WARNING: This review contains GREAT BIG SPOILERS for the end of Volume 9. If you hate spoilers, you really, REALLY shouldn’t read this review until you finish Volume 9.
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The new year brings the final few months of Hori and Miyamura’s final year of high school. After Miyamura asked Hori to marry him at the end of Volume 9, their everyday interactions begin to shift. Honoka, the first-year from Volume 5, makes another appearance, and Sengoku and his father stop by the Hori family’s house.
Horimiya © HERO · OOZ © Daisuke Hagiwara / SQUARE ENIX
Volume 10 moves along the ongoing plots with established characters rather than trying to introduce new faces as Hori and Miyamura hurtle towards graduation. Readers learned back in Volume 5 that Miyamura looks a lot like Honoka’s older brother, who passed away some time before we meet her in the manga. In this volume, their friendship seems to have evolved into a sibling-like relationship, with all its ups and downs.
There’s also a very sweet flashback to earlier on in high school, when Sengoku and Remi first met. (Presumably the reason the two of them are on the cover of this volume.) Though Remi was fairly popular among the boys because of her appearance, Sengoku didn’t notice her at all until she wanted to talk to him about books. The scene is heartwarming and adorable, and it’ll fulfill any need you have in your heart for warm and fluffy feelings.
However, there’s a scene near the middle of the volume that left me feeling a little gross. Hori and Sengoku accidentally fall asleep in the student council room, and when they finally get a teacher to let them out, the teacher makes a comment about feeling Hori up to make sure she isn’t carrying anything that’s against the rules. It’s played off as a joke when a female teacher comes up behind him and overhears, but it came off as slimy, and it wasn’t really needed for the humor of that scene to work.
Though the plotline with Honoka and the flashback between Sengoku and Remi were delightful highlights of the volume, Volume 10 felt overall disjointed and episodic, with very little stringing it together. Hopefully, Volume 11 will return to a more cohesive overarching plot when it releases in June.
Story: 4 out of 5
Art: 4.5 out of 5
Overall: 4 out of 5
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