I’m calling this episode the series finale for now but I do believe there are still some manga chapters that haven’t been adapted. Maybe there’ll be an OVA or two in the future. It’d be really funny if there’s enough for a third season. What could it even be titled if Season 2 is already called The Missing Pieces?
I was very curious as to how exactly this season would end. It did begin with a brief look at Hori and Miyamura’s graduation but surely, the show wouldn’t come back to it in earnest again. We already saw the ceremony in the first season finale. Evidently, the joke is on me as that is very much how Missing Pieces ends, with a second depiction of something we already saw. To be fair, most of the episode is new footage so I’m okay with the seeing the ending done a second time. That said, it is funny to learn that the staff couldn’t fit the entire ending in half an hour. I would love to see a fan edit that stitches this and the original finale into one long episode. If it’s following the manga, it’d probably flow fairly well.
My first guess as to what this finale would entail is the gang’s trip to the beach. That was brought up in the original season finale, only to go completely nowhere. Funnily enough, the proposed trip is brought up again in this episode…and then the show doesn’t do anything with it again. Is this trip not in the manga? Why is this consistently omitted.
There is one moment that feels repetitive and that’s the one where Hori imagines what life would be like, had Sota not met Miyamura and kicked the whole story off. Miyamura did this same exact thing in the original finale and it’s implied that Hori’s daydream happens to parallel to that. I can see why this originally got cut as having these two what ifs back to back would take up a whole episode and get tiring. Still, I enjoy this scene. Usually, we’re privy to what’s going on inside Miyamura’s mind. Seeing Hori’s for a change is refreshing. I also love how differently Hori’s what if plays out. Whereas Miyamura imagined the worst case scenario, Hori prefers to think that even if things did play out differently, she’d still end up with Miyamura and their circle of friends would still be formed.
You could probably tell throughout this series of blog posts but I’m pretty mixed on Missing Pieces. It did what it set out to do which is adapt cut content and expand on the original series’ narrative. However, I’m unconvinced if said content really compliments it. I thought the original series lost focus towards the end and Missing Pieces feels just as aimless as that, if not more (and that’s saying something for a slice of life show). There’s a bunch of characters that I’m not super fond of such as Yoshikawa, Iura, Yanagi, and Yasuda-sensei but despite the extra screentime provided by Missing Pieces, I’m just as disinterested in them as I was when I watched the original series. Missing Pieces also introduces some new characters and that has some middling results as well (who honestly thought Watabe’s character was a good idea?!).
There are a couple scenes that I wish were included over other stuff in the original series. The sports day episode in particular comes to mind. Often however, I get why these scenes were cut in the first place and it made me prefer the more streamlined narrative the original series provided. There’s some baffling creative decisions in the original series but at least it’s straighter to the point and it cut out most of the fluff featuring characters that I don’t care about. I’m sure diehard fans are pleased with this but me personally, I didn’t get much out of this series of deleted scenes.
Watch Horimiya: The Missing Pieces on Crunchyroll and Funimation
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