Things are a little awkward between Miyamura and Hori, as they both try to process that they told each other “I like you” at the end of the previous volume. Because they're enormously frustrating characters, they manage to convince themselves that the other person didn't really mean it, so the awkwardness doesn't last long. Then Miyamura buys something for Hori while purchasing a magazine with an article about his family's bakery in it, and Hori decides to pay him back. After that, the whole gang gets together with the student council (free AC!), and there is embarrassment and relationship angst galore. This only increases when Miyamura reconnects with his best friend from middle school, who thinks Hori is Miyamura's girlfriend.

This volume was lots of fun: wonderfully sweet moments between Hori and Miyamura (#1: the hug!), lots of things that made me laugh, several intriguing new characters, and a possible future romance between Ishikawa and another character.

As much as I love Hori and Miyamura, their romance is incredibly frustrating. The fact that they like each other could not be more obvious. They've told each other as much at least one or two times, and they get along so well. I want them to finally believe in their feelings for each other...and, at the same time, I'm a little nervous about what will happen when they finally do. At this point in the series, they're still comfortable with each other. When they're not at school, they're often at Hori's home, acting happily domestic. I can absolutely imagine them being married. They'd be such a solid couple. However, I have a feeling that their first few dates are going to be incredibly awkward. Here's hoping the author keeps the awkwardness to a minimum. I don't want them to stop talking to each other!

Seeing Miyamura with his friend from middle school was a bit of a shock. I had gotten the impression, in the previous volume, that he hadn't had any friends until high school. Anyway, this bit helped me add more detail to my mental image of Miyamura. He needed someone willing to break the ice or introduce themselves to him first, someone who'd be willing to keep talking to him until he'd learned to relax around them. Shindou was willing to do that, as was Hori. That said, I wasn't comfortable with how Miyamura behaved with Shindou. He was rougher than I expected, even violent. Shindou didn't seem to have much of a problem with it, and maybe it was just a sign of how comfortable they were with each other, but it definitely reduced my enjoyment of those scenes.

I'll wrap this up with the magazine article about Miyamura's family's bakery. The instant Miyamura mentioned it, I knew there was going to be a picture of pierced and tattooed Miyamura in the magazine, and I was right. As usual, all the girls thought he looked hot but didn't connect him with the Miyamura they knew at school, and Miyamura pulled a new lie out of thin air, saying that the person was his family's partner. I was a little surprised that the author didn't use this as an opportunity to have Yoshikawa bring up Hori's lie from volume 1, that pierced Miyamura was her cousin. Instead, all the focus was on Hori, who accidentally destroyed a ruler and a mechanical pencil while stewing in her own jealousy.

This continues to be a solidly enjoyable series, even though several aspects of it are a little too frustrating and obvious and the author is already reusing the “relationship developments occurring while a character is delirious from illness” cliche. This is one of those series that has a high possibility of eventually growing stale, but for now I still love Hori and Miyamura and I like the artwork. I'm definitely planning on picking up the next volume.

Extras:

• One full-color image of Remi, Sengoku, and Kouno. The inside front cover also has a cute little related picture of Remi acting goofy with the other two student council members.
• One page of translation notes.
• A 3-page bonus manga. It's a continuation of Ishikawa's weird dream in which Miyamura is an adorable little cat person. This time around, he's joined by Sengoku in adorable little cat person form.
• The inside back cover includes a funny one-page bonus manga in which Hori complains about Miyamura's perfect hair (and Sengoku notices her casual mention of having brushed it before - yeah, Hori and Miyamura are fooling no one but themselves).

 

(Original review, including read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Hori agrees to help out the student council, even though she's already overworked. She also starts to worry about the future – she can't even begin to imagine what she might do after high school, and it dawns on her that Miyamura might leave her life forever after graduation. Readers get a brief flashback to Miyamura's past, as he worries about whether he truly fits in with this new group of friends he's found himself. Near the end of the volume, Ishikawa hears something shocking and confronts Miyamura about it.

I needed to read something sweet and this fit the bill, although it wasn't quite as good as the first volume in the series. Hori and Miyamura were, as usual, completely adorable together. There were lots of hilarious moments – my favorite was the one involving poor Ishikawa's birthday present for Hori. For everyone's sake, I hope he gets over Hori soon.

The flashback to Miyamura's elementary school (and middle school?) years was one of the more interesting moments in the volume. I had been wondering about his reasons for getting piercings and tattoos that he rarely allowed anyone to see, and this part seemed to indicate that it possibly started off as a form of self-harm. Considering that he did his first piercing with a safety pin, some tissues, and nothing else, he's lucky he didn't die of an infection. In the series' present day, though, I think he just genuinely enjoys the tattoos and piercings, based off of his reaction when Hori's little brother suggested a new tattoo for him to get (it totally looks like something out of Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, by the way).

This volume introduced a few new characters. I'm really not a fan of Remi, the student council president's girlfriend. She tries a little too hard to be cute, referring to herself in the third person (“Remi's in a hurryyy!”), and the bit later in the volume, when she needled Hori, was kind of odd. It would have made more sense for her to apologize for what she'd done to Hori earlier in the volume, and it felt like a clunky attempt, on the author's part, to move Hori and Miyamura's romance forward. That feeling was intensified when Ishikawa confronted Miyamura a short while later.

Like I said, I didn't think this volume was as good as the first one. However, I enjoyed it enough that I started reading (and finished!) the third volume before reviewing this one. I usually try to avoid doing that, because it becomes difficult to keep everything straight, but Hori and Miyamura were too sweet for me to want to stop.

That said, one last gripe: if I remember correctly, Hori's best friend saw Miyamura in his full pierced and tattooed glory in volume 1, and Hori lied and said he was her cousin. It seemed like this would be an important moment (and an important lie) in the near future, but it didn't come up again in this volume nor in volume 3 (and it really should have in volume 3, but more on that when I review that volume). Here's hoping that the author eventually does something with that detail.

Extras:

• One full-color illustration of Ishikawa and Yoshikawa (Hori's closest female friend). 
• A 4-page manga-style announcement of the Hori-san and Miyamura-kun OVA (based on the work on which Horimiya is based), which I would now badly like to see. 
• A 3-page bonus short in which Sengoku, the student council president, is revealed to be a little less cool than everybody but Hori thought.
• A 1-page manga-style afterword.
• One page of translation notes.

 

(Original review, including read-alikes and watch-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)

Completed Series Rating
⭐️? stars⭐️

Well, well, well... I did not expect that to happen... I mean, for 5 volumes it has been all cute and innocent and so, but then, unexpectedly, huh?? Nothing shows and it leaves the reader thinking "did it happen? did it not happen?"....

So far, this is my least favorite volume. I did not devour it. The chapters focused on the other characters were MEH. I don't like the possible love triangle between Tootu, Sakura and Ishikawa... And I certainly do not approve of that domestic violence. Miyamura is one of my favorite male characters in a shoujo, so that makes me dislike Hori a little bit. Her violent temper that came out of nowhere... In spite of Miyamura not being angry at all at her (as if he would be! he is the nicest guy) I still do not forgive her. Because of jealousy! Such a lame excuse...

ホリミヤ 5 - Hero,Hagiwara Daisuke Enters a new rival, Sawada, a cute girl. But not because she likes Izumi... no, she likes Hori!

Izumi being away for days and Hori missing him... awwww.

Just when Izumi was going to kiss Hori, here comes shaggy dad... awwww.