Review of given

I don't know if I expected too much given the rave reviews for this anime, but my feelings towards it were overall very lukewarm. The biggest issue were the characters, followed by my confusion if this Anime wanted to be about music, friendship or about romance. The main "couple" were so much in the background, that I was rooting more for the people in the flashbacks. Also, the feelings of the main couple towards each other felt unbelievable and too sudden because of that reason among many other things. For Akihiko, Ugetsu and Haruki I know there will be a movie which I will be watchingnext but it is pretty telling that the secondary characters get their own movie first. (Also I can pretty much guess what kind of a person Akihiko is, so I feel less than thrilled.)

The story was also about a band playing music but there was hardly any music to be heard at all (should've taken a page out of Gravitation's book, for anyone old enough to remember this classic).

There were a few emotional moments, mostly about Mafuyu's history but it just cemented him as a very lackluster main character.

I don't know if I missed something that everyone else saw in this story, but for a BL/Slice of Life anime it was pretty meh.