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Apr 16, 2022
I will never again watch an anime just because I see it on top ten lists.
This was absolute garbage.
I can kind of understand why so many may have liked this when it first aired, it has a knack for trying to con the audience into believing that it’s deep and is also trying to say something.
But it really isn’t. It’s exposition heavy in parts in such an unnatural way that it made me cringe, at just how bad the conversation between the characters giving the exposition was. To be fair though, all the dialogue in this anime is a mess. Nobody ever actually
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says anything, when the ‘deep’ moments with Hajime are happening she never actually says anything, she giggles her way through some vague cutesy talk and then says ‘Your fine the way you are’ like that’s meant to be some kind of nirvana inducing revelation. Or ‘it’s scary to make decisions’ OMG how could that bit of wisdom have possibly escaped me all my life? How did I never realise that?
It’s a joke. I can’t believe there’s anyone out there who could take this seriously…
I barely remember any of the characters and I finished watching this today. Yet they have already faded into obscurity if they left any kind of impression at all. Which to be honest I doubt they did. From what I do remember they were all single trait personality types. As in they have one thing that defines their personality and all their worldly struggles are tied to that one thing. But it doesn’t actually matter because the show doesn’t bother with them anyway. It pretends too, but if you try to tell me exactly what any of the other characters learned from the whole experience and you actually told me something definitive I would tell you that your self projecting because it definitely didn’t happen.
I had some hope for the villain, Katze at least appeared interesting at the start. Until he also just kept going through the same motions and repeating the exact same things using different words and phrasing. The way he was played up as being super powerful, and, the way it’s never actually shown just HOW Hajime seals him inside herself just proves that the writers had no idea what they were doing and no plan as to how to finish the story. If you want to be different but you have no idea how to actually do it, it’s best not to try in my opinion, or you end up with this kind of vague and lazy ending to an even lazier story.
I won’t point out all the abandoned plot points because there’s too many and I barely remember them, I’m sure we all remember the big one though. The MESS. At some point Hajimes cube just… disappears and it’s never mentioned again. Yet half the characters in this are obviously not the type that would just let something like that go. I mean up until a few days, or weeks (because who knows how much time is actually passing here?) they were fighting those cubes but now that they’ve stopped abducting people, well it doesn’t matter. They just happen to be an obviously dangerous alien life form that is still present on earth… but well we’re running out of episodes so better forget about that.
I just cannot understand why animes like this become popular at all? How does Hajime as an MC hold up in any way? Is it because of the Pixie Girl trend? It just blows my mind…
I know there’s a second season but I’m sorry, I don’t plan to waste another 6 hours of my life watching this, I’m sure it’s just going to be the first season with a few new characters anyway.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Nov 5, 2021
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,
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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.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Nov 4, 2021
There’s not much to say about Junjou. All the show does is follow a tried and tested formula, and it does this throughout all three seasons.
A relationship is established after going through some issues and finally admitting their feelings for each other. Then another problem or issue is introduced, these usually revolve around jealousy, bad communication or meddling from outside by friends/family. The couple will always have worked out whatever it is by the end of the episode. Then in the next one it starts all over again, just with a new problem/issue.
I find the side couples easier to deal with and enjoy to be
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honest. And Usagi’s character is fine, but Misaki is just the worst example of what is meant to be the innocent & oblivious character trope. Instead of coming across as cute he comes across as in denial and full of self hatred. Why else would he keep denying the existence of a relationship between him and Usagi after they’ve been living and sleeping together for 3 years already? Pushing that trope too far just causes a character to turn into a cardboard cut out…
He’s 21 years old just about to finish his University degree and this idiot has no idea that it takes more than just an editor to produce a book. I mean how stupid is he meant to be here? Because he’s like way past the line of naivety and innocence and so far into just being dumb it’s painful to watch him fumble his way through life in general.
Anyway, let’s talk about the best part of this season. We all know what it is, the animation!! The quality from season 2 to 3 is just astounding. You can actually tell characters apart from the first glance, the backgrounds are actually clear, everyone’s faces don’t look like Isosceles triangles, body proportions and hands in particular xD are almost even. I mean if you watch all the seasons one after the other, when you get to the third it’s like your watching a top quality series. Even though if you were to compare to a different anime it would still be not very good at all. If they had actually matched it to the current art in the manga it would have been even better, but almost anything is better than those first two seasons xD you have to REALLY love this show to put yourself through the torture of watching that.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Oct 13, 2021
Usually when an anime is popular I can kind of understand why, even if I don’t like it myself. But with this? I just can’t understand why anyone would like this. Unless they’re about 14 years old and think that yandere and yangire are just soooo cool…
If you’re thinking about giving this a shot, don’t. Please don’t waste your time. I absolutely promise that I’m not being over critical, and you definitely are not missing out on a good thing.
The whole first season is a mess. It’s told like an actual Visual Novel would be, one arc starts at the beginning and it usually
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ends with one character going crazy and murdering a bunch of people, then it resets and starts again in the next arc. Nothing is ever actually explained and everything is just chalked up as being caused by ‘the curse’. But the cause of the curse? What started it and why it happens? Is also never explained. Unless you think some vague information about a dam being built and the three main families is an explanation.
It’s just a curse, so yeah deal with it. It’s like the writers just though that calling it a curse and having a few of the characters talk about how it follows you around and stalks you at night, will make it sound scary, so we don’t need to actually think of a reason as to why or how the curse happens…
They angered Oyashiro-sama! That’s all we need. Doesn’t matter what they actually do, if a character says they angered the local god it’ll make perfect sense!! Except it doesn’t…
And after the whole story resets and we start at the beginning, the focus is shifted to one of the other characters, but once again, we never actually find out anything new.
There is not one single point where this anime is actually scary or creepy. People will tell you it is only because there are times, when a character that’s been acting cute and sweet will suddenly start acting super serious. Their face will be drawn in a creepy style that makes them look insane and they’ll start laughing maniacally and talking crazy. Someone apparently thinks that’s all you need for a horror to be good, Cute girls suddenly turning ya gire… The murders aren’t graphic or gory either, I mean corpse party murders and gore is at like 6 and Higurashi is at like a 2…
None of the characters have consistent personalities across the arcs. I mean I get it’s a different story, but the characters personality should still be the same, otherwise you may as well just use different characters.
Then there’s the obvious attempt at prolonging the season by splitting the story where Shion pretends to be Mion and murders everyone into two seperate arcs told from Keichi’s and her perspective. Completely unnecessary, since we’re really just watching the same story twice. It kind of explains why dead people were walking around in Mions case, but they seem to have forgotten about Tanako… that’s just glossed over in the second arc like it didn’t happen.
Even I kept hoping that maybe the last arc would do something more, maybe it would explain something. But no. It just kept meandering along and got absolutely nowhere. The story becomes more convoluted and in the end you’re just left wondering how anyone could ever think this was a good story.
Even for the time it was made in the animation is bad. The backgrounds are mostly static images, drawn in a completely different style than the characters are. This makes the characters stand out in a way that’s not very aesthetically pleasing at all. It looks like it was made in the 90’s to be honest. The voice acting as well, is bad. Everyone just sounds like they don’t give a fuck except when they’re yelling loudly.
I was going to watch the rest of the seasons, but now, I’m highly suspicious wether they would be any better than the first one. I will never bother watching this again, or recommend it to someone. I will try to discourage people from wasting their time by watching it though.
I’m sorry to say but I lose all respect for anyone who thought this show was good. When I read through some of the reviews that gave it high scores all I see is someone who’s trying so hard to pretend like they ‘understood’ what was going on, just so they don’t have to admit to the fact they didn’t get it either.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Oct 11, 2021
This anime would be so much better if the VN game concept was the same as the manhwa concept in extraordinary you (the drama).
If Catarina was unable to control her actions during ‘special events’ and she was forced to act like the actual villain. That’s something I’d love to see her get through alive. I mean nothing against this cute, all gender harem she’s got going, I’m here for it. But it’s just so predictable you know? And at times I can’t help but get a little bored of her ‘clueless’ personality…
The plot itself is pretty standard, I mean you can sort of tell how
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everything’s going to play out after the first episode. As in Catarina will unconsciously befriend and cause all the other main characters to fall in love with her. Though one thing i didn’t see coming was that the girls would fall for her too, but I’m all down for that.
The only other thing that bothered me was the opening theme. In the last few seconds it shows Catarina and her friend from the previous life, but it does so in a way that just makes it painfully obvious that she too will be reborn into the game. Or well, not so much reborn as connected to? They left that part pretty vague but I guess it’s safe to assume that Sophia is the reincarnation of her friend just without the memories.
I know this is a common occurrence in anime I’ve seen hundreds of openings that give plot points away, but this anime really doesn’t have a lot of surprises in it and that could have been one, if they hadn’t done that. So yeah, that was disappointing.
The art is… ehhhh… I mean it’s ok. It’s very average actually. All the male characters especially, are tropes personified, which makes total sense for the anime of course. But it’s a bit boring for the viewer you know? It was for me anyway, but I also think that it fit the anime really well. Since it’s such a vanilla Otome game, the princess and castle vibe just works.
Also, the whole thing with the president was probably one of the weakest attempts at a plot twist I’ve ever seen. Like the rest of the plot… it’s obvious the moment Catarinas friend mentions the ‘hardest’ route. This show has like 7 characters, excluding the parents and maid, and subtly including the president as a ‘side character’ is just, once again, painfully obvious. There’s like a one second fake out that fails to be convincing anyone who’s watching I imagine.
Anyway, don’t get me wrong. I think this anime was great. I really enjoyed it, even though at times I’d get a little bored or annoyed. The animation worked great for the genre as did the characters and the plot itself. I just have a bad habit of critically analysing anything I watch and I watch a lot of everything…
Best part ; I’ve mentioned it like twice already, the all gender harem. This needs to be a thing in more animes.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Oct 4, 2021
~{ May contain some spoilers }~
I’ll start of with what’s good about it.
The story is well written, even though you might hear some people say that it’s too dramatic the actual writing and content of this show is never boring. Sure, some of the stories and character arcs may be predictable but predictable isn’t always bad. As long as it still makes you want to keep watching to get to that predictable ending you already know will happen. Now there’s nothing especially great about the story, it’s your average romance with a bit of comedy and all the teenagers are in love with each other
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all over the place. But it’s well structured and it doesn’t lose the plot halfway through and it never gets too preachy.
The characters too are well developed. Taiga appears very shallow and two-tone at first, with only two defining characteristics but she does eventually become deeper. I find more fault with Takasu to be honest, he appears to only care about pleasing everyone else throughout this show. Yeah he’s got a crush but we hardly ever actually see him do anything about this. And Taiga barely helps him, it’s mostly him just doing what she wants and helping her with Kitamura. The rest of the support cast are probably better written, they actually have personality flaws and depth that have seemingly escaped our two mains.
There was a lot of content that annoyed me, but again, the show is written skilfully enough so that those things don’t detract from the actual point it’s trying to make.
The animation was fine. Nothing amazing and nothing caught my eye, it is good quality art definitely, and there’s nothing wrong or disappointing about a show having a plain, straightforward style. The character designs are better for the girls, the two main male leads are pretty much the same except one wears glasses and the rest of the male cast all look like brothers except for Haruto and Noto.
The music was boring. I can’t remember any of the song used for both openings and endings. But the animation for the first opening was probably the best animation in the whole show.
Now I’m going to list a lot of the stuff that annoyed me. You can stop reading here if you don’t care ^^
This is a tough anime for me to write a review about actually. It might confuse some of you. Because I do like this show, but, it also contains almost every trope I hate about romance themed animes. The score may seem low to some, but I guess I’m just hard to please in this respect and I have a habit of loving and hating the same thing for different reasons.
The worst part, is of course that all the teenagers act like it’s the end of the world when their crush doesn’t end up liking them back, or they get over it quickly and come back with
~ ‘I’m not giving up on that person just because they rejected me!’ ~
Look, I’m all for positivity and fighting for what you want. But fighting for what you want turns into toxicity when it involves you, fighting for a person that has already expressed they have no interest in you romantically. Love isn’t about making someone love you, it’s not about changing yourself until they do and it’s definitely not about obsessing about someone until they happen to notice you. Putting this kind of plot device into anime aimed at teenagers is a bad idea, especially emotionally stunted Japanese teenagers.
It’s also unnecessary and does not make feel hopeful and fired up like it attempting to make feel. Instead it makes me lose respect for that characters personality.
I also have a huge problem with main characters like Takasu, which again, is basically telling male teenagers they should be constantly grateful that a girl will even deign to allow them to be in her presence. That it’s cute when a girl calls you her dog and demands that you do anything she commands. The worst part is that Takasu just takes it and does what she says.
There’s nothing wrong with having a kink for this type of genre, like Inu x Boku ss type relationships are perfectly fine, because in that show both of the MCs are willing participants. While in this show it always just seems like Takasu is along for the ride and isn’t really enjoying himself. Also it hurts the believability of his and Taigas feelings for each other. Because it’s not played of as a joke, but rather that Taiga is really like this.
There’s also no real lead up to him developing feelings for her. There is with Taiga. I actually think that part was done well, we see her struggling with how much she cares for him throughout a lot of the show and finally accepting it.
But with Takasu we see none of that. He just keeps going on about how he left her alone again and he doesn’t want her to be sad, but there’s no depth of feeling. To me it just comes of as him feeling pity for a friend who has no family and friends to take care of her.
And… confession culture… what can I even say about this ridiculous practice? The way it’s played out in some animes is just insane. Imagine someone you’ve talked to like once in your class or school suddenly confessing they love you? I would seriously think they needed help of the psychiatric kind.
Lastly, XD, the absolute worst part of this anime, and this is the one thing that really lets it down and makes it go from an 8 to a 5 for me, is the tactic they use to fill time up.
Every time something big happens in the show, which is always one of the characters confessing to another. It also always happens at the end of an episode, then the next episode has a time skip at the beginning. So suddenly it’s like a month later and we have to wait through another episode to find out what happened in flashbacks.
The worst of these is of course the big confession right at the end, and the fact that the time skips are always due to someone being hospitalised or hurt. It’s just a lazy way of attempting to build suspense and also fill a few more episodes. When a show repeats the exact same plot device just using another character that’s when you know that someone in the writing room had a hangover that day and just could not be fucked. It’s basically the same as using the script from a prior episode and changing the names around…
Anyway, sorry this is so long, I tend to over analyse everything.
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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