The Summer 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Horimiya: The Missing Pieces

Horimiya followed the relationship between Hori and Miyamura, two high school kids slowly forming a bond and falling in love. But only so much manga can be put into a thirteen-episode series. Horimiya: The Missing Pieces is here to fix that: it goes back to the beginning of the original series and fills in the pieces of the original manga that were left out in the first adaptation. From silly moments to quiet ones, this is a chance to reconnect with your favorite characters and see what happened between the scenes of the original.

Horimiya: The Missing Pieces is based on Daisuke Hagiwara's Horimiya manga. It streams on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

Usually, we get anime series that adapt their manga influences in bits and pieces to fit as much of the story as possible into a given runtime. It's less common for us to get a sequel that fills the gaps. That's what makes Horimiya: The Missing Pieces so exciting: it's a sequel series that, rather than continuing the main story, instead goes back and adapts the little bits and bobs from the manga that got cut for time. It's doubly exciting because it's also returning to the earlier chapters of the manga; much as I love the early volumes, I felt that the story (and Hori) got a little too mean later on, so this is a chance to relive the heyday of the overall series.

This first episode is in two little tangentially related halves, the first taking place before Miyamura cuts his hair and the second right around the time he does. They're tied together because, in both segments, Miyamura has to find a way to avoid undressing in front of the other boys, once on the school trip and once during a newly instituted mandatory swim class. In both cases, he attempts to use an excuse that Tohru cobbles together for him, claiming that he has his period. While this maybe doesn't work quite as planned in a time when we're more accepting that transmen can have periods, it still makes other people reliably uncomfortable because we're still not past "periods are taboo." It also, in the first case, plays into Miyamura's body image issues because he doesn't want people to think he's a girl, something that comes up again when Remi touches his chest in the second half to see if maybe he has breasts.

If there's an underlying theme here, it's that boys shouldn't have to make up excuses for why they don't want to undress in front of other guys. Sengoku also avoids swimming; in his case, he's self-conscious about how skinny he is and doesn't want to put his body on display. It's perhaps true that teenage girls are more likely to be uncomfortable with public bathing on a school trip because who wants to advertise their menstrual cycle? But maybe boys and girls should both be offered rooms with private showers? The swimming thing is largely played off by the pervy teacher as girls not wanting to be seen in swimsuits, but honestly, no one should have to be made uncomfortable in this particular way.

In any event, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces is off to a solid start. It's a reminder of what made this series so good in the first place, and since there's no more Skip and Loafer to watch, this may be a good (enough) substitute for summer.

This is a bit of a weird one, isn't it? When they first adapted Horimiya, they skipped over a bunch of the smaller stories in the manga in order to cram all the story-relevant bits of a 14-volume romcom into a single anime season. I didn't care for this choice, as I thought it robbed the characters of a lot of their charm. Hori came off particularly poorly, her more assertive personality turning absolutely harpyish without anything to soften her.

I don't know what kinds of conversations happened to get us here, but now there's Horimiya: The Missing Pieces to backfill that missing context. It feels like a weird half-measure here; did someone realize they made a mistake taking those bits out? Was the first series a big enough success that they decided to gather up the scraps and toss something together like a “clean out the fridge” salad? Or maybe this was the plan all along?? We may never know, but I'd much rather they'd made a two-cour adaptation, or even just adapted half the manga, instead of this bizarre asynchronous presentation.

But then, it is nice to see these sweet kids again. The episode kicks off with a short segment during the school trip, early in their relationship, and back before Miyamura cut off his hair (which I appreciated, because I always preferred that look on him). However, it also carried some cultural baggage that I've seen crop up elsewhere that I've never cared for – the implication that if a girl lets herself be vulnerable around a boy, it's because she sees him as sexless and therefore safe, rather than just trusting and feeling comfortable around him. It's weird, considering just how much of their early relationship is about how comfortable and safe they felt around one another, and it just felt a bit sour to me.

The rest of the episode, about Miyamura and Sengoku trying to get out of swimming, was a bit better, if a bit cisnormative in assuming that it's absurd to say that a man could have periods. Too often people forget that body image issues are not just for girls, and adolescent boys can be affected by them too. Having a partner that finds you attractive isn't a quick fix, either; Sengoku is self-conscious about his skinny frame, even though his girlfriend Remi likes him just the way he is. There were some cute moments mixed in too, like Remi stealing Sengoku's sandals and refusing to give them back. Scenes like that have always been Horimiya's strength – moments where you can feel the emotional intimacy and closeness between characters, in both serious and playful ways. Taking your boyfriend's clothes and refusing to give them back is a time-honored tradition!

Calling this spinoff Missing Pieces feels like a recognition that removing these scenes took something fundamental away from the story. I wish they had handled it better, but I'm also not about to complain about getting a chance to spend more time with these characters.

I was really confused as to why we were getting more Horimiya considering that I thought the first season covered most of the original manga. Then I looked into it and realized that the first season of the anime skipped a lot of side stories and gags that I think are being compiled to make up this sort of spin-off, side season. That sounds like something more akin to an OVA, not an entire season because you run the risk of making the pacing of the episodes feel very out of sync, and this episode isn't devoid of that concern. You can tell that the first third takes place at a very different point in time from the rest of the episode based on Izumi's. So there is a part of me that's distracted because I feel like I am guessing where each of these bits is taking place and what growth the characters have gone through before then.

This would be a bigger issue if this season tries for some emotional or thematic beat. The closest thing we get to that is in the first third where there's some sexual tension between our two leads. The rest focused on gags, and they are funny. I forgot how tightly written a lot of the dialogue was in the series, and many of the jokes did land for me. I'm not sure how I felt about the one thing that connected all the skits being the recurring gag of Izumi being on his period. What is the joke supposed to be? That he's a guy, and guys don't get periods? Or is the joke supposed to be that everyone took him super seriously, and the excuse somehow worked? I'm not sure, and I get the impression that the writing wasn't too sure either. I liked most of Horimiya when it was airing because of its comedy, tight pacing, and slightly above-average production values. While I worry that I'll be narratively put off by this season, as long as it maintains those three things, then I think I can look past it as some nice supplemental material.