Horimiya to me is the perfect showcase of a generic romance. If you have a look on what's upcoming next season, you will see several gimmicky romance shows, Alya Sometimes Hider Her Feelings In Russian, Shikimori Is Not Just A Cutie, Rent A Girlfriend, and the list goes on. Horimiya doesn't need any gimmicks to keep you invested, it just has genuine people developing genuine feelings, and that's what makes it so special.
I used the word genuine a lot, but it is the most accurate way to describe it. It breaks many of the conventions of the anime romance formula in its first episode. After Hori and Miamura meet each others 'hidden selves' for the first time, Miamura tells Hori he is surprised that she is talking to him again after how awkward it was, Hori almost takes offence to the comment, saying 'You really thought I would react that way?' It's not played for comedy or overly mushy romance, but a genuine human reaction. It's a great way to introduce the message that you shouldn't assume the worst out of people or that they will disslike you, and being your true self is important. Soon after this, they are relatively open about their feelings, calmly saying to each other that they are glad that they are the only two people who have seen this side of them. Miura's statement is especially long, which is interrupted with a tsundere joke, but after that brief moment, Miura straight up calls her cute, which, again, is insanely rare in anime to happen so soon and not with either party freaking out afterwords.
The end of the episode is what really sold me on the series. After Tooru confesses to Hori and she returns home, she talks to Miura and instead of talking about the confession, she is more upset about Miura's comment that he doesn't think both of them would be a good romantic fit for each other. She ends up saying "All of this is just me being nice?! That's the kind of vibe you get?" It pulls you back to reality, thinking about how if someone was inviting you over every day and constantly talking to you, that would be a big indicator for someone liking you, which, for the final time, would not be recognised by the casts of other anime. Take another romance anime that I actually really like, Dangers In My Heart, where the protagonists spend each day talking to each other in the same room as well as hanging you after school, and none of that is ever mentioned by the other characters as being evidence of them liking each other. In the same conversation, Miamura rants about how he doesn't think he is good enough for her, being very insecure and worrying about how he will harm Hori's reputation, which makes her cry, ending with her saying "Don't assume stuff without even asking" reinforcing the message that you shouldn't assume the worst in people. Her crying at this insecurity and her being clearly hurt by this is, to be blunt, a message a lot of people who feel the way Miura does in this scene needs to hear, that it is often selfish to think this way, and harms not just you, but the people who care about you. A couple episodes later when Miura asks Tooru about how he feels about him, Tooru lightly insults him for asking this, again showing how these insecure behaviours can actually put people off, and you need to have faith that your friends care about you, reinforced by how Tooru admits he wonders how Miamura sees him with him being so nervous around them. After calling him weird and Miamura starts to apologise, Tooru says that it's not a bad thing, again, showing how you shouldn’t think the worst in people, and that it’s ok to be yourself. It's worth pointing out with the Hori example, that this is a borderline confession in the first episode of the series, Hori is again being upfront about her emotions.
What I’ve mentioned may seem like unique events, but there are many, many, many more examples of this breaking of the formula and showing genuine romance, but to avoid spoilers (and me writing a 15000-word essay) I will leave it here. It's just so genuine.
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#Themes
I went over a lot of this aspect in the narrative section, so I’ll keep this (for me) brief, the core themes of the show are that you shouldn't assume the worst out of people, you should be open about your feelings, and you should be yourself. All of those come together in the core idea of honesty. Almost every single scene is about honesty, someone either not being clear with what they mean, being too blunt or the many other ways it comes up. While that statement may seem that it’s shoving it in your face, most of these interactions don’t come away with an obvious message, you just notice that over time, people are more and more honest, character arcs get resolved when people are clear with each other, new ones emerge out of hiding the truth. Hori and Miamura fall in love with each other only after meeting who they both truly are. We see over the show that characters get more and more willing to be open with each other, and the lead, Miura gets the most out of this, seeing him transform from an insecure man who worries he is inconveniencing others, to seeing him embrace who he is and how his life has improved. It's hard to understate how effectively these themes are handled, with, like I said before, each episode reinforcing it, which is a lot more difficult than it seems. It's also a really important message that a lot of younger people in the cast's age group should listen too, but despite its importance and the prevalence of the theme, it never once felt preachy and weaved naturally into the show, reinforcing it without ever directly telling you.
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#Characters
All the central cast are all deeply thought out and are understandable, not just from a story perspective, but a human one as well. Instead of going through all of them, I'll talk about my favourite, which is Miura and how his mental health was approached. This part is a spoiler and will be marked as such.
This is a romcom, so the comedy is a big selling point for some, and unfortunately this is where the show falls flat. While there are some jokes that I like, there are a lot that were a lot more annoying than not. The small one beat jokes are mostly fine and sometimes quite charming, but a large portion of the bits that are solely comedy are genuinely annoying. This might be due to how many times I’ve seen the series and the jokes getting old, but I’ve rewatched Love Is War quite a few times and the jokes there have never got old for me. It might be different for other people, and comedy is subjective, so take that for what you will. I don’t think this is a dealbreaker as the show focuses a lot more on characterisation and a lot of the bits lead to those interesting moments, rather than playing for straight-up comedy, but it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t mention an aspect I find weak in a review.
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To get into the more technical aspects of the actual anime, I'd argue it's on the good side of mediocre. The animation is servable, the style is really nice, the soundtrack is actually realy really good (notable highlights being Route Sentimental, Alone in the Woods and Opened Door and Hottest 36.5 Degrees), and the direction is also pretty good at points, but none of these aspects (except the soundtrack) ever really blew me away. I particularly would like highlight certain shots being punctuated by beautiful moments where characters are on a cloudy white background with a coloured tint around them, which I believe really enhanced the scenes they were in.
The voice cast is good as well, both the sub, and the dub. Admittedly, I do cringe at a few moments of the dub, mainly at most characters who are not Miamura and Tooru, who I think absolutely killed their role. Hori’s actor is also good in the more serious scenes, but I honestly found her performance to be very lacklustre and kind of embarrassing when she is forced to raise her voice for a comedic scene. That being said though, it is beyond serviceable and is my preferred way to consume the story. I would definitely put it above the average shit anime dub. While I have my issues, I think they are effective in emphasising the characters feelings, and making those more intimate moments more impactful. I think that the production is perfectly good enough to translate the story, but I certainly wouldn't be complaining if these aspects were improved. A small more unimportant note is the opening, which I actually really like, there are two different versions, with the second one emphasising how Miura has grown, and even if you look in the first version, you can see a grown Miura hidden in it, hinting at his ability to turn into a more confident person. Again, not important and I wouldn’t care much if it wasn’t there, but as someone who really likes looking at and analysing anime openings, I think it’s a nice touch.
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#Cut Content
The big elephant in the room that people who have seen the anime are waiting for me to talk about is the amount of cut content in it. Around a half of the manga was left out and skipped over, and what was left was reordered quite a bit. While I can see why people were annoyed at that and I do agree to a point, I would argue that the show's pacing is drastically improved with a lot of the, for lack of a better word, filler, left out of it. I read the manga not too long after I first watched the series and really enjoyed it, however it definitely jumped out to me how different it felt at times, not necessarily worse, but different. I have flip-flopped on this position multiple times, but I will argue that I actually prefer how the anime structured itself over the manga. Now that’s not to say that I think all the cut content was justifiable, there are plenty of scenes that I wish were animated, but I think that the more dense nature allowed the show to be much more engaging and leave out a lot of the more uninteresting parts of the story e.g. the pool part, where aside from the bonding between Miura and Sengoku, nothing really happened. There aren’t any parts of the original anime that I think shouldn't have been adapted, which I think says a lot about the skill of the screenwriter in picking what was most important. I actually really like all the reordering. A lot of the manga has plot lines start, then leave to go do something, then come back to it, the anime just puts all the chapters involving certain characters together to make it a more naturally flowing story (e.g. Remi and Sengoku’s story), drastically improving the pacing, which often felt quite schizophrenic. All the man cast were developed to a satisfactory point, and frankly the rest of the scenes that aren't in the original series feel more like reaffirming those ideas more than developing new ones. One thing that I definitely think was hurt by the cut content is part of the ending, specifically
To briefly mention a broader belief I have, I don’t think an anime’s first priority is to be a copy of the manga. If I wanted to experience the manga, I would just read it. I think that an anime adaptation is a great way to look at the series and think of how to improve it. Bocchi The Rock is a great example of when a director looked at the manga and decided to add new moments to enhance it, Horimiya would be my example for how an anime can benefit from the removal of certain aspects. Anime and manga are different mediums and excel in different ways, and so I would prefer to see a show that was made with that in mind over a show that just wants to be the manga with voice acting. Though I can understand how people can disagree with me here.
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I have watched this show 10 times now, and I vowed to my friend that when I did, I would write a review on it. While I don't think the adaptation is perfect, It holds a special place in my heart for being the first romance anime that actually made me believe that the two main characters genuinely liked each other, and as a result, has become my ultimate comfort food anime. The story, while simple, reflects the mundanity of our lives, and channels that energy to make a romance story that felt more real to me than any other. The characters are all really likeable, and the maturity it handles its more intense ideas was insanely nice to see. After all I've done to praise this show, I want to make it clear that this is not a show with a hidden super complex plot or insane action or anything like that, it is still just a simple romance anime. But romance is as valid as a genre as any other, so just becasue it's not as flashy as Jujutsu Kaisen or Attack On Titan, it dosent mean there isn't something really special here. Again, Just be warned if you want to watch the show in order, you will probably not have a good time.
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