Horimiya starts off very strong. It plays on the expectations of a typical romcom, exploring the awkwardness of second thoughts in relationships. The first five episodes are incredibly good at building a relationship between the two main protagonists and using an appropriate amount of melodrama to accent poignant moments, while remaining quiet when bridges in the relationship are reached. For example, once they decide to hook up, they no longer fret over the issue of "if" but merely "how far" they will go.

Unfortunately, once you get to episode six, the extraordinarily uninteresting and overdramatic portrayals in the sideplots take over.

Natural chemistry gets usurped by unremittent feelings and fake dating with characters that feel way more "anime" than something like Maid-sama (a show I enjoy, but whose tone is not suited to what was setup in the first five episodes of Horimiya). Many reviews by manga readers have said that these side stories were rushed (which prompted the side story show to be developed) but for me they dragged on interminably. The secondary couple had a lot of potential and I started out rooting for them, but hey overplay the "will they, won't they" plot - the avoidance of which made the primary couple so much more endearing.

Episodes 6-11 nearly made me drop the series all together. They were so hokey and detached from what I had signed up for.

Only in the last two episodes do things get back on track. You finally get a continuation of the developing, solidified romance of the main couple which advances their relationship without filler. Nothing in the intervening episodes felt like it mattered at all, so such a a degree that I would recommend only watching Episodes 1-5 and 12-13. There's so little in those other episodes worth experiencing. The quality of those episodes is so solid that I would go out of your way to watch it like that even if it will feel like less of a complete story.

Comparing this against Fruits Basket and Kaguya-Sama, Horimiya sits between them in terms of style, but way below in terms of overall quality. The aspects of realism are so extremely welcome and refreshing that it's worth watching even just the first five episodes to experience it. While there is some exceptional art and acting, it sits next to things that deeply annoy me (that's obviously not the case for everybody, given the show's rating). Had they nailed it all the way through, it could have been a solid 8. As is though, I'm basically rating on how much of the runtime was worth it. Horimiya is a positive experience if you are laden in the tropes of typical romance stories, but I strongly recommend my watch order to preserve the qualities it could have easily excelled with.