Title: Horimiya
Japanese Title: ホリミヤ
Author: HERO
Genre: Manga | Romance
Demographic: Shounen
Format: E-Book
Length: 16 Volumes | 25 Chapters
Publisher: Yenn Press
Publication Date: 2012-2019
My Rating: ★★★★ (4 stars)
Goodreads | Storygraph
Synopsis:
At school, Kyouko Hori is known for being smart, attractive, and popular. On the other hand, her classmate, the boring, gloomy Izumi Miyamura tends to get painted as a “loser fanboy.” But when a liberally pierced and tattooed (not to mention downright gorgeous) Miyamura appears unexpectedly on the doorstep of secretly plain-Jane homebody Hori, these two similarly dissimilar teenagers discover that there are multiple sides to every story…and person!
My Review:
Horimiya is a manga that I enjoyed, to begin with, but as it progressed I slowly began to lose interest.
Hori-san is a popular girl in school, but she wipes it all away when she gets home and cares for her little brother. Miyamura-kun is the opposite, he seems to be gloomy and boring at school, but outside he styles his hair and shows off his tattoos and piercings. By chance, these two complete opposites meet and begin to share each other’s secrets.
I’ll be honest I wasn’t a huge fan of Hori, I just couldn’t connect to her as a character but I adored Miyamura. He was down-to-earth and genuine. He wasn’t perfect, but that made him all the more real. I did enjoy the banter between the two protagonists, however, once the relationship between them developed further, I didn’t feel as connected. It may be due to the fact that I’m not Hori’s biggest fan but I’d have rather had seen more of their friendship than their romance.
I like the artwork for this manga, it wasn’t extraordinary, but it was enough to show the story and characters. The pacing of the story was good, albeit a little slow at times. If there is one thing I’d want more of it would be more of Miyamura’s family life but as I said he was one of my favourite characters.
This is a cozy manga, it’s the kind you can curl up and binge because you get sucked into the story of the two characters. While there were some parts that I didn’t like overall it was an enjoyable manga and I do recommend it if you are wanting to read a cute, heart-warming shojo.
