Not a sequel, actually.
Summary:
- Horimiya was fully concluded in its original TV run, so fans are confused about Horimiya: The Missing Pieces.
- It’s not a sequel — it adapts the skipped chapters of the manga.
- If you want to see more of the characters, it’s worth watching.
If you only watched the first Horimiya TV anime, you might be confused about it getting a second season. After all, the anime perfectly concludes the storyline and never needed a sequel. Yet somehow, Horimiya: The Missing Pieces (Horimiya: Piece) exists, so what is it?
The anime doesn't have a sequel and doesnt need it
Well, it is not actually a sequel. The Missing Pieces is exactly what you could figure out from the name. It’s essentially just side stories, slice-of-life episodes about the characters of the original series that take place during the original series.
Of course, Horimiya doesn’t have a sequel — because it doesn’t need one. However, the anime actually skipped a lot of the manga chapters, and The Missing Pieces adapts some of them. Yet, somehow, fans weren’t actually unhappy about either of the anime — so what happened?
Adapting all chapters of the manga would not have worked
Many modern romantic comedy and romance manga actually work much better in manga form. The reason for that is that they are good for fast reading, having a lot of episodic content that barely influences the story and the character development. This is much harder to watch in anime, because they might feel like they drag on a lot.
Horimiya is not an exception to this. The manga is very long, but the anime adapts the main points of the story and some of the more important chapters, making a coherent story with little to no content that feels like filler. Yes, it’s not technically filler, but it feels like it.
So is it worth watching?
Horimiya: The Missing Pieces adapts some of these chapters. If you want to see more of the characters in slice-of-life short skits, this might be for you — just don’t expect an actual sequel (not that the anime needed any).
It’s worth watching if you fell in love with the cast of the anime and wanted to see more of them. If you only cared about the conclusion of the main romantic plotline, though, it is easily skippable.
There’s also Hori-san to Miyamura-kun, which is the original webcomic that was published before Horimiya. It’s somewhat different, but it got an adaptation too, consisting of six OVAs. While most fans agree that it is inferior to Horimiya, it is also worth checking out if you want to see the characters again.