YMMV / Horimiya

• Adaptation Displacement: As a result of Horimiya getting published and officially translated in the west, it displaced the original Hori-san to Miyamura-kun there.
• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Miyamura's piercings and body tattoos. He tells Hori that he simply got them because he was bored, but the scattered flashbacks to his time in middle school imply that they were more the result of depression and self-harm. A latter chapter sees Hori getting pissed off after learning that Miyamura re-pierced one of his ears, implying that it was more so the latter.
  • The nature of Kyousuke and Yuriko's relationship. Kyousuke's estrangement from his family is frequently Played for Laughs but a number of Hori's own quirks, her fear of abandonment, and frequent paranoia that Miyamura will be unfaithful seem to imply that Kyousuke and Yuriko have had a continuously rocky marriage throughout Hori's childhood.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Fan reactions to Tanihara, Miyamura's former middle school bully, depend on which side of the Pacific you're on. In Japan, he's decently popular for acting like a Tsundere in trying to make up with Miyamura but being terrible at communicating it, and he scored tenth place in the character popularity poll. In the West, fan reactions are generally negative due to his introductory scene where he gives Miyamura a Breaking Speech until Hori beats him up and scares him off and the anime showing that he framed Miyamura for causing their middle school class pet rabbits to die, leading Miyamura to be completely ostracized. Consequently, Western fans feel like he already crossed the Moral Event Horizon, and think that Miyamura forgiving him let him get off with no punishment for his past actions.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Hori has become one in the fanbase due to her violent and jealous tendencies, particularly because of how she takes it out on Miyamura. On the flip side, she is still very supportive and caring towards him and knows exactly how unreasonable she is, even once becoming concerned that he won't care about her anymore.
  • Yuki became one as a result of being the center of the Love Quadrangle dilemma between herself, Toru, Sakura and Yanagi. Yuki starts to develop feelings for Toru but Cannot Spit It Out, but opts to fake date him to both give her an out to turn Yanagi down while also discouraging Sakura from pursuing Toru. Yuki's indecisiveness and jealousy ends up being the major driving point on this storyline. Some found this to make Yuki one of the most relatable characters in the story while others despised the fact that she both held the Conflict Ball and ultimately got off scot-free without ever really being called out for it.
• Broken Base:
  • The running gag of Hori's Romanticized Abuse kink, in which she gets excited whenever Miyamura acts like an abusive boyfriend. It straddles the line with the fanbase considering the gag funny or not. Not helping matters is Miyamura himself is consistently uncomfortable with it, which pushes the gag further into Cringe Comedy territory.
  • Miyamura's makeover. He cuts his hair and removes much of his piercings rather early into the series after he and Hori publically announce their relationship. The fact that this came after Miyamura heard some of his classmates bad-mouthing Hori on her taste in guys made this change really contentious. Later story beats address this by tying in his makeover to his finally coming out of his shell and overcoming his trauma from middle school. Some found this to be a satisfying change for Miyamura while others thought it just made him into a "generic pretty boy" and his original design was still the better one.
  • The resolution of the Tooru/Yuki romantic subplot. Some readers found Yuki avoiding Yanagi's confession by fake dating Tooru, and how she and Tooru used the fake relationship to dissuade Sakura from pursuing him, as unfair to both suitors and make Tooru and Yuki look cruel to them without actually having to address their romantic status. On the other hand, other fans were happy with the development, as it helped Tooru and Yuuki grow closer, and said suitors eventually got over their crushes and became friends with them.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: It's implied that Miyamura's various piercings came as a result of self-harm, rather than simple "boredom" as he described it to Hori. A flashback dream also implies that he used to be suicidal.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Iura ranked third in the popularity poll despite not having a character arc in the remake at the time and getting far less focus compared to the rest of the supporting cast.
  • Yanagi ranked fifth in the same popularity poll despite, at the time, only having been recently introduced to the cast and not having many spotlight chapters to show for himself.
• Growing the Beard: The animation in the original webcomic-based OVAs seem to have gotten better over time, as the colors are shaded and the characters have more complicated movements in the later episodes.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Miyamura's comment towards Hori in chapter 1: "I figured after yesterday, you would do your best to avoid me." Seems like a light-hearted statement based on Hori's public image issues (based on her reaction from earlier in the chapter) but it goes much deeper than that for Miyamura.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In chapter 4, Hori off-handedly says to Miyamura that he looks thin enough to fit into her clothes. It turns out (in a much later chapter) that he is. And then some. To her predictable chagrin.
• Ho Yay:
  • Repeatedly, between Tooru and Miyamura once they become friends.
  • Also Miyamura and Shindou. Good lord Shindou acts like he's in love with Miyamura half the time.
  • Tanihara (one of Miyamura's middle school bullies) can't accept that Shindou is friends with Miyamura. The way he talks, it's as if Tanihara thinks Shindou belongs to him.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • SORRY, IT'S EGG TIME! ^Explanation  Early in the series Miyamura rushes to the supermarket in Hori's stead to take advantage of an egg sale due to her getting caught up with work after school. He frantically yells this at Yuki to explain why he can't stop to talk. When the anime started airing, this scene quickly went viral and became something of a go-to caption to post whenever a new episode drops.
  • "Hori's dad looks like a hentai protagonist." ^Explanation  Kyousuke Hori, Kyouko's dad, has long hair that covers half his face. In hentai, male protagonists are usually drawn faceless or with similar hair so that they can remain a self-insert and/or avoid taking attention from the girl. After Kyousuke debuted in episode 5, viewers were quick to note the similarities.
  • Chika-chan this, Chika-chan that, Chika-chan everything! What the hell?! ^Explanation  Hori complaining about a character named Chika in the anime is often used out of context to describe reactions to the internet's obsession with another Chika from a different series.
  • HorniMiya^{Explanation (SPOILER WARNING)} A pun on the Officially Shortened Title, used after Hori and Miyamura finally had Their First Time.
• Misaimed Fandom: Based on the implication that Miyamura's body piercings were a sign of self-harm, it makes it all the more ironic that there a segment of fans who still decry his removing of his piercings as an Unnecessary Makeover.
• Narm: The rather brisk way the anime adapts stories from the manga has an unintended side effect of making some of the characterizations for Miyamura and Hori come off as awkward.
  • Miyamura's two early instances of violence against Sengoku ^note Sengoku asks Hori to explain herself about an accident with the Student Council caused due to miscommunication. and Ishikawa ^note Ishikawa accidentally, and weakly, slaps Miyamura compared to hitting him in anger comes off as even more disproportionate on Miyamura's part than they did in the manga.
  • Hori's Clingy Jealous Girl antics evolving to the point where she's jealous of him getting close to other guys as well. In the manga, Miyamura actually did have a male admirer in class, and Hori learning this combined with Miyamura being Ambiguously Bi is what leads to her paranoia. This character never appears in the anime, so it makes her ranting about Miyamura leaving her for a guy come completely out of the blue.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Remi is a sweet and kind person with a bit of a mischievous streak, but some people just won't forgive her for making trouble for Hori when an accounting book was misplaced.
  • Hori's physical abuse of Miyamura and past bullying of Sengoku. A couple of chapters have opened with Miyamura showing up to school with a bruise on his face, and while Hori is always cast as being in the wrong in these situations, the repetition of it has led to some writing off Hori as a domestic abuser.
• One True Threesome: Sakura, Sengoku, and Remi are nearly inseparable and do care for one another a great deal. It gets to the point where Sakura says that she'd be perfectly okay with marrying both of them if it came down to it.
• Periphery Demographic: You'd think that a high school rom-com full of pretty boys would be this for male readers — but it's actually a shonen series, meaning young men are the target demographic, making the legions of female fans into this.
• The Scrappy:
  • Sengoku's girlfriend, Remi, is not well-loved by the fans, let's just say. She's generally flighty and tends to cause problems for Hori through her impulsive and flaky behavior. This seems to have changed in later chapters, though, as her more likable traits have come to light and her relationships with Sengoku and Sakura has been given some depth. In-universe, she's even become a good friend to Hori and her gang. She still has a die-hard hatedom, but then again, who doesn't?
  • Honoka Sawada's Clingy Jealous Girl and Bratty Half-Pint tendencies don't endear her to fans—her first appearance was fighting with Miyamura over Hori's attention and taking full advantage of a Double Standard to get away with headbutting him in the stomach. Even after she supposedly undergoes Character Development, the extent of that is her being clingy around both of Miyamura and Hori instead of just the latter.
• Shipping Bed Death: Hori and Miyamura get this from some of the fandom on two fronts:
  • Miyamura's complete makeover after their Relationship Upgrade proved to be rather divisive with some fans, partly because the speed at which he does it made it come off as Miyamura caving to peer pressure ^note Miyamura was judged by their classmates as not being a good fit for Hori, something she in the past completely shot down as something that bothers her while others feel this stripped away part of the quirky charm of Miyamura's personality outside of school.
  • On the other end, Hori's rather explosive and violent outbursts straddles the line of how much the fandom would be willing to tolerate. It doesn't help matters that the mangaka swings back and forth between when her violence towards Miyamura is played for laughs or treated seriously. This divide reached its breaking point in a chapter where, in a fit of anger over Miyamura re-piercing a hole in his ear, she accidentally slams a door into his face causing his ear to bleed.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Miyamura struggling to believe that Hori actually considers him a friend and isn't just being nice. Really any moment where he's involved in a Friendship Moment or romantic moment with Hori and it doesn't feel real to him.
  • After Tooru rejects Sakura's confession, she goes on to see Tooru and Yuki together. She acts as the weight of the world is off of her shoulders now that she's confessed and gotten that out of the way, but after Sengoku gets the message and tries to comfort her, she immediately breaks down crying. Love Hurts, indeed.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • In Sengoku's first appearance, he's supposed to come off as having deserved getting beaten up by Miyamura because he humiliated Hori in public about the lost papers. While this might have been acceptable in the original webcomic, where he was actually being a jerk about it, in the manga and anime all he did was ask Hori to explain what happened to the papers—the people who were actually badmouthing her were the background students who were gossiping about the scene. Hori and her friends still act like he was basically accusing her of lying just for being the slightest bit skeptical about her tearful, defensive response. It gets even worse if you know the context behind their relationship—Hori used to kick Sengoku around in middle school, and Miyamura's attack probably brought some unpleasant memories up.
    • Values Dissonance: Even somewhat berating a person in public is Serious Business in Japan, so that Sengoku was doing so particularly inflamed Miyamura, who knew that the entire situation was caused by Remi’s flakiness. Add to it that Hori was voluntarily doing work that wasn’t even her responsibility, and you have a recipe for Miyamura, a person with both a history of being bullied and seemingly unresolved rage issues, to get “kinda pissed off”.
  • Kyousuke is nearly always the butt of the joke whenever he shows up, his family's opinion of him ranges from passive-aggressiveness at best (Yuriko) to straight-up hatred at worst (Kyouko), and they treat Miyamura (who's the only character in the series who actually somewhat likes Kyousuke) as much more of a member of the family than him. It's implied that he deserves this poor treatment from the rest of his family because he's a deadbeat and a Manchild. That said, when he shows Miyamura a picture of Kyouko as a girl and he points out how she's holding a baseball bat, Kyousuke shrugs it off by saying she was always violent and she got it from her mother. Which, if he's telling the truth, means the rest of the family treats him like trash not because of anything that he personally did to them but basically because they can.
• Unnecessary Makeover: Miyamura eventually cuts his shoulder-length hair into a shorter, more boyish do. He says it's because he wants to fit the image of what Hori's boyfriend should look like and avoid her being teased because of his meek looks, with several people commenting that the new haircut looks much better on him. The fans tend to disagree, stating that the change was unnecessary and looked better beforehand. Funnily enough, in-universe, both Hori and Watabe have a similar reaction to most fans and want Miyamura to let his hair grow again. After he reveals that some of his piercings are closing up and he doesn't have any intention of opening them again, more complaints followed. When both of them eventually get a shorter haircut and keep their hair that way in adulthood, even more of the fanbase had fractured opinions about it.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Little Girls?: The series could easily fit in a shoujo magazine, but it's published in a shounen one instead.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Shu Iura. He's this series' designated Butt-Monkey, with a sister who thinks he's an idiot and his friends all largely agreeing with that. However, he's monstrously popular, scoring third out of the cast members in the official poll.
• Values Dissonance: The Running Gag of Miyamura's desperation to keep his body tattoo a secret. In Japan, it's considered a social stigma^Explanation Tattoos in Japan are most often associated with the Yakuza.
• The Woobie: Miyamura. He was neglected, isolated and bullied by his peers whenever they felt like it in both middle school and high school, usually within earshot of him. It got to the point where he had some self harm tendencies and was suicidal, when he runs into his middle school bullies, even though it's been years, he won't defend himself no matter what they say. His self esteem is so bad that simple expressions of friendship confuses or surprises him. It takes him until the end of the series to really get past his trauma and self destructive tendencies.

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