Horimiya: The Missing Pieces

Episode 9

Big surprise everybody, but the episode that focused primarily on the young adult teacher who is very open about how sexualizes his female students wasn't my favorite episode of the season so far! In all seriousness, when the episode opened up, I knew what jokes it was primarily going to lean on. While there were some nice moments in here towards the middle, which I will get into later, I pretty much got almost exactly what I was expecting. I never really understood the character of Yasuda that much because he was always there, and the first season primarily just recycled the same joke with him. It was definitely problematic, but he didn't bring the show down for me that much because he was never that much of a focus. Here, when you put his creepiness front and center, you realize Horimiya only really has two jokes with him. The first is, as I said, Yasuda just likes to creep on girls and almost seems proud of that fact. The other joke is that no other characters seem to really take him seriously or show him any real sign of respect. I guess it's nice to have a teacher the students can see eye to eye with, but that seems mostly done to make fun of him or put him down for his very justifiably creepy behavior. It wears thin quickly, and I wonder why this guy still has a job.

The one saving grace of this episode was towards the middle where we got a little glimpse into the relationship between Tooru and Yuki. That whole scene about the sewing needle and how Tooru was clearly jealous because he wants Yuki to look after him was cute, especially since the reason why Yuki brings her sewing kit with her in the first place is because Tooru keeps losing his buttons. I would've liked it if there was more follow-up to that scene because, technically, neither character learned anything from the situation. I'm still not even sure what their relationship dynamic is supposed to be at this point in the series. I would like them to develop because I see them as a secondary couple of the show, but these two have barely gotten any solo focus let alone focus as a pairing. It seems like a massively wasted opportunity that I hope the show rectifies sometime soon!

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Horimiya: The Missing Pieces is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.