Horimiya

I struggled at first with how to rate this. The first half to two-thirds is one of my favorite mangas ever. I love Hori, I adore Miyamura, and watching them get to know each other was the most fun I've had with a manga in years. On another site, I tried to give the series an 11/10 for 'characters' but was met with an obnoxious error message:

But I, like many others, felt that the manga sort of ran out of steam towards the end. Around volume 10, the manga starts gradually focusing more and more on its cast of supporting characters at the expense of the central romance between Hori and Miya. This, I felt, was a major point against it. Where I disagree with some of the other reviewers is that I no longer feel this way: As I'll explain, I think that sort of gradually winding up the story was actually a good ending—certainly one that's faithful to the story the author is telling about Hori and Miyamura.

The fact that the manga gradually 'loses steam' towards the end is rooted in what I love about Horimiya: It gives me exactly what I want out of a romance. Horimiya stars two well-adjusted-ish people who realize they love each other before the final chapter, are very happy together, don't create stupid drama, and don't suffer some horrible tragedy. That is the sort of lovably unremarkable love story that Horimiya sets out to tell. And in consequence, it runs out of stuff to do with the titular couple by about volume 10–12.

At that point, we get several volumes that focus primarily on the cast of supporting characters, rather than on Hori and Miyamura. As I said, I originally felt that the story lost its way at this point, but on reflection I think it works; in other words, I think the final volumes of Horimiya are an important part of the story of the central romance even though they are not, for the most part, about that romance. That romance starts to fade into the background, but not because the protagonists lose interest in each other. Instead it becomes sort of a foundational part of the protagonists' lives rather than something that occupies every moment of their (and by extension, the reader's) conscious thought. The romance is no longer novel, but it's still very real and very important.

Ultimately, I think that's how it ought to be. One of the points that Horimiya seems to be making is that a love story like this doesn't have a climax; it simply continues. So although it is a bit disappointing to watch that love story take a back seat to other, less compelling story elements, I don't think it's a bad thing. One way of thinking about it is that some stories tell you the love interests lived happily ever after; Horimiya shows you the first bit of that. This is a bit simplistic, but I think it's at least mostly right.

That's not to say that I love everything about Horimiya. I still think that the final volumes are the weakest part of the series. But that is primarily because I think the supporting characters just aren't likeable enough to bear the new weight that's placed on them. Some of them are really great (I love Tooru and Yoshikawa), but others are merely good, and two of the supporting characters (Remi, who is a bit obnoxious, and Sawada, whom I genuinely cannot stand) were real duds. And there were a couple of points where I felt like I didn't fully understand Hori and Miya's relationship. For example,

But ultimately, those flaws don't detract much from my enjoyment of Horimiya, which is on the whole a really excellent story. Bottom line: I can't claim I loved absolutely everything about Horimiya, but I can tell you that I absolutely loved Horimiya.