Review of given

A realistic review of Given… I see so many people raving about how realistic this show is. How it explores the characters and their fears, their insecurities, their pain… etc… And look. It does do this. It just does it in a very shallow way. Maybe if it had more episodes it could have been something meaningful. Don’t let those rave reviews fool you into believing that Given does not follow the usual Bl tropes. Because it does. The Uke is still smaller and cuter than the Seme in all the relationships. It’s also obvious which is which from first glance. My favourite character in this was Kaji,but so much of his backstory was just a mess. I just never really understood why his relationship with that violin genius didn’t work out? Something about the two of them stopping each other from succeeding in their respective fields? Was that it? Stifling each other’s creativity?? To me it just looked like Kaji was sick of the other guy fucking around on him?
The worst part is the horribly rushed movie that finishes Kaji and Harukis story, that was just painful to watch. It was like 50 minutes of vaguely philosophical bullshit about Kajis past relationship and like 5 minutes of the~
“I ignored you so I could work on myself and become worthy of your love” ~ trope. I had real hope for these two because they were adults in a bl anime that actually tried to be something more. But you know…

I’m reading the manga now, so far it’s not better, but I’m not far into it.

About Mafuyu and Ritsuka??

I don’t have much to say tbh. Their pretty standard bl characters. Mafuyu is cute, doesn’t talk much, the only good thing about his character is that he’s a uke who’s got more sexual experience than his current seme. All that stuff about his boyfriend dying… was pretty boring. Using the death of a loved one as a tragic backstory is so watpad to me… if it’s not done right it just reminds me of bad fanfics and AUs… and something about the way Mafuyu reacts to everything just screams… “Shit this guy can’t be TOO upset about his dead boyfriend ‘coz we need him to like this new guy now”

Ritsuka?? Honestly I don’t even remember what his thing was. Something about losing his sound?? I mean what the fuck does that even mean?? Look I’m in the creative field, I use music as inspiration for physical art all the time, and sure I can relate to things like writers block or loss of muse, but what the fuck does losing your sound mean?? Is this bad translation?

Also only hyper sexual males are inspired by their lovers, so this whole thing between Ritsuka and Mafuyu is mostly lost on me. Yeh I know it’s meant to be the love that inspires, but this is a realistic review. And artists and musicians haven’t been getting inspired by love since the Middle Ages. The human race is just a bunch of jaded fucks these days.

Ugh this is turning into a rant isn’t it…

Whatever. The show wasn’t bad, but it’s also not the fucking holy grail of bl that everyone thinks it is.