given

given balances humor & fun vs. sad & emotional very well. when i was laughing at certain parts, i didn't feel like it was taking away from the more emotional scenes or plot. and the humor alone is excellent. i usually don't watch comedic anime, and i was actually watching given specifically because it was a lgbtq+ romance—i enjoy 11 episode anime like this. i was surprised as to how often i laughed while watching. additionally, the emotional scenes are fantastic, and so is the buildup. i enjoyed having basically two arcs: sato's and uenoyama's—it kept me invested even after episode 9, which is where i would argue we get the most emotional payoff (i also cried the most during this episode). i love seeing bl, or just generally lgbtq+ representation done so well in anime because it can be so hard to find a good show that makes it explicit that the relationship is romantic. you can't ignore that this anime is a romance, and blow them off as just "really close friends." it's just refreshing to see such good representation in addition to such a well written story. i also like how this anime keeps it real, or short and sweet. it doesn't try to over dramatize anything, but gives you exactly how much background story and information you need to understand the characters, and i mean all of the characters. each backstory is nicely fleshed out and i was invested in every character and relationship! not only was i invested in sato and uenoyama, but kaji and nakayama as well. i feel like a lot of people are hesitant to watch mlm or wlw anime—wlw more so because of how often it is sexualized, but nevertheless—which makes it even more worthwhile to see such an interesting story that accurately portrays queer relationships. the genre and feel is a bit different, but i would compare this to something like 'bloom into you,' which is one of my favorite wlw anime, particularly because of how real it is—the same would go for banana fish, which is again a slightly different genre but i think also hits the representation aspect just right. i don't think a lot of people realize how important this kind of anime is to the lgbtq+ community. there's just such a nice feeling you get from watching a story about people like you, because lets be real, it just doesn't hit the same watching a straight couple if if you're gay. i also think anime like this is great for normalizing queer relationships, in the sense that given has a pretty normal plot and concept, and while i don't think that it would be "the same" if you replaced the relationships with heterosexual ones (the dynamic of queer relationships is much different, which is another reason we need to have more and better representation), but it puts into perspective how "normal" queer relationships are. this anime deserves all the hype it's been getting and i hope it can be a stepping stone for lbtq+ representation going forward.