Horimiya

Horimiya is a school romance with a very gentle heart. It comes from a manga drawn by Daisuke Hagiwara and written by an artist who goes by the name HERO. The manga grew out of HERO's own web comic, Hori-san to Miyamura-kun, and ran in Square Enix's Monthly GFantasy magazine from 2011 to 2021. The anime was made by the studio CloverWorks and directed by Masashi Ishihama. Its thirteen episodes aired in Japan from January 10 to April 4, 2021.

The two main characters are high school classmates who look like opposites. Kyouko Hori is one of the most popular girls in class. She has good grades, lots of friends, and always seems put together. Izumi Miyamura looks like the quiet boy nobody talks to. He wears glasses, has long messy hair, and keeps to himself. Most of their classmates think they know exactly who these two are.

But both of them live a second life away from school. At home, Hori is not fancy at all. Her parents work a lot, so she cooks, cleans, and takes care of her little brother, Souta. She wears old clothes and does not bother with makeup. Miyamura, on the other hand, has many ear piercings and tattoos that he hides under his school uniform. Outside of class he is relaxed, kind, and good with kids. One day, by chance, Miyamura ends up at Hori's door, and each of them sees the side of the other that no one at school knows.

From there the story follows how they become close, first as friends and then as more. The show does not drag out the romance with endless misunderstandings, which is common in this kind of story. Instead it moves forward and spends time on what it feels like to be close to someone. Miyamura has felt lonely for a long time, and the show is honest about that. Hori can be bossy and has a quick temper, and the show finds a lot of humor in it.

A wider group of friends fills out the story. Toru Ishikawa is a friendly, popular boy who also likes Hori. Yuki Yoshikawa is Hori's cheerful best friend. Remi Ayasaki is the class's sweet but loud girl, and Kakeru Sengoku is the serious student council president who is dating her. As the series goes on, each of these classmates gets their own small stories about love, jealousy, and growing up.

The mood is warm, funny, and a little sweet. Many episodes feel like short, separate stories about daily life, so it is easy to watch a few at a time. The manga sold well in Japan, and its volumes reached high places on the Oricon sales chart. In 2023 a follow-up series, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces, adapted chapters that the first season skipped. Horimiya is a good choice for anyone who likes calm, kind love stories about people learning that it is safe to show who they really are.