This is a (wonderful) story about young adolescents, living a picture-perfect mundane school life. I love it because I've never had that kind of a normal life and through this story I could somewhat experience it. There is a romantic element which I would say for more than not would be a dream come true. At the very least for me it would be. The two of the main characters' romantic development is the focal point of the story until about half way through. Then, after that aspect of the story.. Develops, they are in love and each page of the story feels like another brick in the wall which is their love and appreciation for one another. I feel sorrow knowing that I've long since been past the point in my life where I could hope to meet someone with who what the two main characters have become to each other will develop.. They've found someone and created something fulfilling; They've become a precious person for someone who became their precious person. The story doesn't stop there. The story goes on and shows how they nurture that relationship and make it grow every day for the rest of their life that we know about.
This is a perfectly mundane story which I only can dream of being my life at this point.
Every single character is a loveable good person.
Now, the a bit longer version..
I've had this story in my mind as "one of the great stories I absolutely must go through" for a long time.
I first got to know of this story through Reddit, r/manga, before the anime was announced. People on there were displaying a lot of affection for it a lot and based on what I read, the expectation and hope that I'll love everything about the story grew in me. Then, after a long whe, I'd found the mental capacity to broach it and finally delve into it.
I expected this story to be something I'll love and that is what came to be.
There is one single thing I've mildly disliked in Horimiya. That is the fact that some characters seemed to be underappreciated by the other characters, most prominently Iura Shuu.. I dislike that, I dislike comic relief characters (there are no comic relief characters in Horimiya, it's just what came to mind as a comparison). But that wasn't my interpretation for too much, so it's not terrible.
Through Horimiya I lived through what I'd love for my life to actually be. I'm bad with people, am all alone, and all of that cliche stuff. When I get the opportunity to get closer to someone nowadays, I just don't feel like doing it, I become tired by just the thought because it always ends up worse than had it not happened at all. Through Horimiya I could enjoy the "life" of having friends and being alright in the society, without the fuck up which is me actually being a part of that equation. Every interaction in this story in between all characters is for me a reminder of how life can be beautiful, how my next life might be! I'm sure that there actually exist people who are, other than for their names, the same as the group of characters in this story together.
The characters aren't presented like a "major character", "more major character", "less important character", "unimportant character".. They're all just natural, the difference being only in the amount of spotlight they receive. The spotlight's shine doesn't shine less or more bright for any character than it does for any other character. It would be lovely to know more about all of the characters of this story. I feel like I could spend the rest of my days reading about them, reading this story. I was so.. Engaged with the story that I eventually started realizing "wow, you are just looking at a screen, a drawing.. They literally don't exist, this warmth is just a construct in your mind, not a real person.." and I would feel sad. It's nice when a story achieves this for me.
This manga is originating from a web comic by the story's author, HERO sensei. Here is a link to their site: http://dka-hero.me/top.html
Please realize that the manga Horimiya is (the first) 120 chapters of the web comic. Those 120 chapters convey the main story, which is mostly about Miyamura kun and Hori san. It is so very worth of a mention that actually there, CURRENTLY, 460 more chapters! They're an omake (bonus story), but it is 460 chapters! It's basically the same as the first 120 chapters, just with the focus being more on the other characters. Kyouko and Izumi are still present though! The thing to note is that none of those chapters have been translated from japanese right now.
Sidenote which I'm mentioning because of the expectation that for some, Iura's behaviour might be not perceivable as anything other than a quirky manga character trait; I am identical to Iura in regard to his differing personality based on who he is with, specifically, when I'm with my sisters(family) my behaviour is to a I would say great extent different than when I am with someone else.
I like Sawada Honoka a lot as a character. I will be intentionally very vague in the following about her. When she first appeared I was quite captivated by her and the expectation of there being more of her.. It's interesting how she became "just another" character as I realized that she indeed was, just another character. What I mean is that when she first appeared she captivated the majority of my emotional attention and that I even might've expected her to become a major focus point of the whole story.. But that's not what happened. There is something sorrowful about her, and there are many wonderful things about her. She is precious. The beautiful thing to me is that the authoress didn't make her revolve around these certain things which in most other stories would become at least somewhat of a defining characteristic of the character carrying them.
Life goes on and it is, to me at least, clear that in the "behind the scenes" (what the author didn't present to us in the manga) she does deal with what she has to deal with and that just because the authoress chose not make her character revolve around one specific thing doesn't mean that that thing is irrelevant, that those things are irrelevant. My interpretation is that it is a way to convey that people move on. People mustn't live in the past. Life goes on. One of the sad things about her is practically identical to what is sad about Miyamura in the earlier stages of the story, and Miyamura's past, before the story began. Trough that I assume that it is implied that Honoka will, just like Miyamura did, overcome it and soon enough have what to her personaly is a fulfilling life. I mean, it wasn't really merely implied, it was somewhat made apparent. 🙂
Things in this manga are reeeally slice-of-life, and primarily Izumi-Kyouko.
There are things I'm left wondering about and would've loved to see, but I guess that the reason why they were't drawn out (this being a manga, also in the literal sense) for me is because that would dilute the story, it wouldn't fit as neatly as the authoress would want it to fit with what she strived to achieve with this creations of her's. It's not necesssary for everything to be drawn out (litterally) for the reader of this story, in order for the reader to know that some things did/do happen.
For example, with Honoka, I briefly felt like she stopped existing in the story which was sad to me because I like that character a lot. Then, on one page, outside of a speech bubble I think even, there was a sentence which changed my view of the whole Horimiya manga; That sentence said that Miyamura was tired because he was playing games up until the early hours with Honoka.
Poof, at that moment I realized that the story is not faulty in the way of skipping some developments, or of being one-dimensional. Honoka wasn't present for some time in the story at that point, so when she was mentioned just like that, I relized that the story shows us certain things, but the characters have lives outside of what is literally shown to us through the story. Tooru and Yuki have their life while we witness Hori and Miyamura hanging out at the Horis place. Yuuna and Souta have a life while we're shown the main cast all hanging out in the council room. Yuriko and Kyousuke, Miyamura's mom, Motoko.. And Honoka. They all have a life behind the scenes. The story just doesn't focus on them, this isn't a story about them (remember, there are, currently, 460 more chapters of the web comic which ARE about the other characters). This is a story about Izumi Miyamura and Kyouko Hori. Even with them, there are things which are left to my imagination and I know have happened "behind the scenes"!
The relationship of Hori and Miyamura. The authoress portrayed for us in the story their emotional and for their relationship major developments. Things which signify how much they were bonding and growing their love for and trust in one another. Some mundane things about them aren't drawn out for us in this story though.
Skip until the next paragraph if you don't want to read a mild spolier. It's about something that there isn't in the manga, which then you'll know not to expect and hope for.
My first kiss is not something awfully worthy of a mention. Perhaps Hori and Miyamura's wasn't either? In any case, their first kiss isn't shown. Perhaps it was beautiful but nothing out-of-this world, and that is why the authoress chose not to (literally) draw it out for us, the reader, but to simply show us the story in which we will know that they did kiss prior? It could've been in the story as I doubt it would've been anything but beautiful, but it not being shown makes the story more mature to me and solidifies the "things happen behind the scenes" interpretation.
Now I'll mention something which I think is a bad topic in today's world, namely because of cancel culture, and because it will dirty up this review I guess... But I will mention it, I want to mention it!
I want to mention it because what increased how much this story shines for me is precisely how this story is not contaminated by that! What I have in mind is.. Well, I don't know what precisely to call it.
The characters in this story are normal human beings who make jokes that will evoke toxicity within a "woke" individual. I fully expect that there are plenty of people who literally took issue with this whole story because of how not-okay they are with some jokes and things that the characters of the story said. I've never minded this in a story before, probably hadn't even noticed it as something worthy of a mention in my own thoughts. But, because of the state that the world I am surrounded by is in today, becuase of how loud and overreaching these "woke" people are becoming, I have taken notice of it in this story and it is something I appreciate the story for further more. It makes me remember that the world is not crazy but that just some really loud and/or influental people are, and that they empower those who share their views while canceling those who don't.
There is some spite in the above because more than once have I been offended and hurt by people who had a toxic interpretation of what I said (just a single someone IRL, while on Reddit it's not just a single person usually) and decided on stickng with jt without being willing to heart out what it is that I'd actually meant. They allow themself to define my words, the meaning I had intended for them and the overal intention of my thoughts which gave birth to my words. This has been happening increasingly more often in the last few years. I am happy that Horimiya is clearly not a story created with the worry of not offending those people in mind. This is a really small aspect which I presume more people than not will not notice.
Alas..
My latest ponder, given birth to by this story somewhere around its 80th chapter, is that these works of fiction are here to captivate those like myself, who have practically given up on themself and thus experience "life", what they would love to have from it, through these works of fiction. I hope that as few people as possible need to read Horimiya in order to experience Horimiya!!
