Given Movie 2: Hiiragi Mix

If you want a lesson in how to avoid communicating with people in general, watch this movie. I swear, you won't be disappointed in this regard. If you came here for literally anything else, you just might be.

To preface this review: I read the entire manga from start to finish. The first half was fantastic. The latter half was a drag and I wanted to tear my hair off my head in pretty much every chapter after chapter 35 or so, around the time when the Hiiragi arc begins. As implied by the title, it focuses mostly on Hiiragi and his budding romance with Shizusumi, ... his band member and childhood friend. The two of them started a band with another childhood friend, Yuki Yoshida, who passed away a couple of years prior to the events in this film, and before the series started. That premise in and of itself promises a lot of lingering feelings of grief, regret, love, jealousy... all those things, amplified by the fact that these are teenage kids who have a lot of maturing left to do. That aspect is glaringly obvious in this film, the lack of maturity and - as previously mentioned - severe lack of communication.

Several times throughout this film and while reading the manga, I found myself practically yelling at my screen "maybe ask Mafuyu WHY he didn't want to elaborate on why he's unsure of whether or not he wants to debut with his band, maybe ask him WHY he turned down the offer to come along for dinner". These people suck at communicating with the right people. They just whine about their issues regarding someone to literally anyone else but the person their annoyance pertains to. The lack of communication is highly ironic in a series like this considering how, early on, Haruki Nakayama of the band Given said "Music is all about communication". All of them dropped that mindset right after he voiced it out loud, and it's been out of the picture ever since. I get that most of them are teenagers, but they aren't 13. They're 17-18 and they should know better. It's a poor plot device that does nothing but frustrate and make people more likely to skip forward in the film to get past those frustrating parts.

Disregarding the plot entirely which is just a train-wreck, the music is - as it's always been - fantastic. Centimillimental's musical talent and writing still blows my socks off. The art is the same as it's always been; nice to look at but nothing that really makes you go 'wow'. There's a lot of slide-shows in the film in lieu of actually animating and voice acting those scenes out which I always feel is really cheap, especially when the slides are supposed to tell an important part of the story. Overall, I'm on the fence about whether or not I'd recommend this film. If you've only watched the anime, the previous film, and the OVA - I'd say go for it. For manga readers who finished it... well, you know what you're in for, you know what's coming up. It's a lot of repeated frustration except this time, it's animated and voice acted. To summarise: Proceed at your own risk...?

This movie is so disappointing.

Everything that made "given" a good anime in the first season and the first movie? This movie does the opposite of that.
Given, in my opinion, had the perfect balance between wholesome and dramatic when it came to same-sex relationships. The two main couples weren't too wholesome to the point where it was boring, but they also weren't too toxic to the point where it was disturbing. Even when *that* scene happened in the first movie with the second couple, the aftermath was handled super well. But this movie does the complete opposite of that. Forget about the slowburn innocent love of ... Mafuyu and Ritsuka. Forget about the carefully developed mature love of Akihiko and Haruki. Hiiragi and Shizusumi's relationship is, at most, a cringy Wattpad fic that is written by a 13 year old straight girl. Why dedicate a whole movie to the side side couple that is not only irrelevant to the main plot but also falls short in everything compared to other couples? I wasn't against the idea of them being together, but this was such a lackluster from start to finish. It comes almost out of nowhere, it relies solely on miscommunication and other toxic tropes, and in the end, those issues aren't even really solved. Their arc feels like an afterthought to the author, who had no idea how to conclude it, so she just made them... have sex. And all of their problems were magically solved. Character development? Consent? Nowhere to be found. Honestly, even their problems felt forced, trying to tie it all to Yuki. It also doesn't help that Shizusumi as a character is so insufferable and static that I don't see any redeeming qualities for him, unlike other flawed given characters such as Akihiko, who apologized for his actions and showed a ton of character development.

The only reason I gave this movie a 6 is because I still love the other plotlines and the main 4 characters. That's it. I can't believe this is the same author who wrote the previous arcs.