In 2021, Hiroki Adachi’s Hori-san to Miyamura-kun finally got an anime adaptation called Horimiya, and it was an instant hit. It was a combination of romance and comedy, which was quite rare for a Shonen series, but it still managed to have an impact on the community. The anime series was directed by Masashi Ishihama, who is a well-known name in the industry.
Horimiya follows the story of Kyouko Hori and Izumi Miyamura, who discover the hidden lives of each other. Their secrets become a mode of their friendship and help them open up about it to each other. This brings them close with a lot of funny and intense moments. While the story is an intriguing part of the series, there is one other aspect that was particularly liked by Ishihama.
The director once revealed that the thing that excited him about the series was the vast array of characters that were involved in the narrative. He wanted to focus more on them but somehow couldn’t. This led to the series being a disappointment to a lot of fans.
Masashi Ishihama’s Favorite Aspect of Horimiya
When the Horimiya anime series first came out, Anime Corner interviewed Ishihama to talk about the creation of the series and the success it had been achieving. During the interview, Ishihama was asked about the aspect of the narrative that would like the fans to look forward to.
Ishihama stated:
It is the feeling of a community warming up all at once. There are more characters to come. I hope you enjoy it, because the way they get closer feels refreshing. Now for the final episode, I want you to feel that this is where “Horimiya” will end.
At the time of the interview, the final episode of the series was about to be released. Thus, Ishihama hinted that the next storyline will probably have more characters and the fans will most likely enjoy their depiction.
Ishihama was particularly excited about the number of characters that the series had and the focus on each of those characters in the plot. He felt like he would get an opportunity to work on them in the future.
How Horimiya Got Sabotaged?
Even though Ishihama was eager to devote much more attention to the series characters in the future, the first season itself received negative feedback because of those characters. Fans complained that there was an imbalance in the narrative of the first season because of the characters of the series.
Also, while a majority of the characters were introduced early on, they were never expanded upon. Not much was revealed about the individual storylines of those characters, and as a result, fans never got a chance to learn much about them. These characters had the potential to make the story even more intriguing.
This led to so much criticism that a second adaptation was forced out of them to fill in the left-out details of the original storyline from the manga. It was called Horimiya: Missing Pieces and it came out in 2023. Now fans hope that the series could come up with another season that could focus on these characters more profoundly.
Horimiya is available to watch on Crunchyroll.
