Hori, Miyamura and their friends may be in their final years of high school but don’t think that’s made them more mature. If anything, they’ve only become sillier with age! Miyamura and the boys have fun going out and eating parfaits, Hori and the girls gossip about whatever weird situation the boys have found themselves in this time and overall life continues pleasantly and as normal for everyone.
As I’ve been watching the currently airing anime adaption of Horimiya I’ve been reminiscing on how much things have changed in the series since the started: Hori and Miyamura have been openly dating for ages, Miyamura is no longer a loner at school as he is fully a part of Hori’s friend group (which itself has gotten much larger than it initially was), and Hori’s family seems to fully consider Miyamura to be their son-in-law at this point (with Hori’s dad casually calling up Miyamura to come over when it seems like something silly is about to go down). It’s still the same manga however and while the comedy has gotten somewhat sillier over time there’s still plenty of long-time manga fans to enjoy.
In fact the series seems to go back to it’s roots a little in volume 13 which focuses on another member of Horimiya’s friend circle, the genki/keet Iura who turns out to be quite taciturn at home and where, like Hori, he seems to share some of the parenting duties for raising his younger sister. And, continuing in a less-than-great trope that Horimiya just can’t seem to drop, there’s a little bit of a “gay panic” when Iura thinks that his sister’s male classmate is crushing on him romantically, though I will say it’s less “no homo, no homo!” than some of the previous iterations of this skit we’ve seen. It’s truly the one thing I wish the series would completely drop. Honestly given how silly the teens are usually it’s more surprising to me that they aren’t instead playing up the idea with “flirting” between same gender characters instead like my friends and I did at that age (of course, my friends and I all turned out to be queer so perhaps The Straights are just like this).
Funny enough Sawada, the younger classmate with a huge (lesbian) crush on Hori, gets a few chapters to herself in volume 14 and she feels like a much more fleshed out character now than her first appearances were, the creators at least seem invested in giving every side character a fair shake and their turn in the spotlight. With Iura’s focus in volume 13 I think everyone has spent some time in the spotlight now, now if only the creators would commit to making a few more of the potential couples hook-up!
Horimiya continues to be a fun, lightweight read that’s good for at least a few giggles whenever I pick it up. I’m glad that so many people are discovering the series now via the anime (even if I remain puzzled why it’s only being adapted now) and hopefully many of these new fans will continue with the manga once the show is over. My guess, and the guess of many other manga fans, is that the anime will wrap up around the end of the fifth volume (there’s a part which could work as a good, natural stopping point) so there’s still plenty more waiting once the anime ends!