When I first heard there would be more Horimiya in 2023, I was thrilled. However, it didn’t take for me to realize that this wasn’t going to be a sequel. Rather than extending the story into the college lives of Hori and Miyamura, Missing Pieces just adds extra content that happened in their highschool days. That disappointed me immensely. I think we saw all we really needed to see in the first season. Still, I decided to start watching Horimiya: The Missing Pieces.
In some ways, this “second season” was pleasant. In other ways, it definitely betrayed my expectations. By the end of this review, you should understand what I think about the anime as a whole. As usual, we will look at five categories to judge the quality of this anime: Visuals, Story, Audio, Characters, and Enjoyment. Thanks for stopping by Anime Rants, and please enjoy this review.
Visuals: 7
While I’m not confident about my ability to judge visuals, it seemed to me that there was a slight drop in quality and creativity in Horimiya: The Missing Pieces compared to the first season. The linework an highlights were simpler, the shots and angles were lacking in diversity, and backgrounds were less detailed and sometimes rather obnoxiously colored. It might just be me, but some of the “magic” that I felt watching the first season was just not there anymore.
All that to say, the art and animation in Horimiya: The Missing Pieces was still quite good. I love the character designs, so it was great to see them again with their bright hair colors and adorable faces. The face expressions are always high quality, whether they are exaggerated for comedic effect, or just normal responses. Sometimes, the still shots are beautiful, with good lighting, colors, and level of detail. Overall, the visual category deserves a solid 7/10.
Story: 6
In the cases of school rom-com and/or slice-of-life, I rarely give a strong score to the story category. This kind of anime doesn’t have much of a central plot, but there are other factors that we can use in evaluation. For a fantasy slice-of-life, world-building is critical. For a romantic comedy, you need good humor, and so on. When it comes to Horimiya, I am mostly judging the comedy style, the themes, and the success or failure of emotional scenes.
Comedy is generally hit-ot-miss. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that I often felt unamused by the jokes and their implications. That being said, there were absolutely some genuinely funny parts. The humor in this season was good. But unfortunately, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces didn’t live up to the first series in terms of strong themes or delivery of emotional content.
Thematically speaking, the story has already been resolved once the friend group has formed. Everyone is learning to appreciate each other and feel accepted for the first time. Since there were no new character arcs added to the existing characters, there was no emotional struggle or reward. There were a few parts that echoed the more heartfelt nature of the first season. For example, Miyamura’s reflections after the sports festival were meaningful. Still, I think the story category only gets 6/10 this time.
Audio: 8
Horimiya: The Missing Pieces features excellent music, songs, and voice-acting. Both intro and outro songs were good, but of the two, I most loved the intro – “Shiawase” by Omoinotake. It’s such a gorgeous and emotionally moving song. Plus, the melody is easy to remember. It got stuck in my head for a while.
The ending song, “URL” by Ami Sakaguchi, was fine. There was also a special outro for one episode in particular: the one about Konoha the ninja. Two of the seiyuus worked together to sing this cheesy theme song just for the fun of it. It’s called “Dokuro Ninja Konoha” by Reina Kondou and Jun Fukuyama.
The voice-acting cast of Horimiya is legendary, at least for a nerd like myself who can recognize nearly all of the voices. My favorite of the seiyuus are probably: Kouki Uchiyama (Miyamura), Haruka Tomatsu (Hori), Jun Fukuyama (Yanagi), and Mao Ichimichi (Remi Ayasaki). Everyone involved in the voices of this series did great work.
Characters: 8
Horimiya: The Missing Pieces mostly dealt with the same character group as before. There were a few minor new introductions, like Sengoku’s father and Sawada’s new friend from her class. Of the characters we know, the show did a good job spending a little bit of time on each one. However, that time was mostly used for humorous escapades rather than significant character growth or changes.
There are a few exceptions. I liked the episode about Sakura and Yanagi becoming friends and bonding over manga. That was a new dynamic we hadn’t seen before. We also learned some interesting character history about how Kyousuke and Yuriko went to the same highschool as Sengoku’s father. Additionally, it was nice to see Sawada’s new friendship with someone from her own year. Finally, there was decent character development during the episode where Hori and Miyamura had a fight.
Despite having limited development in this season, the characters of Horimiya are still terrific. They’re cute, relatable in different ways, and representative of many different teenage experiences. I’ve grown very fond of all the members in the friend group – even Remi, who I didn’t particularly love in the first season. The show is technically about Hori and Miyamura, who are the best characters, in my opinion. But their story would be weak and boring without the many colorful characters that surround them.
Enjoyment: 6
I enjoyed Horimiya: The Missing Pieces more than I disliked it. Still, let me note the negatives before we move on to the good stuff. Some of the humor was aggravating to me. I don’t remember feeling this way during the first season, so I’ve probably just gotten grumpier. Regardless, some of the things that were supposed to be humorous fell flat. One example is the group’s responses to Kitahara, who is a young gay boy. While I wouldn’t say the jokes were outright homophobic, I still didn’t like the way this issue was handled.
Another big problem that took away from my enjoyment was the continued existence of the pedophilic teacher, Yasuda. This is something that did annoy me in the first season. For some reason, I thought it might be better this time. But it was actually worse. Yasuda had so much time afforded to him. All the characters agree he’s gross, and he is usually framed as the butt of the joke. Nevertheless, I hate that he even exists in this series. We didn’t need someone so disgusting in an otherwise wholesome anime. Grr.
There were two other factors that lowered my appreciation for this anime: 1) the lack of real drama or character growth left me bored half the time; and 2) I dislike the way everyone laughs or shrugs off Hori’s violent tendencies. She hits Miyamura when angry. If I wanted to be dramatic, I’d say this glorifies domestic abuse. I know this isn’t meant to be taken too seriously, and for many people in different places in life, it could indeed be funny. But for me, it’s an issue I take seriously, so I couldn’t laugh about it even with fictional characters.
All this hopefully explains why my enjoyment level was “only” a 6/10. But that 6 still means I liked more than I disliked. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have kept watching. There were aspects that I enjoyed from each category. The character designs and art style are pleasing to look at. The opening song sounds amazing! There wasn’t much of a story, but the characters still amused and entertained me.
On a final note, some of the goofier humor really did get me smiling and giggling. It wasn’t all bad. My favorite example was the scene where Yanagi is waiting in the cold at the bus-stop. At that point, Remi and Hori appear wearing sunglasses and using masculine body language and speech patterns. Remi proceeds to impersonate an adult man hitting on Yanagi. Hori was supposed to defend Yanagi, but both girls forgot their lines at some point and the skit fell apart. That was hilarious.
Overall Score: 7.0 / 10.0
As usual, I calculated the overall score by taking the average of the five numbers for the categories explored above. Compared my (probably overly enthusiastic) review of the first season, this isn’t a great score. I’m pretty sure I thought Horimiya was a low 8/10. But Missing Pieces is barely reaching the 7/10 range. Some of that is probably because I’ve become cranky and more impatient with anime in the last few years. But part of it also that this anime just wasn’t all that great.
I think this review was honest and fair, so I just have to accept that this anime wasn’t as good as its predecessor. However, I have no hate for the anime at all. That’s why I was pleased to see that it was well-received by anime fans, especially on MyAnimeList.net, where it currently has a score of 8.24. While I don’t necessarily recommend watching The Missing Pieces, I’m still glad that the first Horimiya got the attention it deserved.
Thank you for reading~
Anime Rants 
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