Brief version:
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.
All characters are loveable good people.
Now, the a bit longer version..
People on Reddit's r/manga were displaying a lot of affection for this story a lot and that's how it got onto my radar. The story did turn out to be something I love.
One thing I've mildly disliked in Horimiya is how some characters seemed to be underappreciated. [spoilers]Most prominently Iura Shuu[/spoiler]. 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. The "life" of having friends! Every interaction in this story is for me a reminder of how life can be beautiful, how my next life might be!
The characters of the story didn't feel like "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 brighter for anyone. 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. 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 felt 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 her site: http://dka-hero.me/top.html
The manga Horimiya is the first 120 chapters of the web comic. Those 120 chapters convey the main story, which is primarily about Miyamura and Hori. It is so very worthy of a mention that actually there are, CURRENTLY, 460 more chapters! They're officialy categorized as bonus, but it is 460 chapters of literaly the same thing as the first 120 chapters, just with the focus being more on the other characters. Kyouko and Izumi are still present though! None of the bonus chapters have been translated thus far.
One character's (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'll be vague in the following about her. When she first appeared I was quickly enganged 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 any certain thing which in most stories would become at least somewhat of a defining characteristic of the character carrying it.
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 just because the authoress chose to not make her character revolve around something which is quite a big deal doesn't mean that that thing is 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 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.
I'm left wondering about some things , but I guess that the reason why they were't drawn out (this being a manga, also in the literal sense) is because it wouldn't fit as neatly as the authoress wants 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 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. 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 and that the characters have lives outside of what is literally shown to us through the story. Tooru and Yuki have a 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 and 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 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 which isn't (shown) in the manga, which then you'll know not to expect/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 wouldn't be 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 how contentious it is... 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! The characters in this story are normal human beings who make jokes that will evoke toxicity within a "woke" individual. It wouldn't surprise me if you told me that there are many people who took issue with this story because of how not-okay they are with some jokes and things that the characters of the story said, thoguht or did.. This is something I wouldn't have noticed until a year ago, but the current state of my surroundings made me take notice of the fact that this story isn't soiled by "wokeness".
I have been 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 it 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 is really picking up pace as of late and I am glad that Horimiya is not a story constrained by the worry of not offending those people.
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!!,,,
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