Welcome back to Anime Rants with 7Mononoke! (Mono for short.) As you may know, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces finished its run on September 23rd, 2023. Needless to say, I’m way, way behind on my episode reviews for this series. However, I plan to catch up as soon as possible – starting with today’s responses to episodes 7, 8, and 9.
Note: This post will not contain detailed recaps of episode events. Rather, it will focus on my notes and responses to selected highlights in each episode.
Episode 7: Friends
Episode 7 focused on the friendships between certain characters – some of whom we haven’t seen interacting much before. The main friendship highlighted here was between Sakura and Yanagi. They happened to bond over manga – in particular, one called “Konoha”. The interactions between Sakura and Yanagi were super cute and sometimes awkward. They’re both overly polite and tend to overthink things, so it was an amusing combination.
It was interesting and funny that this episode included so much about the “Konoha” manga. Apparently, it’s mostly about ninjas, with a lot of supernatural and shonen action. Impressively, the entire outro song for this episode is a corny theme song for Konoha. The voice actors for Sakura and Yanagi are the ones singing it. There are even accompanying still-frame visuals during the song. I love when Horimiya does goofy stuff like this.
Sawada was also an important character for this episode. She didn’t have any friends in her grade and felt uncomfortable in her classes. However, thanks to her friendships with third-year students like Remi and Yoshikawa, Sawada still enjoys school. Later on, she manages to bond with a few girls in her class after she helped them advertise their new club. Sawada is the kind of character that annoys a lot of people, but I’ve always liked her. I’ve head-canoned her as a closeted bisexual girl, and you can’t stop me.
I forgot to mention this earlier, but I also enjoyed the scene with Yanagi and Yoshikawa in the library. Yanagi is really charming even without trying. It was adorable when Yoshikawa ran up to Tohru afterward and demanded he hold her hand. Overall, this episode was a lot of fun.
Episode 8: Yanagi-kun
As the title implies, Yanagi was the main focus of this episode. His interactions with the other characters were very entertaining. My favorite part was the scene at the bus stop. Miyamura, Remi, and Hori bring hot cocoa to Yanagi, who is stuck in the cold waiting for the next bus. Remi and Hori did some kind of skit where they were pretending to be men hitting on Yanagi. Fucking hilarious! I laughed a lot at that.
Yanagi’s early morning struggles were relatable and humorous. I like the idea of such a sweet and unassuming person having an extremely grumpy side. Other amusing parts of this episode were the interactions of Yanagi and Sengoku. The student council president is heavily invested in becoming better friends with Yanagi. But due to Yanagi’s awkwardness, he made it sound like he wasn’t interested in getting closer with Sengoku. As a result, Sengoku sank into a funny, over-the-top depression.
The scene in the hallway with all the boys was also funny. Everyone seems to enjoy teasing Sengoku, especially Ishikawa. I felt a little bit bad for Sengoku when he was compared to a molester, but everyone understands it was a joke – I think. And at least now, Sengoku and Yanagi are getting to know each other better. That’s about it for my thoughts on this installment. It was a highly enjoyable episode.
Episode 9: Teacher
After two episodes in a row that were fun and not problematic, Horimiya decided to give us a crappy episode once again. The main focus of this episode was Yasuda-sensei, the pervert/pedophile teacher used for “comic relief” (you know, because pedophilia is so hilarious). Since I hate Yasuda and I hate it whenever anime tries to make light of pedophiles, I won’t be spending much time on this character or this episode.
However, I’ll briefly mention a few things that had nothing to do with Yasuda. First of all, this episode introduced us to another teacher named Nakamine. He is a complete air-head, always forgetting things or losing items. I thought he was funny.
It was also amusing when Sengoku and Hori got trapped in the classroom together. Hori is such a tyrant, but for some reason I like her. Last of all, the cutest thing in this episode was Yoshikawa and her palm-readings. She’s just a dork and I think she’s precious.
Thanks for reading~
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