The first thing Horimiya gets right is the meeting. Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura run into each other outside school, and both are not who their classmates think they are. That single chance encounter is the whole engine of the series, and the show never needs a bigger one.
Trailer, via AnimaxAsia.
Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura
At school, Hori is the prim and perfect social butterfly. Miyamura wears a gloomy facade. The truth runs the other way. Hori is a brash homebody. Miyamura hides a gentle heart, along with piercings and tattoos.
The series is based on Daisuke Hagiwara’s Horimiya manga, itself an adaptation of HERO’s webcomic Hori-san to Miyamura-kun. Aniplex and the animation studio CloverWorks co-created the 2021 anime. The story follows two high school students who discover each other’s secret selves and form a bond that blossoms into a romance.
That premise is small on purpose. There is no world to save, no tournament to win, no rival to defeat. The stakes are whether two people will let the other one see them, and whether they can stand what they see.
Airing on Gunma TV and Tokyo MX
Horimiya ran for one season of 13 episodes. It first aired on January 10, 2021, and last aired on April 4, 2021. The network list is Gunma TV, Tokyo MX, BS11 and Tochigi TV. Wikipedia’s entry on the series also notes a run on the MBS television station.
The broadcast spread across four months, one episode a week, is worth marking. Here is how the run breaks down:
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| First episode airs | January 10, 2021 |
| Final episode airs | April 4, 2021 |
| Episode count | 13 |
| Season count | 1 |
A sequel anime adaptation, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces, was announced after the thirteenth episode aired. It covered chapters that the 2021 series did not animate, and it ran from July to September 2023.
Haruka Tomatsu as Hori
The voice cast is the reason the two leads land. Haruka Tomatsu voices Kyouko Hori. Koki Uchiyama voices Izumi Miyamura.
Around them, the series builds a full classroom. Seiichiro Yamashita plays Toru Ishikawa. Yurie Kozakai plays Yuki Yoshikawa. Nobuhiko Okamoto plays Kakeru Sengoku. Mao Ichimichi plays Remi Ayasaki. Reina Kondo plays Sakura Kono. Daiki Yamashita plays Shu Iura. Jun Fukuyama plays Akane Yanagi. Taku Yashiro plays Koichi Shindo. Shoya Chiba plays Makio Tanihara. Momo Asakura plays Honoka Sawada.
That is twelve named roles, and the show uses them. A romance with only two interesting people runs out of road by episode six. Horimiya does not have that problem, though it does not give every one of those twelve equal time either.
Comedy, Drama, Animation
The genre tags are Animation, Comedy and Drama, and the order is honest. The comedy comes from the gap between the public face and the private one. Hori at home is not the Hori who holds court at school. Miyamura without his uniform is not the boy who sits alone.
The drama comes from the same gap. Once you have shown someone the side you keep hidden, you cannot unshow it. The series understands that the reveal is not the ending. It is the beginning of a different kind of work, and the show is patient enough to sit in it.
The Missing Pieces Arrives in 2023
The sequel announcement matters more than most follow-up news. Horimiya: The Missing Pieces exists because the 2021 series left chapters on the table. It aired from July to September 2023.
That is a rare admission of shape. A 13-episode season has to cut something, and this one cut enough that the source material could support a second adaptation two years later. Fans of the manga got the rest of the story. Viewers who only watched the anime got a reason to come back.
The two-year gap also says something about how the first season was received. A sequel to a finished romance is not automatic. Someone decided there was still an audience, and the decision held.
What Horimiya Does Better Than Its Peers
Most high school romances treat the confession as the finish line. Horimiya treats it as the midpoint. The series spends its episodes on what happens after two people stop performing for each other, which is the harder story to tell.
The piercings and the tattoos are the clearest example. Miyamura’s hidden self is not a metaphor. It is ink and metal, visible the moment he takes off the school uniform. Hori’s hidden self is a temper and a domestic streak. Neither reveal is dramatic. Both are just true.
Here is what the show ranks above its peers, in order of how much it matters:
- The honesty of the central pair, who never lie to each other for plot convenience.
- The refusal to make the supporting cast into obstacles.
- The willingness to keep going after the confession instead of stopping there.
- The restraint of the comedy, which stays grounded in character rather than gags.
The show also resists the urge to turn Ishikawa, Yoshikawa, Sengoku and the rest into rivals or saboteurs. They are friends who notice things. That keeps the tension inside the relationship, where it belongs, instead of outsourcing it to a third party.
Where the Season Slips
Thirteen episodes is a tight order for a manga with this much material, and the compression shows. Some of the twelve named cast members get a scene or two and then fade. The classroom is full, but not everyone in it gets a turn.
The series also moves at a gentle pace that will read as slow to anyone expecting plot. Episodes are built from small moments — a shared meal, a walk home, a conversation that goes slightly wrong. If you want momentum, this is not the show for you. If you want two people learning each other, it is.
The published critical score sits at 8.5 out of 10, drawn from a TMDB audience score of 1170 votes. That is a real sample, not a handful of reviews, and it lands where the show deserves.
The Verdict on Horimiya
This is one of the better romance anime of its era, and it earns that on restraint. Horimiya does not need a villain, a rival or a crisis. It needs Hori and Miyamura in a room, being honest, and it knows it.
The 2021 season ran from January 10 to April 4, on Gunma TV, Tokyo MX, BS11 and Tochigi TV, with 13 episodes and a cast led by Haruka Tomatsu and Koki Uchiyama. The sequel, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces, followed from July to September 2023.
The part worth watching is not the confession. It is the ordinary episodes after it, where two people decide the version they showed each other is the one they want to keep.
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