Horimiya: The Missing Pieces

Episode 5

On the one hand, it's nice to have an episode finally focusing on Shuu who got, hands down, the least amount of focus and screen time in the original series. On the other hand, I feel like this episode told us absolutely nothing at best and sort of meandered all over the place at worst. So Shuu was kind of seen as the jokester of the group in a show that already had a lot of lighthearted comedic banter. Sometimes his actions did get a genuine laugh out of me in the past, especially when he's sort of neglectful and airheaded. But compared to everybody else who has some degree of layers to their character, he's incredibly one-note, and I kept waiting for this episode to prove me wrong…only for it to do nothing by the end.

The two major bits of information this episode communicates are that Shuu is an overprotective brother and wants a girlfriend despite not having anybody he likes. The girlfriend thing is this weird insult everyone keeps flinging at him regarding his demeanor. My favorite bit was Shuu feeling weird being the one person in the group who isn't paired with anybody or doesn't have any flirtatious dialogue with anybody. That would've been fun to explore, but again we don't do anything with that. I think my eyes started to glaze over once we got to the middle of the episode, and everyone was trying to figure out what to do about Shuu's situation regarding his sister's crush. But it just went in circles, and I was with Hori when she said the conversation was stupid.

I appreciate the show for having some self-awareness, but it doesn't change the fact that it wasted a couple of minutes of my life with dialogue it acknowledges wasn't funny or insightful. Then the episode ends with this awkward interaction that I don't think should've been as awkward as the show made it out to be. Maybe it would be better if the sister was more heavily involved towards the end of the episode. Or maybe more chapters revolve around Shuu later on, and the next episode will continue from where we left off? I don't know, but I can only judge the episode for what it is, and for now, it's probably my least favorite episode of the season so far.

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Horimiya: The Missing Pieces is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.