschewing melodrama for genuine, heartfelt moments that explore the nuances of love and friendship. The animation and art style enhance the series, infusing each scene with warmth and intimacy. Beyond its central romance, Horimiya celebrates the power of friendship and self-acceptance, enriching the narrative with a diversecast of lovable characters. With its endearing characters and heartfelt storytelling, Horimiya's first season is a must-watch for fans of romance and genuine emotion.
lastnameEver
12/14/2023, 12:52 PM
Horimiya causes the sort of boredom that causes people to believe in hell just so they can have something to look forward to. To describe what happens in Horimiya would be like one of those zen koans because watching the show all the way through and not watching it is the exact same thing. To find enjoyment in Horimiya would be to find enjoyment in watching paint dry. Characters are bland, flavourless, flat, and uninteresting. The show’s animated by Cloverworks. Like everything Cloverworks touch, it is absolutely hollow. I don’t like wishing ill-will upon anyone, but if Cloverworks were to go bankrupt, I don’t thinkanything of value would be lost. The story’s the usual misunderstandings, fights over the girl, the boys kiss and make up and make up aimless conversations that go nowhere, with a lot of bad comedy that isn’t unfunny but isn’t funny either. I don’t think there’s anything egregiously wrong with the show but the story has no objective. It’s not the romantic development between the two leads, since that wraps up without much fanfare. It’s not the school, since the place is too boring. It’s not the people in the school either, they’ve got nothing going on in their lives. There’s no conflict, no stakes, no direction, no message, no spark of creativity, and still better than Oregairu, that’s crazy.
animedork95
07/27/2023, 06:48 AM
I was really looking forward to this anime, especially since it was so positively received by the anime community on TikTok, but unfortunately it falls short in critical areas, namely: pacing, storytelling, and the overall anime direction. I'm a big fan of the manga. That being said, I'm not usually one to tout the source material to say it's always better than the adaptation. In many cases, I actually prefer the anime over the manga because there are certain scenes that are just better animated, like fight scenes which can get pretty confusing in black and white panels. Animes also have the unique opportunity to fixissues that existed in the manga, such as pacing and transitions, or improve certain aspects to make scenes more impactful such as as adding character development or subtle visual elements. All of that to say--I came into this anime excited to see it translated into the anime medium. Unfortunately, I think the director and storyboard staff misinterpreted Horimiya. The manga is a rom-com, with unique and funny characters, that occasionally have deep and moving interactions and backstories. Those serious moments are very much interspersed throughout the lighter, funnier, happier, and slice of life moments so it never felt too serious or dramatic. It made sure that you saw a lot of these fun, daily interactions not only to keep a lighter feel to the story, but to also better acquaint the reader with the characters, show in depth character development, and make readers feel a deeper connection to the characters. All of this groundwork and thoughtful pacing led to the serious climaxes being very impactful. If Hori was crying, I was crying, if Miyamura was in pain, I felt my stomach sinking. From the opening to the very last episode, the anime skips all of this important groundwork, making Horimiya into an edgy drama that occasionally has funny moments instead of the mature rom-com it was written to be. The vibes are completely off. The opening song and animations are way too serious and depressing. The first episode cuts what feels like an entire volume of Hori and Miyamura getting to slowly know each other, and exposition about the characters, and jumps straight into internal conflict and deep relationship emotions. There's just no way I'm going to be connected enough to characters in the first episode to care about them crying, especially if it's pieced together in a way that makes it seem like they've only known each other for like a week. This is a reoccurring issue throughout the anime, where they cut exposition and minor character development to quickly get to climatic moments. I guess the director didn't realize how important those small moments were, and how cutting them would lead to anticlimactic, confusing, and quite frankly jarring dramatic moments. The anime is faithful to the manga in that all of the content of the anime was technically in the manga. But the way they pieced it together and the elements they added to certain parts turns it into a very different story. It looks like they tried to make this into an edgy, we're-not-like-other-shoujo's anime by their sound choice, animation choices, and story choices, and then failed at even doing that. Another side of the pacing issue aside from the selection and emphasis of certain scenes, is the transition between them. Some scenes lingered on screen for way too long, to the point we thought our TV was frozen, while others were cut so abruptly short I just couldn't help but wonder if they were having problems making it within the time allotment for the episode. It felt and looked clunky. The order of the story clips did not aid in this. The manga is a collection of short stories, with longer ones requiring more exposition interspersed into the shorter stories. Which stories are where and the order of them in the manga is very international. I always thought that every story, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, was absolutely necessary, and I had thought at the time that if you got rid of even one of them, the story overall just wouldn't be as good. And I was right. Whether for time purposes or drama purposes, the anime cut out almost EVERY single one of these smaller stories. Outside of ruining the exposition, connection to characters, and character development like I mentioned before, it makes the transition between stories so jarring. The smaller stories in the exact order they were in were necessary as buffers, as transitions, and as pieces of information for character development and for the bigger, more climatic stories to flow naturally, make sense, and be more impactful. Every single climatic scene (of which there were many crammed into each episode) in Horimiya felt anticlimactic at best and downright jarring and confusing at worst. So these scenes that are supposed to have high emotional impact just completely miss. And then after one of these high tension scenes, without any warning, it cuts to a comedic moment. In the manga, it was clear when we were switching from one story to another. It's a lot clearer and easier to understand due to panel and page structure. In anime, if you want to keep this same structure, you have to do something similar to indicate to the viewer that we're switching to something else now or else it looks like you're just randomly cutting between seemingly unrelated scenes. A title/break card is sometimes used for that and I think would have worked well in this case. But no. One moment a character would be plagued by their past, and the next there would be a joke about Hori's kink, and the next would be a different scene of the same character being plagued by their past. If they didn't want to use title cards, they should have reordered the scenes so it made more sense as a comprehensive story. It makes more sense to have larger sections that tell a full story rather than trying to maintain chronological order when you've cut so many little pieces out. That being said, there are some positives. The voice actors are great and so is the general animation. Unfortunately, even with good individual elements like voice acting, animation, and source material, the directing really fumbled this one. The director and storyboarding team misinterpreted the essence of this story, which turned it into an overdramatic mess. With all of the great shoujos coming out now and getting anime adaptations, I would recommend skipping over this anime. If you'd like to see a proper adaptation where you can tell the director and studio not only loved the story, but really understood it, I'd recommend Skip to Loafer. It really does seem like a love letter to the Manga from the Studio. If you read and watch Horimiya and Skip to Loafer in a short time frame, you'll really see the difference a good director who understands the story and the mangakas intention makes.
RebelPanda
12/22/2022, 06:55 PM
On the surface, Horimiya is a finely polished anime—Glistening character art, bright lighting, realistic backgrounds, glittery visual effects. Every voice actor's suited their character, and their performances are convincing. Both the opening and ending credits are slickly animated with the utmost care and talent. The original soundtrack is average, but it fits every scene. Though I was immediately drawn to this anime for its impressive technical qualities, they weren’t good enough to overlook the subpar writing. Beneath the superficial presentation, Horimiya is a computer-generated romantic comedy story that thinks in cliches: It merges tropes from the mediocre rom-com anime with the worst parts of sappy shoujodramas. I should start by saying, I have never read the manga and this subpar anime didn't convince me I should. Chances are you've heard this premise before: A male high school student with no friends meets a girl through a chance encounter. She's popular at school; still, she works hard to take care of her family, and she doesn't have time to socialize: The pair bond over their secretive lives. Despite his edgy appearance, the girl does not judge the boy. She encourages him to come out of his shell and find friends. In return, he does everything within his capability to make her happy. While it is a bog-standard plot, Horimiya was my kind of show. It had a simplistic trajectory: Make progress on Hori and Miyamura’s first love, tackle sexual awakenings, develop the side characters, and develop the themes of self-acceptance. That’s not quite how it went. Instead, they rushed through the story at a breakneck pace while repeating identical jokes and throwing in endless cliches. Fake dating scenarios, love triangles, perpetually pissed off heroines, and a tidal wave of misunderstandings. Even though the premise was simple, I liked seeing Hori and Miyamura together. Their relationship felt genuine; beginning as playful friends who got along despite their differences. Miyamura was a cipher at first—Quiet and introverted, he does not like school, cliques, and social requirements. He spoke very little about his personal life and he stood out from every other generic character design. Simply looking at him raises questions: Why does he have tattoos, nine piercings, and such long hair? All of these questions are answered in a very cut and dry manner. About two minutes of each episode is saved for flashbacks to his dark past. His backstories are presented with washed-out colors, quiet background sound, and darkened backgrounds to highlight his depressed state of mind. The solid presentation makes his melodramatic past seem more interesting than it is. With Hori's help, he overcomes his trauma, depression, and isolation (rather quickly). Miyamura's most significant obstacle was his inability to say how he truly felt. Characters joke about it because they reference how stereotypical his behavior is. If your story makes fun of a genre cliche, then repeatedly uses it, you are not subverting anything. The story is aware it is annoying and it does not care. Miyamura is a respectful guy; he's not possessive of Hori. He does everything she asks, and then some. When his friend Toru asked him for permission to date Hori, he said 'it's her choice' because he's a decent person. Most importantly, he had plausible reasons for falling in love with her. His first reason was, "She doesn't judge people based on looks." She embraced him even though society frowns up students with long hair, piercings, and tattoos. In reality, kids would be lining up to be friends with someone like him—but we need anime high school drama logic! So let's say being Cool makes him Uncool. Hori's classmates made fun of her for dating Miyamura since he's so uncool. Though she never let their words bother her. She accepted him, which made his high school experience better. He's the perfect guy for her. Yet in love stories, there's a problem if one of the partners is a little too perfect. Miyamura does anything he can to make Hori happy, even at his own expense. Though the story frames his selflessness as something good, his dedication strips him of individuality and all intriguing aspects. Such as to prevent Hori from getting teased, he cut his hair and stopped wearing his piercings because people looked down on him for them. However, Hori never needed help. I hate how the show frames his edgy appearance as a problem he must fix to have a good relationship. Part of what made this show so appealing was Miyamura's distinct appearance from generic high-school anime protagonists. As we found out, that amounted to little more than a marketing gimmick. In the first few episodes, it pitched itself as an emotional portrayal of bullying and depression, but those themes were bait. When it comes down to it, this show doesn’t give a rat’s ass about “Not judging people by their appearance.” When Miyamura tells his friends about people talking behind his back, they tell him to man up—in a show about bullying that we’re meant to take seriously. The only problems in their relationship that weren't Hori's fault were caused by contrivances. Miyamura's phone dies for five days, so Hori goes into panic mode and assumes the worst. The grand reunion is played up with dramatic slow motion, loud, emotional music, but it rings hollow. It's meant to feel like they've been apart for a long time, but to us, it was only five minutes. What should've been a significant turning point for their relationship felt inconsequential. Alone, this one contrived moment isn't a big deal; however, it is a persistent problem with the anime. The pacing issues are more noticeable the longer the show drags on. However, no amount of adaptation magic could've saved Hori from being an awful person. She treats Miyamura like sewage water—yet no one ever meaningfully criticizes her, so she is never redeemed! No matter what Miyamura does, she’ll yell at him, whack him, or get silently pissed off. Girls compliment him? WHACK! She's feeling nervous? WHACK! He compliments her? WHACK! There's no winning with her. She's like every bad shoujo author's idea of a strong female character. Making your heroine hit and berate her boyfriend totally makes her a girl boss. These 'issues' only got worse the longer they dated. First, she became possessive, then jealous, angry, and creepy. Mind you, Hori's short temper is not a character flaw. No, it's merely a sign of her love! Because this is how sane people act when they're in love, right? Hori could work on solving her anxiety and jealousy by communicating with her boyfriend. Or better yet, she could confide in her parents, who occupy background space for no reason. Her little brother acts as a bridge between the two when they're having one of their misunderstandings. When Hori finally expresses why she is upset about Miyamura getting attention from other girls, it is revealed to be all in her imagination! If they were able, to be honest, then these misunderstandings would stop. But we can't have that. We need Hori to be jealous because that's one of her three jokes! If I remember this show three months from now, it will be for those God damn misunderstandings. Relationships are about compromise. Loving someone requires giving and taking. Hori takes, Miyamura gives. Some relationships are acceptable this way, but this one is toxic. Miyamura is the glue that keeps them together because he's always patient and submissive. When Hori asks him to act dominant by berating and hitting her, he tries. Expectedly it didn't work, but it's not just played off as a joke. Hori asked him to be dominant, and she always gets what she wants. This is the level of humor in the second half of the show. She constantly asks Miyamura to hit her and insult her. He says no, and that he's not into that—yet she continues to pester him! I would've ghosted her at this point, but he is perfect; therefore, he mustn't reject his queen. He even tries S&amp;M it for her sake, but it makes him uncomfortable. Even stranger, they do their S&amp;M shit in public. Their classmates just watch it happen and say "Wow Miyamura is so cool..." for calling his girlfriend a bitch. What kind of bizarre alternate reality is this writer living in? Still, Hori keeps asking him. If you're a masochist, and your partner isn't a sadist, don't force them to be one! To make her happy, he ignores his discomfort to berate and slap her. The writer must've assumed S&amp;M just meant consensually abusing your partner in broad daylight. No, that is not how it works, nor is it good humor. Miyamura confides in Hori's father, saying he feels uncomfortable with the S&amp;M dynamic and asks for help. Finally, he spoke his mind! Hori's father tells her how Miyamura feels and to be considerate of her boyfriend's feelings. I felt blessed; finally, the show listened to my cries: Please stop being boring! You'd assume this would be enough to get through to her… but no, she responds with, "Stop blabbing about stupid crap and help me out with the chores." This could've been a problem they resolved to strengthen their relationship, but no, it is played off for humor. I knew for certain Hori wouldn't get any worse than this. Right? Wrong. It's time to address the worst joke. Miyamura expresses attraction and considers dating other guys; it's apparent he's bisexual. That's cool! Bisexual people are great partners... though Hori would disagree. At the slightest implication that Miyamura is bisexual, Hori says, "Gross," with a nauseated expression. A little bromance? "Gross." To get the joke, we have to understand it from the way she does, and that is to believe it's gross. Very cool, girl boss. Toru's entire character encapsulates this joke. He was in love with Hori, but he got turned down in the first episode. Afterward, he stuck around to support Miyamura. The thing is, he's into guys too! He'll call a guy attractive, then everyone will go, "Whaaaaat?" How quirky! I swear some of his dialogue was ripped straight out of a BL manga. This isn't just a Hori thing. Random extras act disgusted when they see Toru being friendly with Miyamura. They tease romance with full intention of never making it happen because it's bait. So what's the point of the joke? There is none—the show tries to have its bisexual cake and eat it too. Every supporting character can be placed in at least one of three categories: 1. Nice on the outside, mean on the inside. 2. Constantly acts happy to avoid burdening others. 3. Too dumb to understand what's happening. Although some of them get a few seconds of characterization, it is skipped for the sake of dramatic romance. Ultimately none of their side plots mattered. They're simply a diversion from the primary couple, who could use more screen time because the anime skims through dozens in the blink of an eye. You probably won't remember all of their names, but thankfully their candy-colored hair makes it easy to tell them apart. Hori's friend, Yoshikawa, falls into all three. Her character flaw is that she has trouble communicating. She acts sweet to make everyone around her happy, but she actually does it because she's a spiteful person underneath. Like most of the cast, she narrates her thoughts and puts herself down because she lacks self-worth for unknown reasons. She hides her emotions for the sake of others to not be a bother. Aside from Very Original character writing, this doesn't make her unique. Everyone in the show is terrible at communicating—not because this is true to actual high school students, but because it's repetitive writing. It's never a mystery what a character is thinking, and if you can't tell, the directing makes it even simpler. When they don't know how to communicate the characters' thoughts, they just put a text box on-screen. Adapting a manga involves more than copying and pasting panels—you creatively develop ways to show emotions through body language, music, camera angles, and editing. The extent of Horimiya's visual storytelling is by focusing on a character, slow motion, changing the backdrop to a white wall, and adding a colorful shadow. The first time, it was unique. It conveyed Hori and Miyamura's thoughts. Even though they were evident without the sudden art style change. Then they kept doing it. Eventually, it would happen five times per episode for each side character. It lost its effect right away and became forced. There are numerous more ways to convey the character's thoughts without recycling this mindless visual effect. It just made me roll my eyes. Before it felt personal like I intimately knew who these people were. But then it happened again. Then again. And before I knew it, every irrelevant character had their little introspective moment and I realized I didn't know these people at all. By the end I still had big questions, even about the main characters, for one—why does Miyamura continue to date Hori even though she's a toxic asshole? Nearly everyone has said Horimiya is a masterclass romance, that it is the anime of the season. All I saw was a subpar, run-of-the-mill anime weighed down by superfluous characters, annoying misunderstandings, rushed pacing, and a viscerally unlikable heroine. After sprinting past over a hundred chapters, the story screeches to a halt at the thirteenth episode with a tearjerker ending. I enjoy watching shamelessly corny love stories that make me tear up with joy. But I don't like anime that are so cliche that they do the tearing up for me. If you're new to anime, a lover of romcoms, and have a high tolerance for cliches, you'll get a kick out of this. To everyone else, there are much better choices than Horimiya.
DynamoShinzou
05/30/2021, 02:43 AM
To give out a 1 out of 10 score to something in the entertainment industry implies that whatever you just consumed is the bottom of the barrel of its respected medium. I would not necessarily state that Horimiya is the bottom of the barrel of anime outright, as there are better candidates that are more fitting of such a title due to being very aggressively bad. It’s not that this is offensively bad like some would consider School Days to be, or very in your face bad and gross such as Green Green. There is an abundance of low budged and obscure show’s like Marsof Destruction that one would consider more „objectively“ bad. However, out of anything that has come out that doesn’t have piggy bank budget or offensive/disturbing themes, Horimiya is easily the single worst anime I’ve ever had to sit through. What makes the 1 out of 10 score warranted for this show is that in its 5 hour overall runtime, it completely fails to do a singular thing right while committing dozens of writing sins in the process. Sure, Horimiya has great art, but appearance alone can’t salvage a streamline and generic show that is executed terribly and has one of the singular worst scripts in anime. Story[2/10]: Horimiya is just your run of the mill romance/comedy show with a fairly strong focus on the romance aspect. Horimiya does nothing new to shake up this somewhat over-saturated genre. Every situation falls somewhere within a cliche or is flat out one, which alone makes Horimiya feel unoriginal and rather boring. The fact that Horimiya is formulaic is not the detractor in this regard, however. You absolutely can make the usual romcom formula work again, depending on how you go about executing it. The issue lies in how this anime is so outshined by all of it’s romcom contemporaries in every conceivable way to the point where it really doesn’t feel necessary to watch it. Everything that this show attempts has been done before and better in an abundance of other romcoms, and Horimiya doesn’t have a singular aspect it excels in. This is of course considering when the anime actually attempts to do something thoroughly anyway, as most of the time Horimiya takes a typical romcom situation and barfs it out without any regard of how it will turn out. The only situations in the show that were unique, were so for all the wrong reasons. Occasionally, Horimiya will inject a situation into the narrative just to go practically nowhere with it, even when the bent all logic to force the situation in. An abundance of situations in Horimiya are so out of touch with reality that the moments themselves are ruined, and it’s not due to the anime wanting to be over the top. This is a result of the writer trying really hard to evoke a particular emotion but without the skill to do so in a seemingly natural way. He; as a consequence, has to bend a situation to evoke his desired emotion, thus ruining everything around it. Contrivances to the point where a high school romcom becomes completely unrealistic is something that I never thought I’d see nor care about until I saw Horimiya. Episode 9 in particular has mindboggling writing gymnastics the likes of which I have never seen. In this instance reality is distorted only for the sake of creating 2 situation, one that ends up going absolutely nowhere and another that was melodramatic, boring and left no impact. Contrivances aren’t an immediate detractor of a romcoms quality either, provided they enhance the anime otherwise if they were to be necessary to utilize. Horimiya have contrivances that aren’t just next level forced and stupid, but often each contrivance contribute to a situation reaching an undesirable outcome, which is a gigantic double-whammy. This makes paying attention to Horimiya constantly punishing, as they all too often end a convoluted contraption of a subplot in a halfhearted manner that just fizzles out into thin air as if none of it mattered. The pacing of the show is also a tremendous problem. Everything moves at mach speed pacing, which is likely a source of many of the issues in how the story of Horimiya is constructed. What in my opinion is the best parts of most romcoms is completely ignored just so that the anime can make it’s way to the actual romance faster. You don't have the time to want Hori and Miyamura to start seeing each other before the anime suddenly forces them together. At one point they blaze through 6 months of time in the span of an episode when judging by everything that happens during this time, it feels like only a week passed. The only time the anime was a fraction of a care as to how something would turn out, was how they ended the show. The resemblance of a positive emotion I feel towards the ending might only derive from the joy I felt that the anime was finally ending, however. Otherwise, everything that the anime covers is done in such a careless manner where nothing goes anywhere, and it’s a consistent problem throughout the anime’s runtime. Characters [1.25/10]: Even when everything that Horimiya does has been done before, you can still make this show great with good character writing, good direction of key scenes and maybe even some funny jokes along the way. When you take this path of focusing more on the romance than on the comedy when writing your anime, the characters are bound to be the sole foundation that will make or break the show. This show’s cast has to be blandest and most shallow set of characters I’ve ever seen, as they are almost entirely indistinguishable from each other on a 2-dimensional scale, with few exceptions. The issue is not that they're unlikable people, because most of them are okay human being. The problem lies in how none of the characters feel real in any sense of the word, thus making me care about them and their endeavors a truly difficult task. The two main characters of this show are Hori and Miyamura, and while being the best and „deepest“ characters in the show, aren’t much better than the rest. Hori is your typical popular high school girl. She is beautiful, good academically, and is otherwise responsible, good at housework and I suppose she’s strong-willed as well. This is really the extent of her traits, which is sad because only 2/5 of these can be linked in some way to personality. She has high conscientiousness, a trait never really focused on outside trying to make her look like good wife material. Aside from this, she is trite and completely uninteresting. She has no motivation aside from her love for Miyamura and her likes and dislikes are mostly unknown, aside from the occasional trait practically every teenage girl has, which doesn’t help her with standing out. The issue is not that she is too normal, it’s just how completely undefined she is. She is without form, without a direction, an abstract unknown entity too out of this world for my brain to properly comprehend. Miyamura is probably the best character of the show, and he sucks. Miyamura is your typical quiet, gentle and reserved guy with the insane twist of having piercings and tattoos as if he was a bad boy!!!!!! Miyamura is presented as being very reserved and gloomy, while simultaneously being hinted at having a cool or edgy side to him. His piercings and reckless behavior in episode 1 gave me early hopes and expectations that this would be a hint at a different side of him. This made him at first glance really interesting, as the possibilities to make an interesting character based on this foundation is nearly endless. Sadly, the tattoos/piercings are just a gigantic red herring, as he got these on a whim and therefore mean absolutely nothing to his character, other than that he might have bad impulse control? He’s presented to have 2 sides to him, one that is cool and one that is shy and reserved, but the cool side had completely vanished by like episode 4. This isn't due to him developing as a person either. He doesn’t act recklessly in the slightest throughout the rest of the show, which makes his initial characterizations completely vaporize. It felt like half of his established character was a lie, a planned one at that, which made him go from interesting and back to trite, thereby joining the rest of the cast. Strip the piercings away, and what is revealed is a character that is reserved and gloomy, which is precisely what we’re consistently shoved down our throat by the rest of the cast the whole way. There isn’t much else to his personality other than this. He does however, want to change to become more open, which provides for this show’s only non-love related motivation. It was nice to see some sort of personal goal in the show, but the execution of this arc is so lazy and half-baked that it makes little to no impact. This is despite of him getting a backstory, a backstory which had little to no actual care put into it in addition to being totally fake and unbelievable. It’s plainly obvious the writer just wants to write something that people can feel for just by relating to it, without making it good for people who don’t relate to it. This makes the writing in this show come off as extremely lazy and incompetent. When Miyamura’s arc finally resolves, it becomes obvious that the only thing that changed was his environment, not himself as a person. The fact that this is all that the main couple has to offer in terms of characterization is quite an appalling state for a romcom to be in. This is maybe a passable state for main characters to find themselves in after a couple of episodes, but to have them cross the finish line in this state is an absolute joke. We spend so much time with them, and yet I know so little about them by the end that it’s like the anime hasn’t really been focusing on them. They also start seeing each other way too early in the show, as I have no reasons to care about them seeing each other after only like 10 minutes into the anime. I couldn’t care less if they got together, broke up, got married, got children, got divorced or died. There are literally no emotional stakes at works concerning the two main characters thanks to the godawful character writing, which is why this anime completely and utterly fails. The entire foundation of the show is rotten, which makes it have absolutely nothing to stand on as a show. These two characters and their personal matters take the spotlight for a great portion of the show, so this show absolutely begs for them to be good. There is also a moment at the tail end of the show that completely shatters them as characters and as a (potential) couple that is so abhorrent and unbelievable that I have a really hard time believing it exists. The remaining unidentifiable creatures in this show that; after many hours of research seems to have been classified as „supporting-characters“, are some of the worst of its kind ever written. The supporting cast all consists of characters that follows some sort of trope which is never in any way made interesting and never breaks out of. Tooru: A dude Sakura: The hard working student council member that thinks she’s unattractive. Yuki: Shy and emotionally closed off. Shuu: Insane. Remi: Cute Akane: (blank) All side characters follow their attached on trait the whole way through, and none of them change throughout the show. Every single character in this show constantly come off as shallow as they only have their one superficial trait to themselves. I have loved shows with this bland of a supporting cast, so it’s not like this is a sin in an of itself. What Horimiya does that makes this so problematic is that we are expected to deeply care about these flat and drab characters as they go through long-winded dramatic arcs as if the end result even remotely matters. This makes Horimiya’s latter half completely unwatchable as it invests way too much of its runtime in these characters while slogging through some of the most forced and lamest drama conceivable. There isn’t a singular emotional stake present within any of the arcs, and they don’t try to develop any character as the arc is happening either. Not one supporting character has any resemblance of a motivation not related to love to make them more interesting. This is aside from Sakura who wants to work hard for the student council, which is literally following her trope anyway. The show never tries to convey anything of personality using visuals and their mannerisms other than the very obvious „Miyamura keeps his head down because he’s gloomy“. This show also has easily the worst love triangle I’ve ever seen. Both of the resolutions for the opposing characters within the love triangle is so utterly pathetic it begs the question as to why I had to sit through all this. Not that I can complain too much though, since one of the resolutions is absolutely hilarious in how totally awful it is, to the point where watching this whole show was worth it for this one moment. Shuu also deserves a dishonorable mention as his character is downright alien. Him acting incredibly open and extroverted at school while extremely cold, quiet and dismissive to her sister while at home is a really interesting concept for the anime to handle. The anime just completely fails to address why he is like this, as in, what drives him to be borderline emotionally abusive to his little sister while so upbeat at school? I can’t care about him because he’s at odds with reality as I know it as no person would under any circumstance behave like this, and besides he’s completely unlikable. It’s like the anime (or the manga, if this was present there) ran through a random character generator twice, and decides to glue the 2 generated characters together without caring if it made any psychological sense. The only character that I have some positive regards towards is Hori’s dad, but only for the fact that I found him somewhat funny. He is not vastly more developed than the rest of the cast or anything, but he has a fairly clear and distinct personality and vibe due to his dialogue, which is an incredibly rare achievement for the writer of this show. It’s also strikingly obvious that we aren’t supposed to take him seriously, which made me judge his existence less. Otherwise, every single side-character in this show is zero-dimensional and trite beyond comprehension, and the fact that we’re expected to even remotely care about them is utterly asinine. Same goes for the main duo, which has to be the blandest main duo I’ve ever seen. Apparently the anime skips over a lot of the manga’s character development. While I haven’t read the manga, I can totally believe that due to this show's lack of care to how the characters are developed. Dialogue/writing [1/10]: What ultimately ruins this anime completely is it’s god awful dialogue. Most characters just feel the exact same when they’re on screen, but this is not solely due to their complete lack of depth. If the characters were well developed to begin with, the dialogue would completely suck all the life out of them. The character interactions all feel the same, thus making them boring and lifeless. Aside from maybe Hori and Miyamura on occasion, not one character has any sort of chemistry with the others. In actual chemistry terms, this is not because the elements can’t react with one another, but because every character is the same element. The anime fails to truly distinguish each character in any way that doesn’t relate to their trope. Shuu being loud and Yuki being somewhat timid doesn’t add to their depth when that’s the only way the characters act differently from each other. The dialogue being in this awful state is rather unfortunate considering how the entire show is dialogue, making the whole show extremely tedious. The dialogue never tries to develop the characters in a more indirect manner to compensate for how little we know about each character as people. Even when we’re given a laughably lazy laundry list of Miyamura’s traits in episode 1, there was literally nothing of substance, not even here. Hori pointing out that Miyamura likes manga and that his parents own a bakery is not interesting, it’s not something that gets further explored, and it’s not characterization. As for Miyamura liking manga, I don't think it's even mentioned at any point past episode 1. The only attempts of characterization through dialogue that we get are moments when they point out traits that are plainly obvious to everyone. It’s as if the writers think the audience is too stupid to realize that Miyamura is gloomy and reserved, or that Yuki is holding back her thoughts and feelings. Several characters act as if the only things that is of value in life are all the superficial aspects. Sakura is especially guilty of this since her whole character dissolves into a person who feels less attractive than one of her friends. It’s true that they are teenagers and therefore makes this behavior understandable to a degree, but I still don’t buy that excuse. Especially when compared to romcoms where the characters are of the same age as these ones. Tsuki Ga Kirei have middle school students act less shallow than Horimiya’s high school students, and that show made it feel like their behavior belonged in the show. In actuality, the dialogue in Horimiya reinforces the argument about the characters being shallow, since so much of the dialogue in this show concerns shallow subject matter. There is so much talk about appearance alone in this show compared to anything „deeper“, that mostly everyone appear as shallow humans, not only because they’re underdeveloped but because they constantly behave and think in a shallow manner. Otherwise its all talk about who has good grades, who is good in sports, all the typical superficial traits that don’t mean anything to a persons behavior or character. I don’t typically like shallow people, so this whole ordeal made this show incredibly hard to consume. If having the characters be shallow somehow was the point, then that’s not showcased well, as no one reacts negatively to someone’s shallow nature or does anything else of the sort to support this argument. The biggest issue when it comes to the writing is how constructed and manufactured this show feels on top of all the other negative aspects. As mentioned, the sheer length that this anime is willing to go in order to construct situations that hardly go anywhere anyway is utterly insane. Due to how all logic and reason is bent backwards in order for something to happen, any sense of reality is sucked out of any scene that does this, which makes me feel like I no longer see an anime happening before me. All that this anime is reduced to, is just a series of injections by the writers into a skeletal romcom template, where these injections are meant to bring out something from the anime that will check off the typical anime romcom boxes and then call it a day. None of the injections harbor any consideration in how the situation they’re injected into plays out, and of course all these injections all give half-baked results to boot. Everything is just a means to an end, an end desired by the writer and an end that always end up producing dissatisfying results. Miyamura’s backstory and his random emo phase early in the anime are also examples of this, and I know there are more instances of this that I can’t recall well enough to give my thoughts on. They don’t feel like they belong in the anime, they feel inserted by the writer for the sake of whatever reaction the writer find desirable in the moment. Obviously, this is technically how many romcoms work if you shift your viewpoint on an anime enough. Usually though, these structured situations come seemingly naturally in good anime so that they make sense withing the context of the shows they take place in. Creating a new reality where interesting evens occur and in which I can invest myself into is what anime is typically so good at doing, but Horimiya constantly shatters the walls of immersion. Never have I ever felt these insertions to be merely insertions by a writer as an attempt to manipulate the viewer more than what I have with Horimiya. I shouldn’t be able to feel the presence of the writer(s) when watching an anime unless it’s because the writer in question is very good at a particular thing that I am a fan of. Here however, I had whoever wrote this show breathing down my next for most of its runtime, and that is something that I’ve found to be strictly unique to Horimiya. Naturally, this makes any feeling of immersion a pipedream, which; accompanied by the shallow characters and bland and lifeless dialogue that also contribute to this problem, makes Horimiya impossible to watch. This world they’ve created is so distorted, it’s honestly one of the least realistic anime I’ve ever watched, despite trying to be a down to earth romcom. I have an easier time believing there is a world of shinigami with notebooks that has the capability of killing people than believing that anything that happens in this anime would ever take place in real life. Occasionally they mix this up though. While they sometimes opt for utilizing brute force in making a plot point happen while shattering everything surrounding it, sometimes they go the opposite route by making a mountain out of a molehill. For instance, we spend a good portion of episode 2 by watching Hori making a gigantic deal of not knowing Miyamura’s first name. Her pursuit of getting to know his name without asking was really awkward to watch, with what might be attempts at comedy, I honestly can’t be certain if it was. The fact that the idea of making a fuzz about Miyamura’s first name came to life in an anime that has to rush through the source material just to finish it, is completely baffling. You must have a lot of material to work with, yet this is something you’re willing to spend precious minutes awkwardly presenting, while neglecting likely better anime material? Another instance of this is when Miyamura goes through a painful emo phase early on, because the writer knows hes incapable of causing drama and tension in a natural manner. He just makes Miyamura unreasonably doubt himself to an insane degree, and it’s plainly obvious that this is merely insertion of drama into the show without any regards to how the scene plays out. Miyamura had no good reason to be doubting himself this hard and this confidentially, and this same ordeal goes on for way too long and good lord baby Jesus is it boring. What I’m implying here is that the drama is equally forced and lazy as everything else, however, the drama is mostly bad because the anime gave me no reason to care about anything that occurs. In addition, the drama is often half-assed in some way, not unlike how they half-assed the developments of the characters, both main plot and sub plot, as well as Miyamura’s backstory. Comedy [3.5/10]: The comedy is honestly the best part about this shows writing, though that’s not to say it’s any good. The comedy has a 20:80 hit/miss ratio with one common detractor for the jokes that miss: The timing. And I do mean timing in both senses of the word: 1. The timing of the movements in the slapstick and any comedy that revolves around the animation usually miss its timing, rendering the joke unfunny. 2. The timing; as in what point in time and in what situations they decide to make a joke, is actually a couple of steps below disgraceful. I seriously don’t want an emotional moment to be completely shattered by some dumb slapstick, but this is constantly happening throughout the show and it’s absolutely horrendous. A good portion of the comedy is this kind of slapstick, usually in the form of a punch from Hori directed at Miyamura, which from what I can recall was unfunny every single time. They never manage to find a time and place where this punch gag would be funny, probably because punching people isn’t funny, and I’d argue that this shouldn’t be considered comedy at all. The only reason I bring it up is because the anime thinks this is comedy. Not only is this running gag unfunny, but it’s also unbelievably lazy comedy. Not only is this unbelievably lazy comedy, but it’s also extremely jarring to go from wholesome to abusive in the span of a single frame. Not only does this comedy fail as comedy but it ruins its respective scene on top of it. Another awful yet continuously repeated joke early on is Ishikawa Tooru getting cucked and him being upset about it, which was not only consistently unfunny, but lame and extremely grating as well. SOmeone having their love be unrequited is by no means a basis for comedy, and I honestly cringed at some of these scenes. It felt like the same joke was being told repeatedly like with the punching gag, yet another instance of the comedy being lazy. Mercifully, most of these running jokes are more concentrated within the first leg of the show, meaning the comedy indirectly improves over the course of the anime by gradually sucking less. Otherwise the comedy is a series of mostly unforgettable jokes that weren’t all bad, but the good jokes were so few and far in between one another that it wasn’t enough to make me invested. This is partly attributed to the show not attempting these kinds of jokes all too often, though maybe the jokes were so unremarkable that I just forgot that they occurred. I will give this show that it did have a couple of moments that genuinely made me laugh out loud. The one time Hori (I think it was her) dropped Yogurt on the floor as she heard something surprising was one of the few moments that the comedy landed its timing absolutely perfectly. Also, Hori’s dad; despite being a "random = funny“ character for most of his screentime, did make me laugh a few times, and provided for the only time the anime had something fairly consistently good going for it. Sure a good portion of his funny moments were due to his complete absurdity, but it was nice to see something that wasn't completely streamline. He was that lone unpredictable element of the show that made the show feel alive, instead of a dead corpse of what was once a vibrant romcom anime. Overall, the comedy is mostly very bad, but not entirely devoid of quality, and is leagues ahead of the rest of the writing. It actually manages to evolve into being decent over the course of the show, though this doesn’t make up for the comedy in the former half of the show being beyond awful. Visuals [9.25/10]: The visuals is where Horimiya truly shines. What is easily Horimiya’s greatest aspect, Horimiya’s art is colorful, vibrant and full of life, drawing a stark contrast between it and the anime’s actual substance. The animation is mostly smooth and has a nice attention to detail, the backgrounds are nice and well detailed and every character is strikingly attractive. It’s hard to describe this accurately, but Horimiya’s art feels very watery (and I don’t mean like paint). There is just something with the way the colors are used that not only makes it very refreshing, clean and appealing to the eye, but also very unique to this show in particular. This is what gives Horimiya it’s own identity as a romcom, as everything is drawn with equal amounts of realism as most romcoms, but simultaneously looks and feels completely different from anything that I’ve ever seen. The characters and environments feel very warm due to the anime’s perfect sense of brightness. Everything has the right amount of brightness (or darkness, if you will) unlike what some might find No Game No Life to be. The anime also tries to take a page out of Scum’s Wish’s book by having colored panels run across the foreground with the characters doing something fitting to the situation inside of it while something else is going on in the background. This could be anything from talking, looking a certain direction, opening their mouth, etc. While not having the same level of execution and frequency as Scum’s Wish had, it was a nice touch that made some scenes feel more dynamic and dense. The anime also truly knows how to set the tone of each scene using lighting, even if it has to use brute force on the narrative itself to make the scene take place in its preferred environment. If there is anything that holds the visuals back, its how the animation doesn’t have a great sense of timing when attempting slapstick. Thankfully, this is something that gradually improves over the course of the show, but never perfects. I also don’t find several of the characters’ hair appealing. Hori’s hair; somewhat contradictory to what I said earlier, looks dirty in some scenes (and even once in the opening), Tooru just looks uncanny without me being ably to put my finger on why, and literally any character in the show with green hair should consider coloring it or to start wearing a wig. There is a reason as to why no barbershops in the real world offers „dying christmas-tree green“ as a color option. Overall though, the visuals are very unique and in most aspects excellent, and considering how Wonder Egg Priority turned out, the art and mostly excellent usage of colors seems to be CloverWorks’ greatest asset as an animation studio currently. Sound [5/10]: The sound in Horimiya lands on the less flattering side average. I don’t remember a single composition utilized during its runtime (though that’s not too uncommon with me). I went back to rewatch some scenes, but this did little to improve my opinion on it, as it’s pretty basic as far as romcoms go. The opening song is excellent and sets the tone I assumed they were going for very nicely. The ending theme is pretty good, but didn’t warrant me spending 1 minute and 30 seconds listening to it. The voice acting is good, and especially Miyamura’s voice actor does his gloomy trait justice. If a voice actor where to deliver a immersion breaking performance at any point, there is a great chance I would miss it anyway due to previously covered statements about this show’s failure to immerse me. Enjoyment / Overall [1/10]: Would I consider this the bottom of the barrel of anime, like what my 1 out of 10 score would suggest? When taking all anime’s respective budget into account, it absolutely is without a shadow of a doubt. Despite having great visuals, this anime is one of the singular worst shows I’ve ever seen. This anime is everything of what I don’t want in a romcom, don’t want in an anime and so much more. An anime that expect the viewer to care about undeveloped characters, and then build the entire anime upon this assumption. An anime where literally nothing that happens matter, often not even because the characters are trite but because the writing is horrible. An anime where everything feels like it has come out of a factory, and is focusgrouped to appeal to as many anime viewers as possible by doing as little as possible to check of this focus groups’ required boxes. An anime that just wanna do the bare minimum to be what it seeks out to be, then fail miserably in doing so. All this accumulates the most unnatural-feeling and downright alien anime that I have ever watched, which is such an achievement for an anime going under the school and slice of life genres. This anime’s complete failure all comes down to the absolutely appalling writing. Character writing, dialogue, drama, preserving basic logic and immersion, all these aspects are as bad as they can humanly be, and the comedy can’t cover up this fact as it’s bad and lazy. Trying to invest myself in this world of Hori and Miyamura felt like ramming my head into a brick wall, hoping I would somehow pierce it, as there isn’t a single entry point for me to jump onto. It’s not even just about how bad this show’s negative sides are. There is an absolute abundance of bad aspects about this show that ruins its chances with me, but the real kicker is how this show is completely devoid of anything good or interesting with 5 hours to work with. This is aside from the art, but saying that the art could make up for content this bad is like saying that an impaled heart can be healed with a bandaid. Unless it's an action show, good visuals has never made a poorly written anime good, let alone an anime that is the worst written show I’ve ever seen.
Ranivus
04/10/2021, 11:24 AM
"Hori is toxic" "Hori is a -phobe" "This anime deserves a 1 because of that ONE THING" Those are the words you hear often if you live past the year of 2020 mostly thanks to Twitter. This take is typically comes from western 'audiences'. Don't listen to those kind of takes for this anime/manga. Those come from close minded individuals who lack the understanding of context and most importantly, understanding that HUMANS ARE COMPLEX AND IMPERFECT PEOPLE. Especially in high school. If you are of High School age and STILL don't understand that people have different opinions, then you are going to fail in the realworld. Name one perfect human that has no flaws. I bet you $1 million you can't find one. Especially in anime. And that's the beauty of Anime. Subtlety and context are what create a rich and varying story/character. In order for any slice of life anime to sustain itself it has to invest highly in their characters to create a compelling story. The story revolves around two main characters Hori and Izumi. One is perfect, headstrong, and independent and the other has pretty much given up on the world and just going through the motions. Two extremes personalities of the spectrum "unexpectedly" cross paths and there is your foundation of this High School Slice of Life. The 6 supporting characters all fill in that personality spectrum in a good manner in my opinion. Like any HS Teen, they all have their strengths weaknesses and conflicts. It's so well rounded, you will most likely relate to 1 or 2 of the characters. For me, I had my Izumi phase during high school (bullied into depression) But I also had my Yuki phase (being SO considerate of others that you're willing to sacrifice your own happiness). I had felt the most connection with these two and actually experienced some of these experiences during High School and college. Being my age, I could write a 1000 page book of the highs and lows of my High School and College life. That's for another time of course. After being out of the Anime game for about 8 years, I wanted a soft hearted Slice of Life to ease me back in to the game. The website that i go to (not MAL) recommended this as apparently this is the most watched on their site. My all time favorite SoL is Toradora, and it completely has Toradora vibes. The formula set forth from Toradora is a great template if you are into this kind of anime. I don't know if its the nostalgia factor or my desire to do-over my high school life and not be that depressed guy that never had a true friend-for-life in school, but it kept me up all night wanting to finish the whole series in one sitting. That being said, the production value of the anime is pretty high and you can tell some serious money was invested in this series. I don't spoil myself by reading the manga first. Feel free to read the manga first if that is your thing, but as usual the anime not as fleshed out as the manga. If you are open-minded person that is smart enough to understand context, intent, and A JOKE, I highly recommend this anime if you appreciate the Slice of Life RomCom genre. It's very light hearted and invokes that typical "I wish my high school life was like this anime" vibe. If you are a closed-minded person that looks for reasons to be offended, don't come here. It's not for you. Read the 1 star "this is toxic" review for why. Its obvious they have never been in a relationship or ever had a human friend in real life. Don't be like this, it will make you a bitter and old. Learn forgiveness and find the good in everyone you meet. Its the first anime I've seen in 8 years and it definitely did not disappoint. If you are looking for a date night anime or an anime to introduce to your normie friend that enjoys RomComs. I HIGHLY SUGGEST HORIMIYA TL;DR - Not everything is perfect, and success comes through hard work. Relationships are not one sided and require support and compromise from both sides. Before quickly judging someone based on your emotions, understand the context and intent. Humans are complex animals.
maitawa
04/03/2021, 11:44 PM
First of all: do not be fooled, this is 100% shojo anime. If you ask why male character behave like idiots, start punching each other for no big reason, those are stereotypes of shojo manga. Bland, shallow and not memorable to the point that I was interrupted watching an episode and forgot about it for a couple of days to find out I did not finish it. This is a romcom that doesn't deliver neither good romance nor good comedy. Compared to Oregairu or Toradora... nothing to write home about except only one thing: they try to do the progress of a romance backwards. They meet and start playinghouse even before saying their names. They confess and introduced to parents before holding hands. Everybody thinks they are dating but they do not think so. And so on. Does it make it interesting? Well, a tiny bit but not to the point where the entire show is interesting. Story is ... well there is almost not story so far. It is a sitcom with half-funny or forced jokes. No intrigue. No cliffhangers. *** LITTLE SPOILER IN NEXT PARAGRAPH, not the plot, just some scene *** In Episode 4 they try to make it more funny. By adding a lot of dirty jokes. Like "Your tongue is long. I need to tell Sakura about it". Hahaha. So funny. Boi and girl go to get coke. They drop a can. Everybody: they took too long, they are boning. The couple returns with guilty looks. Secondary characters get the can. Boi says "sorry, she screwed me". The can explodes in the face as expected. Hahaha. Everybody is retarded? *** END OF THE SPOILER Art... normal. In between Oregairu season 1 and season 2. On par with Toradora (which is almost previous century). Sound. Nothing memorable. Some noise in background, OP and ED did not incite any interest. Lego-style doll house 3d art should probably mean something about they playing house or they are dolls but just looks out of place. Characters. Flat, cartoonish and not very realistic. Hardworking girl. Nice guy. Both hide something from school. Something that doesn't worth hiding or even interesting. He hides tattoos. She hides that she has temper and is bogged in chores. Both lack any depth. The girl is kinda has no time to do anything (and has time to get work from STUCO). We have no idea what boi is doing when not at school or sitting at the table in girl's house kinda helping with the kid. The bipolar girl sometimes a cliche tsundere, yelling and hitting the boi (sometimes with heavy objects). Sometimes just normal lovey-dopey shoujo heroine. Perhaps the only interesting thing about Ep5 is how boi's glasses remain intact after a girl throws 5cm think book full force right in his face so his head flies back. The girl was treating STUCO prez Toradora style in the past and now she is getting it back. Why is is so big dirt on her and why now, is not clear. The boi punches his best friends in the face for superficial reasons. instead of hitting him back or showing him the door, everybody agree that this is not a big deal. The secondary characters do not deserve a line about them. Except prez but he got a line already. Even in Wotakoi the secondary characters are more interesting. Mom is typical "always at work feeding kids with microwave dinner" but with Gahamama smile (there is mo than enough memes about it already). Enjoyment. Well it is a feel-good comedy. Not super funny. Our heroes win without much resistance or blow-back. There is a lot of bad romcoms with way more depth. Overall. Nothing original or memorable so far. 1 hour after an episode and it is hard to remember anything interesting or funny. Not waiting for a new episode marking the day in the calendar. If you are at the same age and any romantic story is a revelation for you, then any romantic story, any setup "boi meets girl" will get you excited. For the girls: Muyamura is idealistic husbandu, helping with the house and the kids, calm, obedient, pretty, loyal. You can yell at him, kick him, hit him with the heavy objects if you are in the mood to do so. He can be timid or brutal, as you choose. You can change his style to be a tattooed badass or glass-wearing nerd, as you please. He can be shy or violent but you are always in control. And he loves you and only you unconditionally and will do what you want. Basically he is a doll. Or a male personage of shojo manga. For the boys: Hori is good with chores, smart and pretty. How you get her: just help her with the house, help her our by violence couple of times, and let her kick you when she is having a temper. If your are not a teenager (mentally), you understand this is BS and a cartoon.
bulkyhog
04/03/2021, 12:10 PM
Overall: 5/10 Horimiya came in as a rom-com I've never heard of, but being so highly praised by many I decided to give it a watch. And I can safely say after 13 episodes, that this rom-com is just like many others, despite all the claims of being genre-subverting and unique. Horimiya had great potential, I'll give it that. But that could be explored with the story and characters were basically thrown out the window after 2-3 episodes, making it another run-of-the-mill rom-com. Story: 3/10 I didn't read the Horimiya manga until around EP 8, because that was when I started thinking to myself: are we ever going toexplore the themes the synopsis laid out? The idea of not judging others by their appearance, the potential for further exploration of themes of depression, bullying, societal norms/pressure, etc. were never brought up to the degree I expected. A lot of these problems were resolved way too quickly to be anywhere close to realistic or appreciable. On the topic of speed, the pacing for Horimiya is so fast that you don't get the chance to truly connect with many of the characters. Likewise, a lot of themes and messages felt under-developed because of this. Art: 8/10 I must say the art and animation were very nicely done: all the characters are eye-candy but it's not enough to mitigate the poor pacing and storytelling elements. Sound: 8/10 The OP and ED are both quite good, and the OST, while small, is also used effectively. VA is pretty good too, nothing to complain about there. Character: 4/10 If there's one thing the manga did somewhat decently, it was the development of side characters (although this also fell off a cliff after 40 chapters or so), specifically for Shu. Shu is basically non-existent as an actual character until like EP 9 or 10. I can't even remember and that's sad. 90% of the subplots for the side characters are rushed so quickly or just outright ignored, so they only end up taking time away from developing the main couple (which was also sorely needed). I will say a few moments were decent, namely the Yuki and Sakura episode. Now as for our main 2 characters, Hori and Miyamura, I gotta say their synergy is great. It's fun seeing them do their couple things together. That being said, they are also quite underdeveloped. Miyamura, for one, overcomes his depression and experience of bullying way too quickly, especially when you consider how severe it was. I'm all for forgiveness when it's earned, but this guy forgive that turquoise-haired kid way too quickly man, especially when you consider how he was willing to fight Sengoku and Toru over conversations related to Hori; I guess this reveals his primary character flaw of being overly selfless. And why is this a flaw? Because it's never really explained or justified, and overly relied upon as a crutch for plot/storytelling instead of as an actual character trait he's trying to overcome. The same can be said for the flaws held by every other character they "try to overcome." It just feels more like a plot convenience instead of an actual theme or message the show claims to set out to tackle. Enjoyment: 5/10 At the end of the day, I had a mediocre time watching Horimiya. It was alright. And that's about it. Nothing about it in retrospect stood out to me as fascinating, but likewise, there was also nothing there that made me despite it or want to drop it ASAP. Just another small rom-com in a big pond.
ren0080
04/03/2021, 12:04 PM
Welp, sasuga Cloverworks. Finishing all three of their anime this season without any future continuation other than the Special episode of Wonder Egg. If this season was longer, at least 20 episodes, then it would have adapted all the great and high points of the manga. But nah, cloverworks was like "let's just rush this thing so that we won't do another season later lol". The pacing of the anime is so rushed that anyone with more than two brain cells could see that they are skipping a lot of scenes. I'm not even a big manga fan because of how they beat the dead horse, justgoing on and on without any end insight. But if they did one thing correctly, then it's the characters. Here in the anime, there's nothing like that anymore. The characters here are all friends in a superficial level. There's no depth to them nor any development to their relationships. There's no real feelings to their friendship cause the steps in-between their friendship are missing, making their friendship look fake and superficial level. The animation let's talk about. It's good. But there's no great direction to the animation. A lot of scenes are straight up just from the panels. And in the last few episodes, there's a lot ot off-frames which isn't that noticeable. The music is pretty lackluster. The op is good, but the ed is pretty decent. The ost is... pretty lacking at times. There isn't one scene that I can remind where the ost is elevating the scene to be rememberable. Nothing. Overall, still a pretty decent anime. But I'd still recommend the manga over this. There's a lot of scenes where the jump from between them are pretty bad. There's also the fact that there are two story chapters in the manga that is pretty d*mn shame that didn't appeared here. (4.6/10)
Twumi
04/03/2021, 11:37 AM
[Overall Score: 8.5] Horimiya is one of the most anticipated adaption ever. After years, when everyone gave up on an adaption, there was an announcement. It might not be an exaggeration to say that Horimiya is Winter 2021 most anticipated anime right after SnK final season. After reading the manga for so many years, I was also happy to hear the news. Did it live up to my expectations? Yes. Horimiya feels like it’s about to cross that line between a light-hearted rom-com and an over the top romance drama, but it never does, which is a good thing (A reference from the Oscar winning film, Parasite).On one hand, we have stuff like overwhelming drama like White Album, on the other hand, we have Horimiya, which balances between drama and simplicity so elegantly. The simplicity of Horimiya is what makes it stand out from other rom-coms, and is part of the reason why the manga was crazy popular, long before the adaption. Horimiya (Full title: Hori-san to Miyamura-kun) at first glance, might seem like the typical “Popular girl dates unpopular guy” story, but it isn’t. Kyoko Hori is a popular girl at her school, almost like an idol for students. Everyone looks up to her, this pushes a burden onto her, she always has to maintain her perfect-girl attitude in front of everyone else. After all, its the people around us who decide our social standing, not us. She has a side she doesn’t want to show to others. In one scene, a bunch of girls saw Hori near the supermarket, one of them exclaimed how she resembles Hori, but then they say that she was too ‘simple’ to be Hori. You can see the burden that is pushed onto her. It’s not easy being popular and act perfect when you are not. Hori only shows her simple and imperfect side to those she cares about a lot—like her family, her close friends like Yuki. Miyamura on the other hand, is a gloomy student who barely converses with others. He can definitely pass off as a side character because he’s that unremarkable among students. In his flashbacks, we see Miyamura get bullied and ignored by his classmates, we also get to see him do his piercings by himself with a safety pin, side-by-side to those events. In this way, the act of piercing his ears comes as a response to the bullying. He also has tattoos on his body. So to hide all these features of him, he has grown shoulder length hair and wears a jacket, even in the hottest of days. He stands out among the other students in his school, but not in a good way. One day, both Hori and Miyamura just happen to meet, but not under normal circumstances. Both of them show their hidden sides to each other. Miyamura happily accepts the real Hori, just like she accepts Miyamura. Thanks to Sota, their wingman, they spend a lot of time together and slowly starts developing feelings for each other. The story is hardly remarkable at this point, so what is it that’s so good about Horimiya? The characters. I have to admit, the characters in this anime feel so much more genuine than I’ve seen in hundreds other rom-com. Horimiya is by far the most genuine feeling rom-com I’ve ever seen. The character interactions elevates this anime to another level. First off, the interaction between the quartet—Hori, Miyamura, Yoshikawa, Ishikawa, they feel so calming. There is a certain warm feeling in this anime, and it’s all thanks to the characters. It’s almost surprising how they can develop the side characters so well in an anime that focuses on two characters. Yoshikawa is a character that hides her true feelings. She won’t tell people what she truly desires. As said by Hori, “The less she wants you to know she’s upset, the bigger she smiles”. True feelings can not always been shown, there are many circumstances to people. Ishikawa is a long time friend of Hori and Yuki, he is also becomes good friends with Miyamura. Though he’s one of the more simple characters, he cares about others a lot. When Yoshikawa tried to make cupcakes but it didn’t turn out well, Toru was poking fun at her, he happened to glance at her fingers and notice some bandages, which is proof how hard she tried to make those cupcakes. He immediately starts eating those, even though it looks inedible, he eats all of it, with a big smile on his face. There’s the student council president, Sengoku and Remi who have their own unique dynamic. He is with her because he thinks she’s weak and he likes the feeling like he can protect her. But actually, she isn’t weak at all. Remi lets him feel that way on purpose because she likes him so much. Kouno is also very insecure because she’s always with Remi, who’s like an idol at her school, similar to Hori. They are together so much, that some students call them “Beauty and the Beast” beauty referring to Remi, beast referring to Kouno. Similar to how Miyamura felt that he brought down Hori’s image by being with her so much, Kouno also feels the same. Of course, not all the characters are good. There is Sawada, who’s the damsel in distress and cockblocks Miyamura for a few episodes. She’s annoying and doesn’t know the idea of personal space. She desperately forces herself into the cast and takes away screen time. There’s Yanagi, everyone pretends that he’s so hot and beautiful that in front of him, their own ugliness wants to make them puke. This whole bit with Yanagi is just not working at all and taking away the screen time. The characters are definitely what makes Horimiya so great, but is that the only aspect of what makes this anime great? Definitely no. CloverWorks is gaining a reputation because of their well directed anime. The Horimiya anime (much like Kimetsu no Yaiba) is a lesson in how to properly adapt a manga series. The anime’s direction, pacing and the excellent voice cast elevates every scene to the next levels. Ishisama is a great director who knows what he’s doing. The opening of Horimiya is possibly the most well-directed opening of Winter 2021. CloverWorks is quickly becoming one of my favourite studios. The camera work in this anime has been pleasant. Especially the moments of vulnerabilities, I was wondering how will they handle that, but it was handled amazingly. When the background goes white and vibrant watercolors shift their silhouettes, you know that they’ve given extra care to the more dramatic scenes of Horimiya. Horimiya is a treat, beautifully animated by CloverWorks. The beautifully animated scenes, combined with the OSTs, especially during the dramatic scenes, the sound is yet another aspect Horimiya thrives at. Starting from the mesmerizing opening sequence, which perfectly fits Horimiya’s theme, to the unique ending sequence. One other thing that I must separately mention is the dialogue delivery. This is one of the most important factors to me when I watch an anime. The dialogue delivery feels WAY TOO genuine. The casts are so talented because it is music to my ears. There is no girl who talks in a high pitched voice which is borderline annoying, even Remi talks in a normal way, I expected her to sound annoying. Dialogue delivery is definitely one of the thing I expect the anime to do well, since it doesn’t exist in manga. And Horimiya absolutely nailed it, starting from the conversations to how they were executed, all of it. In summary, Horimiya is a satisfying adaption. Many people will find plenty of reasons to hate it, since even I admit that this isn't a perfect anime or something. For example, people might not like Hori's masochistic side or how he often hits Miyamura. Honestly, it doesn't matter to me. I am well aware of the fact that Hori is a bit violent in nature, but it is explained why, and it's not like she's the Tsundere from Zero no Tsukaima (An actual bitch), she admits her mistakes and admits how she knows she was wrong but she blames it on Miyamura anyways, she can't help it. Miyamura chose to accept that side of her, so who am I to judge what's good for him? Besides, S&M is getting more popular day by day among people, I'm here to watch anime, not to kinkshame anime characters. After waiting for so long, I am nothing but happy to receive such a quality adaption. This definitely lives up to the manga. The manga ended weeks ago, and I was looking forward to the anime every week. This Winter season has been a pleasant ride, with a mix of almost everything, Horimiya takes the spot of the best rom-com. It adapts the starting few chapters, which is the glorious chapters of Horimiya, even in the manga, so naturally I enjoyed it to the fullest. This is as best as it gets, so if you didn’t like this, don’t go into another season or into the manga. As for me, Horimiya is all I could ask from an adaption. Through ups and downs, the anime has proven itself with the stellar direction, well written and likeable characters, and an acceptable story. It definitely became one of my all time favourites. Since I have no Horimiya chapters to look forward to every month now, I’m gladly waiting for a second season :)
Atlos
04/03/2021, 10:08 AM
(TLDR at the bottom, thanks for reading.) Kareshi Kanojo no Jijou (often referred to as kare kano) is a 1998 rom-com anime from Gainax and J.C staff, it ran for 26 episodes but fell into production hell after episode 18 due to director Hideaki Anno leaving the production. On an unrelated note horimiya is an adaptation of a manga which in turn is an adaptation of a webcomic. Have you ever watched a romance anime, maybe you have watched more than 1 romance anime? In that case, you have seen horimiya. It is the culmination of every other romance anime that has come before it and becauseof this is completely creatively bankrupt. Even some of the less common trope horimiya uses don't affect the story in any meaningful way. It's great that Hori and Miyamura get together early but this doesn't make the anime any better, it's not really a surprise either because the title just gives it away, because after they get together the anime just becomes a slice of life and focuses on other characters. Do you remember earlier that I said that this anime is based on webcomic? It was not a normal webcomic, it was a 4-koma manga, meaning that the show doesn't aim to tell a story but to be an entertaining slice of life rom-com manga. But the manga adaptation tries to be a normal romance series while still being faithful to the webcomic, the anime tries to be both of these. It doesn't tell a long cohesive story because it wants to be a slice of life but it isn't an entertaining slice of life rom-com because it wants to long cohesive romance anime, it tries to have the best of both worlds but in the end get neither. For the visual the show is pretty standard because it is a romance anime there isn't much animation but the characters designs all look aesthetically pleasing. Although in some episodes the camera refuses to stay still, often slowly moving across the screen while characters are just talking, I appreciate that it is trying to make the anime more visually interesting but it just takes you out of the experience. I honestly have no clue what to say about the ost because I'm struggling to even remember if it exists (outside of 1 or 2 scenes) but aside from that the anime sounds fine. I'd be lying if I said horimiya wasn't at least some what enjoyable, what it has is fine and why my score is a 5 and not a 1. TLDR: Horimiya is just like every other romance anime that you have seen but changed in the most meaningless ways.
IrrelevantGuy
04/03/2021, 09:48 AM
Romcom is a tricky genre. It's hard to tell exactly what you are getting just by looking at the synopsis. Most of the times, you get your generic romcom with intolerable characters, and at other times, you find something like Horimiya. For quite a long time, Horimiya has been a pretty massive name in the manga community, but it wasn't until recently that it started garnering attention from the anime viewers. Despite what some people may believe, the 2021 adaptation of Horimiya isn't actually its first anime adaptation. Before this, an OVA based on the much less popular web comic was released 8 years ago, whichdidn't gain much attention. But after a new anime adaptation based on the more popular manga began airing, it pretty much immediately received widespread popularity among anime fans. Since then, Horimiya has also become somewhat of a divisive series—with people falling in love with the anime and others finding it very mediocre. As for me, I'm kinda in the first group. Now, before I talk about why I like Horimiya, it's necessary to point out the show's most notable flaw: the premise. Kyouko Hori is a smart and beautiful girl who is loved by all her friends. On the other hand, Izumi Miyamura is a rather gloomy guy who always stays isolated from others. When these two meet each other by chance, they discover each other's secrets or, as they call it, "hidden selves". Hori and Miyamura decide to hide each and grow closer as they interact. What are these secrets, exactly? Miyamura's secret actually needs to be kept a secret—dude's got piercings and stuff, you know? But Hori's secret is.... She is a normal girl who loves to do housework and takes care of her little brother. Yeah, I don't know what about it is unusual either. The premise here is an obvious gimmick, and it solely exists to get things rolling. It's not necessarily a bad thing in of itself, but Horimiya makes this painfully obvious. After the first few episodes, the premise is pretty much entirely forgotten. Aside from initiating Hori and Miyamura's relationship, it doesn purpose and doesn't affect the story in any way. As pointless (and stupid) as the premise is, though, Horimiya itself isn't actually a bad show. The narrative of Horimiya is mostly character-driven, so it mainly depends on its characters to move the story forward. This causes some obvious downsides, perhaps the notable one being how mundane the show can become at times. But fortunately, there is a cast of lively characters that compensate for the lacklustre story. The content is pretty light-hearted in nature, and while there's a fair amount of drama from time to time (which honestly need some work), the anime mostly maintains a wholesome and "feel-good" atmosphere that works very well for it. It should be obvious by reading the title (Horimiya = Kyouko "Hori" & Izumi "Miya"mura), but the main focus of Horimiya are the two titular characters: Hori and Miyamura. Hori and Miyamura initially started out as close friends, and they became lovers after they confirmed their feelings for each other. However, unlike many other romcoms, the series doesn't take an unnecessarily long time to bring them together, which gives it more than enough time to effectively delve into their romantic relationship and strengthen their bond through simple yet entertaining interactions. Hori and Miyamura's romantic relationship starts off as slightly toxic with Hori being overly possessive of Miyamura, but it becomes much, much less prevalent in the later episodes. Both Hori and Miyamura have genuine feelings for each other, and they reflect that through their heartfelt conversations. Their interactions are mostly bubbly and light-hearted, being proof their healthy relationship. They do engage in sexual intercourse in one episode, but it's only implied rather than being explicitly shown. Hori's first impressions may not be very promising. She is seemingly a typical tsundere character who is good at everything she does, but she soon develops into a more complex character. Like any normal girl, Hori has her own insecurities (her so called secret isn't one of them), and through Miyamura, she can expose her insecurities and be nonchalant about them. Miyamura is a very significant part of Hori's life and vice-versa; both of them complement to each other just by being themselves. Miyamura is almost the polar opposite of Hori. He doesn't stand out much (or stands out in a negative regard), he is pretty much always gloomy, and he barely has any "real" friends. He always stays isolated from others, trying to avert any sort of attention towards him. However, Hori's arrival in his life has changed him in more ways than one. Because of her, Miyamura has finally started to make friends and open up to them, and he is very, very grateful to her for that. His gloominess isn't all there is to him, though. He is genuinely a nice and funny guy who you would love to be friends with. (By the way, I really like his "gangsta" or "yakuza" type of attitude.) While strong in romance and comedy, Horimiya falls short in the more serious side of things. As I said earlier, there is a fair amount of dramatic content in the series, and more often than not, it comes out a bit sappy (to me, at least). For instance, Miyamura's past is one of the most prominent themes of Horimiya. Every now and then, flashbacks of his past school life are shown where we see him all dispirited, but any proper reason for him to behave like that is never given. We know Miyamura used to be a hella depressed kid, but we don't know why and how he became so depressed, which makes it difficult to find him relatable. However, Miyamura does confront his past later on in the anime, and how he comes to terms with it is wholesome and encouraging, and presented greatly. Horimiya's supporting cast is pretty memorable, predominantly consisting of Hori and Miyamura's friends, most of whom are quite likeable. From time to time, however, the focus of the story changes to the side characters from the main duo, from which a couple of issues stem. The shift of the focus mostly works well, but sometimes, they are rather abrupt and completely take the spotlight from Hori and Miyamura, especially apparent in the last half. At times, the dramatic content concentrating on the side characters can be very redundant. Like, what was the point of the love triangle between Yuki, Tooru and Sakura? Not much. Horimiya also has a tendency to suddenly introduce new characters (Sawada and Motoko for example) and focus on them right away, which does it more harm than good. The animation of Horimiya is fairly good. It isn't particularly breathtaking or the like, but it's more than satisfactory for the most part. The backgrounds are fine, but the artstyle and character designs are certainly noteworthy; they are simple but the clever use of vivid and flashy colors makes them stand out a lot (especially the hair colors). Though, the anime likes to use certain effects while showing specific character reactions (like overly saturated and shady backgrounds), which is aesthetically cool and all, but I couldn't find much meaning behind them. They came off as kinda tacky to me. In terms of soundtrack, Horimiya does a quite satisfactory job. While nothing too remarkable, the music overall complements to the experience of the show. The opening theme "Iro Kousui" is one of the catchiest songs of the season, paired with a gloomy sequence focusing on Miyamura. In the last half, the sequence changes a bit after Miyamura and Hori get together, highlighting the happy moments of his new life. On the other hand, the ending theme "Yakusoku" is fairly inferior to the opening song, but it is paired with rather unique and creative visuals. The voice acting is very good as well. Horimiya doesn't really bring anything new to the table per se, but it's good at what it does to say the least. Even with its flaws, it's mostly a humorous and heartwarming romcom that manages to be better than most of its peers. While I can't really recommend the show to everyone due to its rather mundane nature, romcom fans like me are likely to find something special in it and appreciate it for what it is. After all, a genuinely good romcom is hard to find these days.
slavemaster_1991
04/03/2021, 09:42 AM
Finally the hypetrain arrived to the final destination and I can write this: I don't get this anime. First of all I will say, I am a manga reader and I had a huge problem with the source material. And like in the source material, I just can't understand what this anime wants to be. First of all, it wants to be a slice of life AND a romcom. And here we get a problem of different pacings for those two things. For romcom you need progression, for slice you need a lot of fillers. So imagine my surprise when anime decided to speed throughcontent, cutting both slice of life interactions AND chopping the development of our main couple. Let me point out, that there was a big problem in manga in terms of pacing: first it ran through main couple, finished the main plot and went after the secondary cast. The problem here is obvious - there is zero progression after one point, all the secondary roots feel like they were made only for a cashgrab and the relationships feel very artificial. I expected that anime will take the source up to this "day X" and have secondary cast plots placed in OVA or S2. Instead they copied the exact problem that original had, but amplified by cut content, so the relationships between every couple seems even more artificial and dishonest. So while I could enjoy this title up to EP7, after that it had 6 more episodes of basically wasted time and opportunity. Even if those 6 episodes were spread midseason and EP7 was placed the last one - the whole pacing problem would be much less obvious due to extended time for relationships to develop. There is also some kind of tone shift from comedy in manga to more serious stuff in anime so some kink jokes feel horribly weird if not straight up disturbing. And the fact that Hori just bends Miamura over as she pleases does not really help in showing a "healthy relationship". To be honest, there is really not much left to talk about. Anime looks fine, some colourful panels were odd but whatever, sound was fine, the story (apart from horrible pacing) was as generic as one could get. If you are into basic generic romcoms - take a look at it, if you want something that is actually good - don't waste your time.
KANLen09
04/03/2021, 09:00 AM
"You are worth more than you know, capable of more than you think, and loved more than you can imagine." Undoubtedly the rom-com of the season, Horimiya has the potential to be great in every aspect of the genre, but the elephant in the room is obviously CloverWorks and the production team behind this show: the classic case of quantity over quality. I'd like to think that we're playing a baseball match with CloverWorks for Winter 2021: Strike 1 for the horrible adaptation of The Promised Neverland (Season 2), Strike 2 for the abominable business practices of hampering Wonder Egg Priority's Behind-the-Scenes tragedy of director ShinWakabayashi and his production team, and finally Strike 3 for what is a total-misfire repeat of Strike 1 of going for a loose and inconsistent adaptation of the original source material (since it's basically marketing for the already completed manga). And you're out! "You say "There's more to this than meets the eye" when you think a situation is not as simple as it seems to be." The main star of the show is the central couple: Hori Kyouko and Izumi Miyamura, two very distinct people, and so different-yet-alike each other. The former is a perfect social butterfly but the truth that she’s a brash homebody; the latter hiding a gentle heart, along with piercings and tattoos while under a gloomy façade. Both have things that don't want people to know that are best kept in secret, and a chance meeting proves to break the mirrors of their perceptions and in the perchance, solidify their relationship altogether within that short span of time. As time grows, both Hori and Miyamura learn of each other's quirks and what makes them tick that helps make their relationship grow stronger by the day. Kinda cute in spots, and to the people whom are having a relationship with their significant other will definitely feel those puppy-love moments that are relatable...well, except for some cringe S&M moments (unless the girls are like bad-ass Hori that secretly adores boys like bad-ass Miyamura, and vice versa) and the eccentric familial conditions. "If I look at the one thorn that is in my side of all my life, it is my weight. I fret about it, I'm anxious about it, being an actor on TV - it drives me insane. It just seems to be something that plays a central part in waking up in the morning and thinking: "How am I with myself today?" - Deborah Mailman You would think that for such a self-titled show that all you're gonna see is how these two central characters would blossom, right? But instead of the rose that we got with Hori and Miyamura's relationship, there are more thorns on the stem of the side characters, as significant or insignificant as they may be (that's to your POV that I won't judge). By themselves, the side characters can be taken as a side story altogether, but since they're connected to the main bubbly girl, I'd guess that this works primarily to advance their circumstances, rather than being tied onto the main couple, and for a rom-com that deems to be a romantic "drama" altogether, I'm not sure if mixing in too much of slice-of-life moments is a good choice. Pretty much like Tomozaki-kun, the best way to infer is through the clique method: - Toru Ishikawa, Yuki Yoshikawa, Akane Yanagi and Hori herself.Toru being avid about his prospects of getting together with Hori only diminishes when he sees that the central couple are getting closer, quicker than it looks on the outside. Instead, he tries his best to steer clear of that direction, leading him to Yuki...but not quite the "closeness" as of yet. It's with the fickle-minded Yanagi that consciously brings Toru and Yuki close together, despite both playing the friendship treatment of going so far as to notice the affinities they have for each other. A potential couple, but played off as one of friend-zoning. - Kakeru Sengoku, Remi Ayasaki and Sakura Kono (with a wild Toru on the side): the Student Council trio. For the most part, both Sengoku and Remi has had quite the relationship with each other: a weak but capable guy and a bubbly, playful girl whose differences match one another, and they're as close to being realistic and vulnerable towards each other in their moments of time alone. Sakura is quite the character that most people will feel quite frustrated about, but for those who've gone though the love ennui moments of noticing your crush from afar, you'll definitely find yourself in Sakura's shoes. She's an introvert through and through, but someone who's an extrovert when trying to reciprocate between the give-and-take of feelings, as such when she develops a crush on Toru, only to find that his kindness is returned, but not in the way she expected it to be. And it hurts real bad. - Miyamura, Koichi Shindo and Makio Tanihara (with a wild Hori on the side): the middle-school "Happy Three Friends" of a convoluted past. The reason why Miyamura is surfaced as a lonesome otaku geek at the beginning is because of Tanihara and his clique of friends who used to bully Miyamura for his ostracized looks, to the breaking point where what Miyamura once confided in was taken away from him, leading to the gloomy aspect. It's only through Shindo that Tanihara would come to start accepting Miyamura for who he is, with the heart talks between both cementing the reconciliation years later. Other than that, Shindo is the casual butt of a joker, and with Hori adding into the equation only makes the S&M aesthetic look more prominent. - The others who have significantly less screentime: Shu Iura is the objectively loud airhead of a character whom is exactly like Shindo, Honoka Sawada whom is seen as the detractor of the Horimiya relationship, and the Hori family of a beautiful, yet somehow kinda "broken" family (in particular to Best Dad Kyosuke). Ideally I would want to paint this picture as someone whom has been in a relationship, but for the general audience, whether you're in one or not, Horimiya is as bare-bones as it can be, trading the romance aspect for its comedy of the Pareto Principle: 80% comedic slice-of-life, 20% romance. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.” – Robert Fulghum I find it quite the fascination of not just the OST that Horimiya has, but more of less its visuals and the intended picture of how people are supposed to perceive both the small and big moments, and this is something that I have to give the animators credit for. Starting off with the OP, it's interesting that there's 2 variations of Miyamura's theme: the 1st half where Miyamura is just like his old self, from reaching for the cube alone to most characters feeling dejected and frustrated, to the 2nd half where Hori's hand reached out for Miyamura with the cube, to the director's credit roll of him slicing the monochrome feel to showcase the colours of life with happiness overflowing. Capping off with the ED, it's using the twixt of a mix of animation in a dress-up model style between the central couple. Even with scenes that are depicted in the style of the OP of the potential couple-like feels, it's these Easter Eggs that not everyone will notice, but I thought it's worth mentioning. As for both OP and ED, it sounds great, no faults there. If I can sum Horimiya up in a quote, it'd be this one by the famous Jamaican singer-songwriter Bob Marley: “You open your heart knowing that there’s a chance it may be broken one day and in opening your heart, you experience a love and joy that you never dreamed possible. You find that being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure that’s so real it scares you. You find strength in knowing you have a true friend and possibly a soul mate who will remain loyal to the end. Life seems completely different, exciting and worthwhile. Your only hope and security is in knowing that they are a part of your life.” As mentioned in the beginning, it's a loose adaptation of HERO and Hagiwara Daisuke's manga of the same name, but if I'd reckon something that the anime lacked over the manga, it's good progression. The anime felt mostly like the typical slice-of-life situations of characters gone awry, and though the allegory of what got lost as the series progressed, so to did the anime that had to relinquish some good character development moments for simpler ones, and that to me, is a shame of how much Horimiya could've been on par with the manga, but it wasn't meant to be... ...or so could be best said: "The source material is so much better."
LilBoOfficial
04/03/2021, 08:43 AM
I have mixed feelings toward Horimiya, mainly due to its inconsistency. One day the comedies fine, the characters are likeable, and the extremely generic story doesn’t feel problematic; while the next day the comedies gone stale, the characters feel as basic as the storyline, and I’m dying at the contrived drama. Majority of the time, it’s the latter. It feels like they blatantly don’t know what they’re doing. But there’s still something in Horimiya that managed to keep me invested, despite the aforementioned complaints. I’ll try to break down both sides of the spectrum throughout this review, since I’m split down the middle. Horimiya started offsuper strong. At first glance, I was intrigued by the characters. The whole concept of “not judging people off their appearances” was interesting, and I wanted to see where they went with it. When we first see Miyamura, we’re made to see him as a gloomy shut-in without any social life. But it turns out he’s the complete opposite. I really liked this idea, because I think this is an important moral that can be used in the real world. But as each episode progressed, this unique concept turned bland and generic, to the point where it was hardly bearable. It’s an emulation of every rom-com in existence, and it fails to add anything distinctive to separate it from the countless contemporaries in its genre. A tsundere main heroine and a slightly dense MC fall in love. Sounds like most of the other rom-com anime I’ve seen. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it failed to engage me any further, and it had nothing memorable about it. The pacing was extremely irregular, adapting 15 volumes in 13 episodes. Along with that, rather than feeling intense or emotional, most of the drama added in felt forced and cringey. I feel like the story completely fell flat, and that’s where Horimiya gets the most criticism. On the plus side, there were infrequent times where I did enjoy the characters, regardless of how basic they are. I always love watching relationships blossom, whether it be romantically or not. In Horimiya, we see Miyamura build tons of relationships. Not only with Hori, but he builds friendships with people he never expected he would have. He fights back the previous hardships he had with his social life, and learns to overcome it. It’s hard to not like Miyamura, and I feel like Horimiya did a great job in making us feel connected to him. His interactions with others are fun, and sometimes super wholesome. We also get to witness things through some supporting characters’ point of view. Though I felt that the supporting characters were forgettable and uninteresting (besides Tooru and Yuki, I love them!), it was still great to see them develop. With better pacing, the character department could have improved to greater heights. One thing that I have no complaints about is the art. The art felt crisp, and it looked gorgeous. The character designs aren’t anything outstanding, but they’re still appealing in their own way. Each character stands out with their own, unique hair color/style. One of the reasons I felt any enjoyment to this show was due to the artsyle. As for the sound, I also have no complaints. Nothing in that department stood out, but it was passable enough to avoid any issues. Horimiya isn’t anything special, but sometimes a basic story isn’t a fault. But there were definitely times where the comedy ran dry and some arbitrary drama forced its way into the story. The pacing was also extremely bad, but compared to the massacre which was TPN S2 (which also aired during this winter season, also made by CloverWorks), this was a little less bad. But all that aside, by no means do I think Horimiya was terrible, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy some episodes. That’s where this inconsistency factor takes play. In short, if you’re planning to watch Horimiya, don’t expect anything too special.

Horimiya ホリミヤ

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Winter 2021 Simulcast List [Update 2/25]

PV Collection for Dec 21 - 27

Winter 2021 Preview

'Horimiya' Announces Supporting Cast and Staff Members

'Horimiya' Reveals Additional Cast, Third Promo

'Horimiya' TV Anime Reveals Additional Cast, Second Promo

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Horimiya ホリミヤ

'Horimiya' Anime Series Gets Side Story in Summer 2023

North American Anime & Manga Releases for February

Winter 2021 Simulcast List [Update 2/25]

PV Collection for Dec 21 - 27

Winter 2021 Preview

'Horimiya' Announces Supporting Cast and Staff Members

'Horimiya' Reveals Additional Cast, Third Promo

'Horimiya' TV Anime Reveals Additional Cast, Second Promo

TV Anime Adaptation of 'Horimiya' Manga Announced for Winter 2021