English Dub Review: Horimiya: The Missing Pieces “Sleepover”

Overview (Spoilers Below):
Miyamura, Iura, and Ishikawa go to the Sengoku household for a sleepover. Sengoku’s cramped bedroom leaves the boys scratching their heads about sleeping arrangements. Their close proximity leads Sengoku to start asking questions about Miyamura refusing to show his skin.

Our Take:
Miyamura’s secret just got a lot more challenging to hide, thanks to this week’s episode. The reason is that he’s invited to spend the night with his friends at Sengoku’s house, including Iura and Ishikawa. Unfortunately, he would have to share Sengoku’s cramped bedroom with everyone else. But that’s not the only reason for this predicament. It’s also due to Sengoku questioning Miyamura’s refusal to strip in front of everyone.
The sleepover shenanigans seemed like the basis of the entire episode from the title alone, but that’s not the case. Instead, it takes up the first act, in which Sengoku and the others attempt to find a better sleeping arrangement for them. Additionally, we see Sengoku trying to get Miyamura to show his skin, resulting in plenty of awkward scenarios, such as Iura thinking Sengoku is about to do something dirty to him. Sengoku’s pursuit continues at school, where he gets Miyamura to change clothes in front of him, only for Ishikawa to distract Sengoku at the last minute.
It was nice to see the episode progress the series regarding Miyamura’s secret instead of having random scenarios in a single plot. It’s not that the previous episodes are bad because of this structure. It’s the fact that since I haven’t watched the last season, I thought of this one as a solid progression of its character development. It also helps that the sleepover segment had a lot of hysterical moments regarding its out-of-context scenarios, like Sengoku being on top of a sleeping Miyamura.
The rest of the episode focuses on Sengoku getting caught in a misunderstanding with his girlfriend, Remi, and Sakura. After walking Remi home during the winter, Sengoku is spotted walking Sakura out of the classroom together, with Hori and Yuki being the first to witness it. As a result, they wind up believing that Sengoku might be cheating on Remi. However, it turns out that Sengoku is buying a bag of cookies for Sakura to share with Remi. The second half may not be as hilarious as Sengoku’s sleepover, but it offers plenty of cute moments involving these characters that could’ve gone in a predictable direction. Thankfully, it was easily resolved without any problems.