It’s hard to be a romcom in a post-Kaguya-sama world. Audiences have gone gaga for that series’ arc-based storytelling and high attention to detail, creating a narrow set of expectations for other works in the genre. A show like Horimiya, which opted for a snapshot style to depict its much larger cast, was bound to face criticism for that decision. Despite that looseness resulting in a handful of marginalized characters, however, the anime did right by its primary couple, and even managed a couple of good spotlight episodes for its secondary cast. Over the course of 13 episodes, Hori and Miyamura’s relationship evolved from a tentative experiment to a lifelong commitment, with moments of both empathy and sensuality along the way. No one else in their unwieldy friend group reached that level of exploration, but the series managed to find consistent voices for several of them (most notably Yuki, who had really come into her own by the end). I’ll admit that Horimiya batted well below a thousand, but it had more hits than misses, so I’m here to play defense for it – mostly, anyway.
