Given

Many works seem to believe that just mentioning suicide automatically makes the script better. It does not. Especially when it’s not really elaborated upon, just thrown in the mix for some free drama. Unfortunately, some readers will fall for this bait, and proclaim the story deep and dramatic and whatever. So, what is Given actually about? The thing is, I struggle to summarize it. Not because it’s complex, but because what I consider its biggest flaw – it doesn’t have a point. With most of fiction, you can usually grasp what the author is going for. Sometimes it’s to explore deeps though. Sometimes the main pointis just see some cool mecha action or cute girls doing cute things, and that is okay too (when it actually delivers the premise, of course). Given simply feels lacklustre. Now of course, you could make a counterpoint that the point of Given is just to be a BL. You could even paraphrase my previous point and say it’s supposed to be “cute boys doing cute things”. But as lot of yaoi, it can’t help but attempt to seem like it’s more than that. The central theme is of course boys being gay. But there is also the storyline about them being in band, which isn’t exactly engaging, and is easily topped by works actually focusing on the band aspect, like Beck or Sakamichi no Apollon. There’s the aforementioned suicide, but as mentioned that theme is exploited rather than explored. There is, I guess, some attempt of high school romance drama. Instead of doing good at one point, it attempts many and success at none of these. At least in my experience, this makes Given a confusing read, because I feel like the “goal” is constantly changing with focus all over the place. And not in a good way like some more experimental works, but in a way of unexperienced writer. And of course, it falls in the usual BL trope of “Well wouldn’t you know, pretty much every male character is gay or bi, what are the chances, huh”. I would have liked to say the relationships are realistic and feel natural, but you know how it is. Similar to shippers, the writing of Given just needs two supposedly likeable characters to be around each other to make them into pairing. The story goes from a start about music to some smutty relationship content – which only dons the appearance of being there for the story, but it’s really just the usual “uwu boys together”, even with the attempts at making it “deep” as mentioned above. It then circles back to the music towards the end, as if remembering that it was supposed to be about music. Some sort of idea of pitting the music and the relationships against each other was appearing, but I wouldn’t consider it well executed. I was going to say the ending was alright, or at least not bad – despite my enjoyment negatively impacted by the fact that the work couldn’t make me care about any of the characters (more about that further down), and that it felt all ultimately meaningless. But the very final page really killed the vibe, what a distasteful and tone-deaf way to end it, huh. Going back to shipping, I’ve read that Given started as Haikyuu doujinshi. While I haven’t been able to confirm this, it would make sense – a fanfiction doesn’t need to create personalities, it takes them from the original work. But turn the fanfiction into an original work itself and now you can’t just reuse the personalities, for obvious reason. So you’re left with a bunch of characters of little personalities, personalities that readers imagination used to fill with the personalities of the original characters they are based one. It would certainly check out. The characters are… uninteresting. I can’t actually remember a name of single cast member and I've literally just finished reading the manga. Design-wise Haruki is the only one that stands out, and even that is mostly thanks to his hairstyles. Rest is just Generic Bishounen A, Generic Bishounen B etc. Yes, I still did have to look up his name. The art is easy the best part of Given. It shines with double page spreads and I especially loved the colored drawings at the start of each volume. Unfortunately, “best part” doesn’t necessarily mean the whole manga is great. In this case, it just means that it’s the only aspect I would call good. Ultimately, this is definitely among the better BL manga. But as a manga in general, it’s at best slightly over average. So as usual, if you're a fujoshi you'll likely have a grand time, but readers of regular manga will likely be disappointed.