So, I just finished Horimiya today (at the time of writing that was 30th of November). And in an attempt to actually get more than one blog post done per month, I decided I’d write about it right away. Well that didn’t quite work out.

Horimiya finished airing in April 2021, and as I’m typing this very sentence, I’m realizing that this is probably the first time I’ve watched an anime this shortly after its release - if we ignore movies and perhaps sequels at least.
In any case though, for those of you who are, like me, living under a rock for most of the year when it comes to being up-to-date with the newest anime: Horimiya is probably the most anticipated romcom of this year, being the adaption of the rather popular manga of the same title. It tells the story of the eponymous Hori and Miyamura and their relationship. They are introduced to us as two different-yet-similar characters, both hiding a part of themselves, but opening up to and accepting each other. Miyamura is the gloomy-looking guy, always wearing long-sleeved shirts and long hair to hide his piercings and tattoos. Hori is the outgoing popular girl who’s hiding from everyone in her class the fact that she… uh… does a lot of housework and cares for her little brother a lot?

Disclaimer: I doubt there’s much I can say about the show here without going into at least shallow spoiler territory. I won’t mark spoilers, so proceed at your own discretion.
Please also note that I watched the entire anime in Japanese without subtitles. While I’m confident I got at least the gist of everything that happened, I tried to follow the flow and not pause to look up words or rewind every single time I did not understand something. As such, there is a pretty good chance I missed a few small and maybe not so small details along the way.

The idea itself sounds nice: two people from “different worlds” find some common ground through which they open up to each other, learn to accept that part of themselves, and eventually even fall in love with each other.
Well, as you might have gathered already, this isn’t quite what’s happening. Miyamura on the one hand could be said to be a rather “serious case”. He’s been bullied in middle-school, and while that stopped since he started high school, he still has no friends whatsoever. He’s a lonely social outsider and spends his days in gloom. People at school avoid him because they are almost scared of him, due to his looks and because he almost never speaks. Add to that the fact that he has several piercings and tattoos, but no one at school knows about them. He’s hiding them completely, wearing long-sleeved shirts even during sports class in peak summer.
Compare that to Hori’s situation and the premise just seems off. While I always find it a bit difficult to talk about the troubles of the “popular kids”, and it is also just unrelatable for me, it’s not like you couldn’t make a sensible story out of that. If, say, Hori’s friends were all the generic party-girl type, who would be disappointed whenever she doesn’t have time to hang out, or who’d find it uncool or something if they knew she was doing household chores all day while taking care of her little brother, then that might make for a proper comparison.

But this is not the case. Hori has two close friends, Yuki (blond girl in the cover art) and Tooru (purple-haired guy in the cover art), who could be said to be the main side characters of the show. They both seem to be genuinely nice people and great friends, and I see absolutely no reason why Hori would need to hide anything at all. In fact, it doesn’t seem much like she’s trying to do that, to the point where I would barely see the premise in the show if the synopsis didn’t introduce it like that.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t exactly a negative point. The premise isn’t so fresh and innovative that I’m seriously disappointed to not see that executed and the show doesn’t take it seriously anyway as I said. If I didn’t read the synopsis I doubt I’d be missing it at all, so I guess the synopsis is just inaccurate and that’s it. Moving on.

So what is Horimiya actually about? While the premise of these two different-yet-similar people finding each other isn’t quite there as I said, the romance still is. Miyamura, while out and about in his casual clothes, tattoos and piercings visible, hair styled up, comes across a little boy called Souta who hurt himself playing in the park. Being the niceguy that he is, Miyamura escorts the boy home, where it turns out he’s Hori’s little brother. Seeing Miyamura, Hori goes full what the actual f*ck?   before treating him to tea as thanks and having a nice chat with him.

Miyamura ends up coming over almost every day after that, probably not in small part thanks to Souta who wants to play with the “cool Onii-chan”. Their relationship progresses quickly from there on out, and before the anime’s halfway point they’re already a couple. That progression did not feel rushed, but rather natural for the most part. After reading way too many trashy romance mangas the past few months, Horimiya felt quite refreshing for several reasons. The first is that the two of them actually started as friends. It did not feel like romance at the start, they just talked, laughed and had a bit of fun together. The other, directly connected, reason I see is that the anime steered mostly clear of the cliché romance teases that I’m so tired of, from the previously mentioned trashy romance mangas. Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about: think of the main couple quarrelling or something, then one of them stumbles, they both fall and lie on the ground, on top of each other, lips centimeters from touching. Or they both drank from the same cup and at least one of them gets the big blushies at the tought of an “indirect kiss”. Those sorts of things.

That said, their relationship is also free of any drama, mostly free of “strong” moments, turning points etc. to the point that it feels a bit flat. Most of their time together in the first couple episodes consists more of lighthearted slice-of-life comedy. Even the eventual confession happened in perhaps the most nonchalant way I could imagine: Hori was down with a cold, like the scary, dangerous Japanese cold, and thus lying in bed all day long in a half-conscious state. Miyamura came by after school to check on her, and before leaving he said to her something among the lines of “I called your mom and told her you’re sick. Also, I’m in love with you Hori. There’s food and drinks in the fridge. Call me if you need anything. See ya!”. On the one hand, what an absolute Chad move. On the other hand, I think it illustrates what I described quite well.
To pick up on another point: it’s not just their relationship that is free of drama; it is the entire show. There is only very little drama and almost no conflict at all. Everything is just proceeding nice and smoothly. While I neither needed nor expected heavy drama here, a little bit of conflict is always a good driver for character development, or just to really emphasize who these characters really are and what they represent. The absence of this sometimes makes Horimiya feel a bit shallow. It is almost too good to be true you could say, although that doesn’t quite capture what I’m trying to say.

To continue with that, there are a few promising plot points, conflicts etc. throughout the series. Some of them are actually quite interesting, but for the most part they are just there and either not at all, or only insufficiently realized.
Miyamura himself is a great example of this. I’ve already described his situation at the start, but let me summarise again and add a bit of detail: Miyamura has a rather gloomy look and rarely talks. He doesn’t have any friends at school, and he used to be bullied in middle school. He’s hiding his tattoos and piercings.
Despite what people infer from his looks, he’s a soft-spoken, kind guy. But over the course of the anime he finds friends in Hori and her friends, as well as a few others, who accept him for who he is, don’t judge him for his looks, his piercings etc. and you feel genuinely happy for the (formerly) poor guy. But when he and Hori start going out, he cuts his hair for her and blends in with the more generic side characters in order to not put her in a bad light.

I do like the “cutting your hair to signify character development”-trope, but this just feels like it’s sending the wrong message. He finally found friends who accept him for who he is, who don’t mind his look. His style, in my opinion, was what made him both stand out on a character-design basis, and also characterized him really well. This restyling does sort of fit his development, but it conflicts with the message of self-acceptance that I felt like the anime was partly about. Perhaps a better way would have been to have him cut his hair, but also let him wear his piercings/show his tattoos freely, although I’m not sure if this is allowed at Japanese schools.
Besides, I’m just a fan of long hair, and although it doesn’t always fit, I think he (as you see in the thumbnail) looked pretty sick. Gotta admit I’m kinda mad at him for throwing that away.

But this isn’t the only example of interesting conflicts that weren’t properly realized. Look for example at Tooru and Yuki, who are Hori’s, and later also Miyamura’s, closest friends. At some point it turns out that Yuki is in love with Tooru, but too shy to act on it. When a guy called Yanagi (pink hair in the cover art) later confesses to her, she doesn’t know how to turn him down. She then asks Tooru if he’d pretend to be her boyfriend, meet with Yanagi and tell him sorry as she’s already in a relationship. He accepts and the plan works. But after that they keep pretending. Yanagi is in the same grade as them, and they’re afraid he’d be suspicious otherwise. So they just walk down the hallway holding hands, etc..
Tooru isn’t bothered at all by doing that for his good friend Yuki. Yuki on the other hand secretly enjoys these moments and wishes they could continue like this forever, or rather, that their relationship would just turn into a “real” one at some point. She is aware that this is nonsense, and also that it’s not okay to do this with Tooru. But at the same time she feels unable to both stop this pretending, or confess her feelings to him. This is even more nicely illustrated when Kouno (green-haired glasses girl from the cover art), strict and introverted student council vice-president, falls in love with Tooru. She tries her hardest to get out of her shell and talk to Tooru, even bakes him cookies sometimes, and eventually confesses to him, where he turned her down. Yuki watches all this from the sidelines and is relieved when Tooru rejected her. At the same time she hates herself for her cowardice and also thinks it’s unfair towards Kouno if she doesn’t seriously try to convey her feelings. At that point I was thinking: this is the good stuff! This is what I like to see!

Wanna know how this was resolved?

Basically, not at all. We eventually learn that Tooru has developed feelings for Yuki too and sees her as something more than just a friend, and that’s it. Three or so episodes later, the anime ends and no further development has happened here. As far as I can tell, they both never stopped their pretending, and at this point there’s no need as that’s what they both seem to want and enjoy. I mean, good for them, but why? Why did they just throw away this conflict that could have been the perfect buildup to a great character development moment for Yuki? I really don’t get it, the entire setup was already there after all. Even if you half-assed it, that could have been nicely resolved by just writing a scene where Yuki gathers her courage and finally confesses to him. I can only guess (hope) that the manga eventually builds on that in a better way, but in the anime that was disappointing to see.

As I said before, the show is otherwise rather devoid of drama. There’s been several situations where you could have expected something to happen. E.g. after Miyamura cut his hair, the girls in his class suddenly think he’s hot and start fawning over him, while Hori is just standing in the back, giving them the death glare. But in the end, situations like these only get played for comedy. Horimiya is more slice of life and comedy than romance and drama. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that though. Having the situation I just described erupt into some serious, jealousy-driven drama would have just annoyed me to be honest.
The comedy though is often on point. Horimiya rarely made me laugh out loud and it is certainly not Konosuba-funny, but it’s still rather amusing to watch. There’s a few at least somewhat questionable jokes mixed in there though. Any time Miyamura and Tooru seem a bit too close by Hori’s standards, she says it “creeps her out” or something among those lines. When I was looking for a comparison of the manga and anime, I came across a guy mentioning that the manga actually contains several jokes that could be interpreted as trans- or homophobic, and that the anime already cut out or defused many of them. On the other hand, we have a scene where all the guys are going full gay for the shy Yanagi, and it’s just funny and also sort of wholesome. Not sure what to make of this.

Since I mentioned Hori’s… questionable… tendencies already, let’s dive a bit deeper into that, because there’s more.
First of all is her violent nature. Hori is a bit of a tomboy and she tends to slap (some) people when she’s annoyed by them, mostly her father and Miyamura. While I’m somewhat used to seeing people get hit in anime, often for comedic reasons, and obviously taking no serious damage from that, it just feels a bit too frequent in the first half of the anime. It’s even worse when Hori is actually the one who’s wrong in that situation, and she just slaps Miyamura out of… embarassment I guess? Anyway, while I feel a bit nit-picky for bringing that up here, it just felt (very) lowkey abusive to me.
The next thing are Hori’s masochistic tendencies. At some point she asks Miyamura to insult her and even hit her, while out in public, and gets quite happy when he does so. Miyamura, being the niceguy that he is and wanting to make his girlfriend happy, plays along. That said, it is very obvious he feels uncomfortable with that. Moreover, as this is happening in public, other people happen to see him hitting or insulting Hori, and get the wrong idea. This again mostly seems to be played just for comedy as it never has any serious consequences. It also only happened somewhere in the middle parts of the anime and was nowhere to be seen for the last couple episodes. As such these scenes just felt unnecessary. They made me uncomfortable. While I don’t want to judge people for their fetishes, the way this was presented, being done in public and Miyamura feeling uncomfortable with it, just seemed like a serious problem to me that was completely ignored.
That said, I was otherwise quite happy with Hori’s character. To me, she strikes a good balance between a tomboy and a more classically “girlish” character, having elements of both but not really falling into a stereotype. Besides, I loved her voice acting. She’s voiced by Tomatsu Haruka (e.g. Asuna from SAO) and it fit perfectly. The voice acting and choice of VA felt very good and fitting overall. Usually I wouldn’t mention this, but Horimiya was perhaps the first time that I actively felt like this was quite positively sticking out.

What I also really liked was that, at least to me, the show never felt like it was very focussed on an either male or female demographic. It is certainly not a Shoujo, but it also doesn’t feel like a Shounen. It often switches between the points of view of both characters, letting us hear each of their thoughts. It treated both its characters with respect. The show is completely free of fan service.

As I mentioned earlier, there is little drama and the relationship of Hori and Miyamura proceeds at a good pace, with them becoming a couple before the anime’s halfway point. That might leave you wondering: what is happening over the rest of the show?
Well, it doesn’t have to end with them becoming a couple of course. If you ask me, a good starting point to recognize trashy romance manga and anime is to look at how much time they spend on… I’ll just call it the pre-relationship phase. Most of the trashy ones focus entirely, or at least for the most part, on this pre-relationship phase. The biggest offender are those where nothing really ever happens and the entire anime/manga is basically just one large ship tease. As even someone like me, who’s never been in a relationship before, can tell you, things aren’t just done because two people become a couple. That is only the first step.
Most good romance manga and anime (at least out of the ones I’ve consumed) are aware of that and spend the greater part of their time in that later phase, just like Horimiya does. That said, after our titular couple became… well, a couple, the show actually focusses much less on them, instead putting the side characters or the group as a whole into the spotlight. We’ll still see Hori and Miyamura a lot, but they only get some light romance and comedy moments without any noticeable further development.
This isn’t really a downside for me though. While I was initially expecting to see more of our main couple, and I am a bit disappointed that we didn’t get any further development here, Horimiya has a lot of interesting side characters that have the chance to tell their story in the second half. I think the ‘arc’ with Yuki and Tooru that I described above shows that well enough. But what that also illustrated, is that the show is just missing a bit of depth or the ability to follow through with the interesting ideas that are so obviously there. Some of the side characters also seem a bit gimmicky and like they’ve been inserted only for the comedy… if anything. Take for example Sawada, Miyamura’s and Hori’s kouhai. She appears in episode 5 or 6 after hearing of them becoming a couple, and is totally shocked because she’s 100% gay for Hori. This is used exclusively for comedy, with her and Miyamura sort of fighting over Hori, and only for that one episode too. After that we don’t see her again for several episodes, until she makes her second and last appearance shortly before the end. And it left me wondering: was that really all she was there for? And where was she all the time in-between? Did her undying love for Hori just take a break of a couple months in-universe time?
I’m not saying every side character must play an integral role in the story of course. But Sawada (and several other side characters) just made me honestly wonder why they were even there.

Now, before finishing this post, I’ll list a few more positives that didn’t really fit anywhere else: The soundtrack was good. The more somber tracks especially did a great job at setting the mood. This was often accompanied by this effect, where a colored outline of the character was floating away on a white background. Yea I know I’m doing a good job at describing it, so here’s a picture:

I want to close by saying, even though I’ve listed quite a few negatives here, I really enjoyed Horimiya. The show has a very solid core, although it’s missing a bit of depth in some departments. It always made for a rather relaxing watch, and was definitely a good way to end my evening for a couple weeks.