Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be diving back into the delightful drama of Horimiya, where our leads just recently Did The Thing, and admitted they have feelings for each other. Heck, Hori even announced that Miyamura is her boyfriend! Admittedly, that announcement was mostly intended to make her embarrassing father shut up, but I’m still counting it as a confession. Either way, our leads are now in an actual relationship, putting Horimiya wildly ahead of the pack in terms of its dramatic momentum.

Anime romantic comedies/dramas rarely get to the point of portraying ongoing, active romances, both because the journey towards romance provides such a clear dramatic template, and also because such experiences are likely to be a bit less relatable to their teenage viewers. But in truth, the give and take of an active relationship provides a fascinating venue for drama, while also allowing for the steady dopamine hits of watching characters you love express their love for each other. Horimiya is now uniquely equipped for the dispensation of warm fuzzies, and I’m hoping it will take this opportunity to utterly melt our hearts. Let’s get to it!

Episode 6

We open with both Hori’s brother and mother coolly wondering how long her father will be sticking around. Given even Hori calls her father “Kyosuke,” there’s clearly not much familial closeness here – and yet also not any sense of bitterness or separation, either. The entire Hori family seems to take a pretty utilitarian view of family relations

The fact that we can’t see Kyosuke’s eyes amplifies the sense of emotional distance between him and the rest of the cast. It’s harder to read his emotions, so he scans as more of a mascot or something than a person

Kyosuke’s uselessness as a parent also further explains Hori’s mastery of the domestic arts. She’s basically had to be a parent since childhood for her own parents, meaning she’s both highly competent as a homemaker, and also bears no illusions about the sanctity and clear role divisions of a parent-child relationship

Though he’s clearly oblivious to it, it seems like Kyosuke’s blunt acceptance of Miyamura is nonetheless smoothing the process of the two of them getting used to being a public couple

Kyousuke and Miyamura get a chance to talk privately when he stays the night. “What do you like about my daughter?” “I like that she doesn’t judge people based on appearances”

Watching the OP again after all this time, I’m struck by the consistency of imagery. There’s a strong window motif present all through the song, and it’s echoed by the focus on a cube, which at times is presented as a window itself. The OP seems to represent the struggle all of Horimiya’s protagonists face, of moving beyond staring longingly through the classroom window, and actually engaging with the world beyond the screen

Also nice to be reacquainted with this show’s delicate, elegant linework, as Miyamura wakes the next morning

Hori stumbles into Miyamura’s room in her sleepwear. I mentioned at the top how being in an active relationship requires navigating new hurdles, but to be honest, Hori and Miyamura have already navigated a few of those hurdles, given they were kinda cohabitating before they were even dating. They learned how to live together before they even confessed their feelings, so there’s no charged adjustment period here

“When you leave in the morning, you should say ‘see you later.’” A cute gesture, as Hori’s mother subtly invites him to the family

Other students notice them leaving the same house, and thus rumors are quickly flying around the school

Of course, Miyamura’s already an outsider at school, meaning all this gossip naturally turns into a repeat referendum on how weird he is

Irrepressible Good Egg Toru is annoyed by all the gossip

Hori brushes off the comments, but Miyamura struggles with them. As we’ve already seen, in spite of his usual calm affectation, he’s got a fierce temper below the surface. He struggles to keep his anger in check

Miyamura fires back with a character development haircut, cutting his bangs short and revealing his face. It’s a haircut that seems to announce his declaration not to hide anymore. His haircut earns a terrific look of shock from Hori

Yeah, now the other students can see his ear piercings

Lots of dramatic filtering effects for both the buildup to this haircut and Hori’s reaction, as you’d expect from an Ishihama production. Ishihama loves using post-processing filters for dramatic effect; rather than attempting to create naturalistic compositions, he often prefers ornate and clearly obscured layouts, which frequently also embrace his love of collage

“What a changeup! Did you get dumped or something?” Thanks, Kyosuke

Our leads head over to Shindo’s place. Apparently, Shindo won an online contest and got Way Too Much Candy

Japan has cheese-flavored candy!? This changes everything

“Are these guys really friends?” Miyamura and Shindo do indeed possess an odd form of friendship, but it’s one that feels familiar to me. They’ve known each other so long that they can basically speak entirely in arcane references, “bullying” each other with their keen mutual knowledge of their personalities, and thus reaffirming their closeness

“This one’s clay-flavored.” Okay, now I know they’re fucking with me

And then Miyamura casually steals Hori’s candy with a kiss. Damn, Miyamura! Our boy’s got some moves

This does seem to be his default relationship-progressing play, though: make a bold move, and then immediately run away. It seems to be working out so far!

“The girls have stopped hanging around you.” “I guess the novelty wore off.” As usual, Horimiya possesses an unusually staggered sense of pacing, with no real sense of time’s progression and the characters’ emotions having any meaningful relationship. It’s an odd contrast from something like, say, Adachi and Shimamura, where the pacing of the school year often sets the stakes of its drama

A girl who looks a lot like a long-haired Miyamura is glaring at him

She confronts Hori about being Miyamura’s girlfriend, then flees

All this hubbub has me somewhat worried. I’m quite interested in seeing Miyamura and Hori navigate the natural, genuine hurdles of becoming comfortable with an active relationship, but “we’re gonna throw in a love rival” feels like a lazy way to avoid that drama, and it seems like that may be the direction we’re steering here

In general, “wuh-oh, who’s this fresh new antagonist!?” tends to strike me as fundamentally lazy writing. Obviously a lot of serial writing can’t avoid this situation, since such works encompass multiple narrative arcs, but there’s almost always a sense that the writer is fabricating conflict out of nothing when it involves the introduction of an entirely new antagonist. Great conflict emerges from the natural contrast of the central characters’ goals and emotions – the more your conflict feels seeded in the base variables of your initial scenario, the more impactful and meaningful it will feel

Even stories with plenty of emergent villains can harness this effect, so long as those villains seem to carry on the thematic banner of the villains who came before. One Piece has scaled through fifty villains while still feeling like “one story,” because the fundamental contrast of Luffy’s philosophy and the strictures of the world at large has guided its drama all the way up the worldbuilding chain

“When are you breaking up with Hori-senpai!?” In contrast, situations like this feel like an artificial drama stimulant, an arbitrary infusion of “but then this happened!”

The new girl is Honoka Sawada

Very nice character animation as Honoka wilts at Hori’s advance – I like the mixture of styles here, with a very realistic shift of the eyes eventually transforming into a super-deformed pout of defeat

“I had a crush on you first, Hori-senpai!” Ah, so that’s how it is

Arbitrary drama aside, this sequence is quite funny. Hori getting yanked between them with a series of aggrieved grunting noises is great

Her over-the-top infatuation, played more for laughs than drama, seems to be drawing the whole show in a more farcical direction

It turns out that Miyamura and Honoka are apartment neighbors. Honoka left her key inside, so she stops by Miyamura’s place

Honoka offhandedly admits that Miyamura is “good at taking care of people”

She apparently had an older brother much like Miyamura, but he passed away

Other boys make her uncomfortable – it seems Miyamura’s resemblance to her brother gives him a pass

And Done

Well, that was… kind of a mess, huh? With its central relationship at last confirmed, Horimiya apparently decided it had earned an episode of indulging in all of its weakest tendencies, offering awkwardly staggered pacing and the clumsy introduction of a new dramatic irritant. Honoka actually seems like a pretty fun character, but using her to simply delay the development of Hori and Miyamura’s relationship feels like a frustrating stalling maneuver. That said, there were still plenty of funny and charming moments, and it already seems like we’re moving past the antagonist part of Honoka’s story. As ever, Horimiya is a flawed but endearing experience.

This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.