Shadowing Practice: How to Love Yourself? What Horimiya Is Really About - Learn English Speaking with Video

INTRO Horimiya is an incredibly popular title. According to statistics from AniList and MyAnimeList, the manga ranks among the fifteen most-read works in history. The only series above it are giants like One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Berserk. More importantly, it’s the only romance story ranked that high in terms of popularity.

And yet, Horimiya doesn’t have the sharp comedic elegance of Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, the supernatural twists of Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai, or the emotional drama of Nana.

So what is it that makes this seemingly simple story about high school relationships feel so special? What makes people fall in love with these characters? Spend time with them again and again? Rewatch their favorite episodes and reread their favorite chapters?

I think the answer is that Horimiya isn’t just a romance manga. It’s a story about how, before you can find happiness, friendship, love, or even a sense of purpose, you first have to learn to love yourself.

STORY The story of Horimiya has already been told at least five different times. It first appeared as comedic four-panel comics published on the author’s personal website, then as a small experimental six-episode OVA titled Hori-san to Miyamura-kun, followed by the full manga adaptation illustrated by Daisuke Hagiwara.

After that came the now-famous anime adaptation by CloverWorks, and finally an equally popular live-action drama released in 2021, which was screened both in theaters and on television.

And despite all of that, Horimiya begins like a very classic romantic comedy about two complete opposites. Hori is the most popular girl in class. She gets good grades, helps the student council, and constantly turns down countless boys asking for her number.

Miyamura, on the other hand, is the exact opposite — the quiet, weird guy sitting in the back of the classroom, never talking to anyone, always buttoned up to the neck, and looking like a complete otaku.

But in the very first episode, we learn that all of this is just a facade.

Hori is actually impulsive and emotionally vulnerable, a girl who gives up ordinary teenage experiences — like going to karaoke with friends — just to take care of her little brother.

And Miyamura, while he does read manga, is far from being an otaku. In reality, he’s actually a pretty cool guy covered in tattoos and piercings.

By pure chance, the two of them discover each other’s secrets, and suddenly they share something no one else knows — along with moments they spend entirely alone together. That shared secret brings them closer, and little by little, their relationship begins to turn into romance.

But that’s not where the story ends. Most of the series isn’t actually about the characters getting together — it’s about Hori and Miyamura growing together, dealing with difficulties, and learning how to care for each other while already being in a relationship.

At the same time, we get to know the people around them more closely: the tomboyish Yuki, the caring Toru, the student council trio, and a whole cast of other characters, each with their own complicated personalities and insecurities.

And the further the story goes, the clearer it becomes that Horimiya is very different from most romantic comedies. Here, romance isn’t treated as the ultimate goal the characters are striving toward. The sunset kiss isn’t some final scene meant to leave the audience with a sense of complete fulfillment. And not every character ends up finding the perfect partner by the finale.

In Horimiya, relationships are really just the backdrop — a backdrop for carefully written jokes, warm everyday moments, and, most importantly, for the characters’ emotional growth and personal change.

Everyone has sides of themselves they don’t want others to see. That’s the line the entire story begins with. And ultimately, the process of accepting those hidden sides of themselves — learning to care for themselves, appreciate themselves, and eventually love themselves — becomes the true driving force of the series, its central theme, and its greatest strength.

MIYAMURA This theme is expressed most clearly through Miyamura’s character. Back in middle school, he was bullied by his classmates for being strange, quiet, and painfully shy. People mocked him, ignored him, and he barely had any friends at all.

At one point, he was even blamed for something terrible — the death of a rabbit the class was supposed to take care of, after he was accused of forgetting to feed it. Even though, in reality, it wasn’t Miyamura’s fault at all.

Little by little, that constant pressure broke him. At his core, Miyamura is a genuinely kind and sincere person, so he internalized all of the bullying and blamed himself for it. Instead of rebelling, defending himself, or trying to fight for his place among others, he chose to disappear instead — to stop being a burden, to stop being noticed. To close off his heart and keep his eyes fixed on the ground.

But unfortunately, bullying doesn’t end once you stop standing out. If anything, the lack of resistance only makes it grow worse over time. Eventually, the outside world becomes a cramped cage for Miyamura — one whose bars painfully dig into his skin, with no way out.

To him, the only escape was to grow up, to become someone else entirely. That’s why he pierces his own ears — because people with piercings must be more mature, right? That’s why he gets tattoos — because schoolkids aren’t allowed to have them. In his own desperate way, he’s trying to stop being himself. But the harder he tries to do that, the more anger begins to build inside him — because none of it actually works. Those outward changes don’t suddenly make him strong, confident, or mature. And the more desperately he tries to become someone else, the more he begins to hate himself.

And along with that comes hatred for the people around him — hatred toward his classmates, toward those who seem successful, toward people who managed to find friends, toward change, toward school, toward the entire world around him. Eventually, he even starts to hate life itself — the life he was given. At that point, Miyamura even begins thinking about suicide. But thankfully, he never goes through with it.

When he transfers to a new high school, a place where nobody knows him, he once again tries to become someone else. He hides his piercings and tattoos and pretends to be a quiet otaku sitting in the back of the classroom.

But then he meets Hori — and everything changes.

Little by little, layer by layer, she breaks through the defenses Miyamura has built around himself. First, she learns about his rebellious past. Then about his bad grades, about his family of pastry chefs, about the fact that he’s afraid of horror movies and loves stew.

She learns more and more about who Miyamura really is — and accepts him as he is: a little cool, a little strange, a little stupid, and a little interesting.

But Miyamura, unused to being accepted by other people, tries to run away again.

He tells his classmate Toru, who is in love with Hori, that he doesn’t like her at all, and that she only spends time with him out of pity. He sees himself as unworthy of Hori. Toru, in his eyes, is a much better match for a popular girl like her. Miyamura even admits that if he were in Hori’s place, he wouldn’t date himself either.

Despite all his attempts to change, to hide, to disappear, Miyamura still sees himself as that same insecure, awkward middle school boy nobody liked — someone who has no right to be loved in the first place.

The turning point comes during a conversation with Shindo, the only real friend Miyamura had back in middle school. Shindo tells him something simple but devastating: when you doubt yourself, you’re actually doubting other people too. In reality, you’re doubting Hori.

Low self-esteem doesn’t just hold people back in school or in their careers. It doesn’t just make it harder to dream, make plans, or pursue goals. It also damages the way we connect with others — because you never give them the chance to decide for themselves whether they like you or not. By deciding that you’re unworthy on your own, you take away other people’s freedom to choose. And in doing so, you end up hurting them too.

Shindo tells Miyamura directly: stop running away.

And so, the first person who showed Miyamura that the outside world isn’t made up only of fear, cruelty, and rejection — his old school friend — helps him move toward the second person, Hori, the one who will finally free him from the cage he built with his own hands.

But that change doesn’t happen overnight. Miyamura still isn’t ready to face his past. Yes, he cuts his hair, stops hiding his piercings, and begins opening up to other people. But even those changes are still, in some ways, attempts to become someone else — even if they’re far healthier than his old desire to simply disappear.

And even after Miyamura starts dating Hori, he continues to feel painfully weak and insecure.

He can’t believe that other people could genuinely love him, trust him, or take an interest in him. Awkwardly, he asks Toru, What do you actually think of me?

He struggles to even call his friends by their first names. And when he’s invited to participate in the school sports festival, he hesitantly asks, Are you sure you really want me there?

It takes years of high school, the support of friends, a person who loves him, a heartfelt conversation with the person who once bullied him, and countless sleepless nights filled with doubt and regret before, by the very end of the story, Miyamura finally stops pretending the past never happened. For the first time, he’s able to truly look himself in the eye — and stop running away.

OTHER CHARACTERS At the same time, the theme of self-acceptance runs through the lives of almost every character in the series. If Miyamura spends the story running away from himself, then Hori, for example, struggles to value herself at all. She takes the entire burden of caring for her brother and managing the household because her parents are always at work.

That’s where her jealousy, overprotectiveness, and even her violent outbursts come from.

That’s why she’s convinced Miyamura will eventually stop loving her, or that her classmates will stop appreciating her if she ever quits helping the student council. Deep down, she’s terrified of being left alone again.

And while Hori helps Miyamura come out of his shell, Miyamura helps Hori learn to trust other people and recognize the value of everything she does for them.

Hori’s friend Yuki, the tomboyish and carefree girl of the group, struggles with her own inner problems as well. Even though she acts open and straightforward, she constantly hides her real desires deep inside herself.

She rejects things first, only to realize later that she actually wanted them all along — whether it’s a childish hairpin, a stuffed toy, the last issue of a magazine, or the boy she’s in love with.

Unlike Miyamura, Yuki isn’t trying to become someone else. But she’s unable to be honest with herself — and that inability quietly keeps her from truly living.

Or take Sakura, for example — Yuki’s main romantic rival, since they both have feelings for Toru. She struggles with low self-esteem too, but in her case it doesn’t come from childhood trauma. It comes from envy. She’s close friends with Remi, a girl who seems better than her in every possible way: cuter, prettier, thinner, more popular, more successful.

And compared to someone like that, Sakura feels invisible. As though she herself means nothing.

As though her feelings mean nothing. As though there’s no point in even trying.

And that’s what makes Horimiya so remarkable. Almost every character in the story struggles, in one way or another, with accepting themselves. They doubt themselves, feel anxious, afraid, unloved, incomplete. They see themselves as too strange, too awkward, too flawed. They try to hide, to run away, to disappear.

Just like us, the audience, they’re forced to confront a complicated world — both inside themselves and around them — and they don’t always come out of that struggle victorious.

And all of this exists inside what initially looks like a simple, carefree romantic comedy.

WE ARE ALL STRANGE And this is where the truly special quality of Horimiya reveals itself. Because no matter how the story is told — through the manga, the anime, or the live-action drama — it always manages to communicate the same central idea.

An idea that, honestly, I think every insecure teenager, every student, and every adult afraid of being themselves needs to hear. That all of us are weird. Every single one of us is weird — and that’s okay.

One last example. Another character, Sawada, is a year younger than the rest of the cast. In many ways, she acts as a reflection of Miyamura. She likes Hori too, she also feels lonely and out of place, and she’s bullied by her classmates as well.

But unlike Miyamura, Sawada quickly finds friends who support her. And importantly, those friends are older than her — which, in a school environment, makes a huge difference. So when she asks them whether she’s weird, they don’t try to deny it or comfort her with empty reassurance. Instead, they simply tell her, Yeah, you are weird.

But so are we.

In that moment, Sawada is given permission — by older friends she trusts — to be weird, to be vulnerable, to be exactly who she really is. And because of that, unlike Miyamura, she never tries to hide from people or run away from them. Eventually, the bullying around her fades away, and, like so many other characters in Horimiya, she slowly begins to find herself.

All of us are weird. All of us have sides of ourselves we don’t want to show to others. And that’s okay.

But we shouldn’t try to run away from ourselves. We shouldn’t pretend those parts of us don’t exist. We shouldn’t build impenetrable walls between ourselves and the outside world. Pretend to be someone else. Ignore our own desires. Dismiss the value of our own efforts. Or convince ourselves that we’re unworthy of love, happiness, or connection.

Because before you can become happy — before you can find friends, love, or a sense of purpose — you first have to learn to love yourself.

And I think that’s exactly why Horimiya became such a beloved story in the first place.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: How to Love Yourself? What Horimiya Is Really About - Learn English Speaking with Video

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