However, this wouldn’t work if the story didn’t pay special attention to the development of the relationship between the two boys, and the series certainly did. By mixing in such heavy yet real-life topics people face every day, it added a layer of color I hadn’t seen coming, which only increased my enjoyment and praise of the series more. Suicide is a big conflict that affects all the characters, especially Mafuyu, the boy who begins the series with a guitar of broken strings, but even more surprising is the addition of parental abuse and the hardships of single mothers. Given upheld my expectations of a good LGBTQ love story, but it also surpassed it by covering incredibly hard topics that need to be covered in today’s media.
The accidental meet that started everything ( Source) After nonchalantly suggesting the boy to get the strings replaced and fixed, the boy quickly latches onto Uenoyama’s advice, and the two boys bond and move forward with their shared passion for music.
Given starts out with Ritsuka Uenoyama, a guitarist high schooler who stumbles upon a boy on the stairway of his school holding a fancy guitar with broken strings, looking lost and listless. Despite its original BL tag, I would say that three words describe Given perfectly: drama, romance, and music. Lerche also leaped in line with MAPPA and TROYCA to release a love story of an LGBTQ couple that is not only heartfelt, complex, but also genre-breaking. Given quickly made its stance clear coming from a BL manga adaptation, but just from the promotional pictures, I could already sense that there would be more to the story than just cutesy, fanservice love between two boys. Such releases include Banana Fish and Bloom Into You, two series I praised heavily for their storytelling while paying homage to the main LGBTQ couples. They told complex love stories with complex characters, and they touched people past the usual fandoms who sought these genres for fanservice and nothing else. Since then, the anime industry began releasing more series that are more than just what the BL genre had built itself up to be. Yuri on Ice is a sports anime, and there is nothing else to say about its genre apart from that. Thoughts : Yuri on Ice broke a genre barrier back when it aired in 2016 by proving having a gay couple in the forefront does not require a story to be labeled as BL or Yaoi. Genres : Drama, Romance, Slice-of-Life, Music