Ritsuka played guitar but has lost interest in the instrument. One day, he meets Mafuyu, who is holding a broken guitar. Ritsuka unwillingly starts teaching Mafuyu the guitar, but when he hears Mafuyu’s voice, things suddenly begin to change for Ritsuka. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 11
Source: Manga
Review: Note: this review may contain mild spoilers for the anime series.
When I was in high school I played flute in the concert band. I enjoyed it so much that I even took outside lessons and participated in the annual solo competitions put on by the area schools. I didn’t have a great time in school overall, but being able to express myself through music is one of the better memories I have of that time in my life. I came to the realization at some point that when your emotions operate outside what other people are willing to tolerate on a regular basis, it’s life’s other more artistic avenues that serve as an alternative outlet for those complicated, powerful feelings.
Given is the story of a budding relationship between two high school students, a tale it heartily accomplishes through sensitive, slow-burn character development. But it’s also a peek into the life of someone dealing with trauma and the shame that seemed to crop up in its aftermath. Unsurprisingly, it’s music that seems to tie everything together.
The story begins with Ritsuka Uenoyama, a gruff and perpetually tired high school student who doesn’t care much for his studies, but who spends his evenings playing guitar in an amateur rock band. He has musical talent beyond his years, but hasn’t been particularly passionate about it lately. One day he meets Mafuyu Sato, a quiet boy who, for some reason, always carries around a guitar in its case. Mafuyu asks Ritsuka to please teach him how to play the guitar, and Ritsuka is taken aback – why would this guy carry around a guitar that he can’t play? After a lot of back-and-forth, Ritsuka finally relents; he subsequently brings Mafuyu along to band practice and seeing the band in action appears to set a fire inside him. As it turns out, Mafuyu has a beautiful singing voice, and this just might be the key to Ritsuka’s band finally getting off the ground. But the song that Mafuyu likes to hum is missing its lyrics, and finding those perfect words may be the ultimate challenge that Mafuyu needs to face.
One of my first observations about Given (having blasted through it in a couple of sittings) is that it’s an incredibly restrained piece of work. I think there can be a tendency with the type of stories adapted into anime to feature large, concrete goals and big climactic moments. It’s one of the things that’s always made anime an appealing medium, after all. Instead, this series skews in the opposite direction, focusing on smaller interactions, emotional moments where the viewer has to “read between the lines” so-to-speak, and instances where characters are alone with their own thoughts and memories. While there certainly are a couple of larger emotional climaxes (a particular performance of the band near the end of the series being the particular one that comes to mind), most of the series is told through glimpses into the characters’ lives and small, seemingly average conversations between them. It’s really more a series about developing relationships than it is about the perfection of musical skills, and while watching characters talk and interact might bore some folks, I enjoy the process of getting to know characters organically in this way.
That’s why I really have to hand it to the series for accomplishing a very balanced presentation of the different characters. While the focus of the story is more on the interactions between Ritsuka and Mafuyu as the obvious couple, band members Akihiko and Haruki, muddling through their own love-lives and unrequited feelings, also get their time in the spotlight (no stage performance-related pun intended). They’re both college students, and it’s comforting to be reminded, through them, that high school graduation doesn’t somehow erase the awkwardness that comes along with navigating romantic emotions. While their pieces of the narrative are ultimately left more open-ended than some of the other aspects of the story, I feel that the attempt to flesh them out at all adds to the richness of the narrative.
This series is a BL romance at its core, and while I enjoy stories about relationships no matter the gender makeup, BL is a genre that typically comes with its own set of tropes that I don’t always jive with. While I suspect the manga landscape is a lot richer and more nuanced in this regard, many of the BL series I’ve seen get adapted to animation seem to be similar in that they try to strike a humorous tone where the main couple ends up together through some circumstances wherein one of the two characters is at least partially unwilling. There are sometimes some sexual situations that are of questionable consent, and those moments really tend to put me off. To me, it’s always more fun if everyone seems happy to be involved; when one character is pestering the other into having sex until they relent, or even tricks or drags them into the situation unwillingly, I find it all pretty upsetting. Given does a great job of avoiding any of these missteps; sexuality isn’t at the forefront of the story in the first place, and by the time the relationship between Ritsuka and Mafuyu becomes obvious and inevitable, they’ve both organically become equal participants. It’s refreshing to enjoy a romantic series without mentally listing off a bunch of warnings and caveats!
Given‘s visual style is a good match for its storytelling, electing to utilize subtle, hand-crafted detail over flashier animation for the most part. The characters are all attractive and varied looking, and many important emotional scenes are enhanced with interesting lighting effects and filters. The couple of major musical performances look great and it’s in these moments that the animation goes all-out. There’s a good blend of hand-drawn and CG animation used to depict the characters playing their instruments, which works well.
Ultimately, the most satisfying part of the story for me was witnessing Mafuyu’s growth through music, and his ability to express the painful emotions he’d been holding onto for so long. I’m reminded again of my brief tenure as a high school musician, playing a Mozart piece in the solo competition my senior year. The previous few years had seemed like hurdle after hurdle – several tumultuous teenage relationships, undiagnosed mental illness, family strife, being emotionally unprepared for college looming in the distance – and I poured all that out within my 10 minute time slot. I don’t really recall my score, but I do remember crying afterward and even to this day I get a little bit choked-up thinking about it. Mafuyu’s time in the limelight is also brief but offers him a similar sort of catharsis, allowing him to move forward past his lingering sense of loss. His story is beautiful and relatable, etching itself into my memory like the notes of a favorite song.
Pros: Excellent character-focused story. Lack the consent issues found in some other BL stories.
Cons: Slow-burn narrative that might bore some viewers.
Content Warnings: Occasional depictions of homophobia. Character death/suicide (flashback). References to child abuse and alcohol abuse.
Grade: A-