Horimiya: The Missing Pieces Review

The Missing Pieces

Horimiya: The Missing Pieces (Horimiya: Piece / ホリミヤ -piece-) is sort of a sequel to the Horimiya anime. It’s also sort of a spin-off. But, in reality, it’s neither of those things. As the name implies, this series covers the content the original anime skipped.

In order to fight an entire year into one season, a lot of content had to be cut. But now, we have that cut content. Or, at least some of it. I don’t read the manga, so I don’t actually know if The Missing Pieces covers everything.

However, what I do know is that I would rather have gotten two normal seasons of the series. The first season could cover the first half of the year. And the second season could cover the second half of the year. I don’t know for sure why that wasn’t done. But, I can make an assumption.

If you want my assumption, it’s that they only planned to make one season of the anime. Otherwise, this decision makes no sense. And, it might be that after the success of the original season, they got the green light for The Missing Pieces.

Is The Missing Pieces worth watching, though? In my correct opinion, it’s not as good as the first season. But, if you look at the average scores of both seasons on MyAnimeList, it seems most people disagree. The Missing Pieces has a slightly higher rating of 8.27 compared to 8.20.

With that said, it’s important to contextualize those scores. The Missing Pieces was only rated by 70,000 viewers. The original season was rated by 783,000 viewers. And those who went on to watch the “second season” are more likely to be fans of the series.

If you’re a Horimiya fan, you’ll like this season.

New Characters

Something I wasn’t expecting was for The Missing Pieces to introduce new characters. But, that’s exactly what it did. And, it didn’t stop at throwing in new characters. It also gave more screen time to some of the supporting characters.

The supporting character who got the largest bump in screen time is Akane Yanagi. I actually didn’t remember Yanagi from the original series, at first, and thought he was new. But, he’s not new. He just didn’t get very much attention the first time around. I wish he did, though, as he’s a pretty good character.

Aoi Kitahara is the first new character I want to mention. He’s a middle schooler who’s a classmate of Shuu Iura’s younger sister. Matoko Iura has a crush on Kitahara. However, Kitahara becomes obsessed with Shuu after meeting him for the first time.

The next new character is Maya Nogami. She’s a freshman and one of Honoka Sawada’s classmates. Honoka and Maya become friends after Honoka helps Maya prepare for Valentine’s Day. Maya has a crush on Shuu and didn’t know what kind of chocolate he would like. So, Honoka asked since she’s friends with the third-years.

Next is Ichirou Watabe, Miyamura’s stalker. Ichirou has an obsession with all things Miyamura. He has an extensive collection of photographs of Miyamura that he’s taken at school. And, he’s always watching Miyamura’s every move. But, it doesn’t seem like Watabe actually wants to interact with Miyamura.

Finally, there’s Takeru Sengoku, Kakeru Sengoku’s father. Kakeru is the current student council president. And, when Takeru was in school, he was the student council president. Despite being two years older than Hori’s father, Takeru was also bullied by Kyousuke. To this day, he still believes the Hori family is no good.

Chronological Order?

At this point, you may be wondering if you should watch all of Horimiya in chronological order. And I’m here to tell you, no. If you really want to watch the series in chronological order, you can. But, it’s not something you can do without a lot of effort.

There are two huge problems with watching Horimiya chronologically. And the first is that it’s not in chronological order on a fundamental level. Each episode is split into multiple parts. And each of those parts may or may not be in chronological order.

For example, the second half of Episode 3 of the original series comes before the first half. But, it gets worse. The Missing Pieces Episode 1 has 3 parts that take place between Horimiya Episodes 2 and 9. And, those parts fall between parts of other episodes.

You’ll have to rebuild the whole series to watch it in chronological order.

Now, I was going to try to provide you with a simplified chronological order. But, after a little bit of trying, I scrapped that idea. There’s really no way to simplify it due to how scrambled many of the episode parts are.

However, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck. For the true masochists out there, Crunchyroll put out an in-depth chronological guide. I still wouldn’t recommend watching the series this way. It seems like swapping between episodes would be more work than it’s worth. But, you can do it, if you want.

Instead of going through all that, though, I’d recommend watching the series as-is. Would Horimiya be better if the whole series was in chronological order? It’s possible. But, the order we got isn’t terrible. All you have to do is treat The Missing Pieces like extra content for the series.

Final Thoughts

In the end, I gave Horimiya: The Missing Pieces a 6/10. It was a pretty good “season.” But, I felt like it got a bit slow during the middle. The first few episodes were enjoyable, as were the last few. Everything in between didn’t leave much of an impact.

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