This story had been recommended to me by a few people I hold very dear to my heart. Considering that the anime is only 12 episodes and the manga is 122 chapters, my stupid brain said "well, since the anime cuts that much, I'll go to the manga to read the full story".
My god what a stupid mistake I made. Not only this was a pain to sit through, it was probably one of the least enjoyable manga reading experiences I faced in all my weeb life.
However, I will say that it's not all crap and the story has a few redeeming qualities. I'll start with what most people agree on: The first 40 or so chapters are good and the foundations of Hori and Miyamura's relationship in that part are pretty nice to read. Not the most amazing romance I've found in fiction, but fairly interesting and good nonetheless. Even after the unnecesary stretch of the story, they still manage to have nice interactions from time to time. The side characters at this moment were also (for the most part) well handled. I liked the Sengoku and Remi chapters specially.
Also Miyamura himself is a pretty good character and I like the dilemmas he faces and the growth he achieves, I'll say the story of the shy and closed-off character getting friends has been done to death but also it's just a trope that works for me, so most of the time I'll take it. And I'll say his interactions with most male characters (Tooru, Sengoku and Shindou) are, most of the time, nice to read.
However, I guess this is were all my praise for this manga ends.
So well, I'll go to my three points here.
Plot/Narrative:
There isn't much and to be honest I wasn't expecting there to be much of it, but an endless cycle of characters bantering and saying dumb stuff didn't do it for me. Don't get me wrong, I knew I was sitting towards a slice of life with mindless comedy, but this was easily one of the most uninteresting reads I had reading something like that. Why? Because of a few things. Firstly, the humor. When it hits, its great, and when it doesn't hit, its painful and cringy. Unfortunately, the second situation happens more frequently. And I get that teenagers are cringy, I don't tend to mind that in fiction, but here some interactions feel so unrealistic and out of hand that were just downright idiotic.
Lots of things that happen here are absurd and, most of the time, meaningless to the story. Chapters such as the one that Miyamura and Sengoku clean the pool, or Hori suddenly not eating (and then not developing into that issue again aside to make jokes about girls not eating, pls tell japanese men to stop writing about that), or that pointless chapter in which this ex-classmate of Miyamura goes closer to the cake shop of Mura's family and then has the most devoid conversation I've ever read in a manga (to then never appear again). And those are the ones I remember because I'm pretty sure I already forgot half of this manga. These scenes don't do it for me, not only because some of them imply a character banter that isn't funny (eg: the chapter in which Miyamura can't say "atatakai"), they never really dive deep into something interesting for the characters or the story. And I like dumb, simple fun with no plot progression, it really does it for me in stories like Wotakoi or Gintama, but here not only there is too much of it that the story doesn't progress, it's just not fun to read.
Though as I said, I enjoyed Hori and Mura's plot in the beginning and some interactions the characters have are still nice at times so I'll give this manga that.
(5/10)
But I guess my biggest flaw here lies with the characters so here is where my rant will get more intense.
Oh my god, have I ever found a manga in which I thought that most of its characters were complete idiots? (maybe Komi-San, but that's not the topic here) Because this was the sensation that Horimiya left in me. And as I said above, this wouldn't have bothered me if they were funny or the story did something to hold them accountable on their faults. Because that's exactly what I would have liked to see with characters like Hori.
I don't downright hate Hori, but I think she is one of the worst romance female protagonists I've ever read. She is fine at the beginning of the story but she ends up being pretty intense (specially with how she treats Mura) and despite the story and the other characters acknowledging that she has some pretty bad personality traits, Hori never does enough introspection herself to question that. I get that the story tries to be simple, but if Miyamura did question himself, why didn't Hori ever did so? That would have been great to explore and would have left to better development for the two of them!! I also get that Miyamura likes her as she is, but realisticly speaking, your romantic partner can take so much of your shit until it blows up on them, and if you don't make the effort to change your bad relationship habits, most probably you'll end hurting that person very badly. And believe me, reading Hori behaving like this made me realize about my own bad relationship habits and how I had to acknowledge and question them in the past so my partner and I can be healthy towards one another when conflict arises. So really, considering this is a shonen, it would be a nice lesson to teach to pubert kids, but I guess it wasn't in the author to do so.
My point with Hori is: she does shitty stuff to the people around her and despite the characters by her side knowing she doesn't treat people right, she still gets a pass and it's super popular. And really, if you wanted her to be like that and to work as a character, a little bit of questioning and her being hold accountable would have been great. She is just too much and at times had me saying "this girl is an idiot", which I don't really tend to do with protagonists when reading fiction, even less with female characters.
Then there is the rest of the characters. I like some of them (Sengoku, Tooru, Remi, Sakura and Shindou) but the cast ends up being so fucking big that the story sidelines into the most unteresting plots or (almost non existant) character development.
If it's not this, its just a gimmicky character that's here to add mindless drama (the blonde boy with glasses and that girl who has a crush on hori, or the few teachers). To add up to the fact, the reactions some characters have to some situations (eg: this green haired guy who has some chapters dedicated to him cockblocking his sister's crush) are too intense and don't help me care for them or like them at all! Chill please!
But to sum up, I guess the amount of characters did end up stretching this story into meaningless arcs thar really don't add anything up or end up just feeling flat.
At least Hori's father has a nice relationship with Miyamura, though his dynamic with Hori ends up being a little bit too repetitive (and even problematic if you ask me). Mura's dynamic with the Hori family its quite nice too.
(3/10)
Art:
It's fine, it does what it has to do. The only issue I have is some male designs, when you have Sengoku, Yanagi and the green haired guy together, they have the same hairstyle so you can't really tell them apart. The monochrome could be better used also, it doesn't really help to recognize the huge amount of characters this has. (6/10)
Some other stuff:
-Who thought that Hori saying that she feels worse about Mura cheating on her with guys than with girls was a good idea? (or even thought it was funny?). Maybe this is my western brain speaking but that statement can be really easily interepreted as homophobic, and the manga should at least try to stop Hori on thinking like that, because it's also a toxic behaviour on her part.
-Yes Hero and Haigawara, we girls tall about our tits, it's just natural to talk about your body with your friends. BUT WE DON'T GO THERE TAKING OUR FRIENDS CLOTHES IN PUBLIC TO PROVE HOW BIG SOME OF OUR FRIEND'S BREASTS ARE. AND ALSO YOU DON'T GROPE YOUR FRIEND'S TITS OUT OF NOWHERE NOT EVEN IF IT IS YOUR BEST FRIEND IN THE WHOLE WORLD. This is not the only anime/manga in which this happens and I'm so tired of this scene happening because it's the most unrealistic shit I've ever read in my life. Specially considering the characters are Japanese, which tend to be very prudish people so this makes even less sense by their own standards!! (lots of scenes in this manga don't make sense at all considering their standards, to be honest, eg: miyamura being tatted af being 16 y/o). But well, guess it's just an excuse for underaged girls to undress? It's not like shonen editors ever see a problem in that, but still, this was completely unnecesary. And it isn't even funny for fuck's sake.
-On the same note, perverted teachers aren't funny, they're creepy af!! If you're going to have a character like that please make it be held accountable for their actions.
-Why did the story set us up with the fact that Hori's parents are never home to then have the father constantly acting like a parasite in the house? What a fast way to contradict your own statements.
-Yeah maybe this is just me but honestly If I'm going to read a slice-of-life set in a school I'm going to excpet realistic interactions and midly realistic people. This manga didn't give me this at all so I guess that's were most of my problems lie in here. No fucking brother cockblocks his younger sister like that, almost no father acts like Hori's father, no married couple with self-respect towards each other keeps sustaining a marriage in which they barely see each other. Editors, please, stop giving Shonen such passes, I'm begging you.
-Why didn't this close up the love triangle between Sakura Tooru and Yuki?? Why didn't Yuki and Tooru ever dated? I didn't really liked them together but the fact that this relationship has no closure is also pretty nonsensical.
Well, I guess this wasn't for me or I'm just getting old for this stuff. Don't waste your time reading this if you're looking for an interesting realistic story with nice progresion and good character development, there is almost none of it here. Some scenes may warm up your heart but at the end, you'll find out they're scarce and won't really fullfill what you're looking for.
The dream sequences with the cats were cute though.