Given Movie 2: Hiiragi Mix

TL;DR - yes, if you like Given, these movies are worth seeing. These movies do however fall into the BL trope of "Oh, look, these two men are friends, let's make them horny friends instead!" which is kinda tiresome TBH. This movie ends in such a way that I am assuming the third movie is really a "part 2" for this movie - I plan to watch it. Oh, BL tropes, you're here again. All the guys are pairing up and have been secretly in love with eachother their entire lives. 🥰 Actually, that's probably the most annoying thing about these movies. It was cute when it was just Mafuyu and Uenoyama in love during the TV series - Given felt unique and like it was doing its best to break stereotypes in the genre. Then again, so did the first few episodes of Twilight out of Focus - you felt like, "Holy crap, anime is doing something realistic for the gays!" but then it falls back into "safe" territory. Of course, these Given movies are much better than something like Gravitation, please don't get it twisted. We still see real emotions from the characters in Given, not just, "uwu, I'm straight but this guy is so girly and now I'm popping wood, hehe" In this movie we get a couple of coming out scenes, and one of them is realistic enough that the boy coming out is actually greeted with a negative reaction, which is sadly the world we live in, but it's smoothed over within 10 minutes so not of any real concequence. But still, it was nice to see some of the rejection we encounter IRL in the anme for cishet fan girls to mull on. There's also sex scenes, though they aren't showing anything of course because this is anime and not that stuff you need a VPN to see in Texas. The sexual tension and scenes in the movie are cute but perhaps a little over done - like, bro, have none of these anime men heard of lubercation? 🤔 At keast that was my thought during the sex scene we get near the end of the movie. "You will cry" and I was like, "Excuse me? Ma'am, this is *not* a Wendy's!" So yeah, stereotypes are broken, if carefully. This movie is mostly centered on Hiiragi and Shizusumi, with Uenoyama probably receiveing the bulk of the screen timne when we aren't folliwing these two around. Hiiragi and Shizusumi are in a 3-piece band, with Uenoyama filling in on guitar as a temp. Mafuyu is in the movie several times, but he honestly didn't do much aside from fret and stay in his own inner thoughts. In fact, I'd say that Mafuyu in this movie is right back where we found him in the first episode. He kinda reminded me of Tsukasa from .hack//sign - quite, unable/unwilling to express themselves adequately enough for those around them to be aware of Mafuyu's past, thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. Essentially, Mafuyu seems to be on the spectrum, no hate intended. Uenoyama is Uenoyama - just doing his own thing, but also sparing thoughts for Mafuyu and even bringing him up in conversations, but weirdly never seeming to go out of his way to actually spend time with him... Which was weird to say the least. They are supposed to be love in, so get over there and get it! Hiiragi and Shizusumi have their own stuff going on, but out of the two, it's clear that the writers spent the least amount of time on Shizusumi - they found the "dark and quiet" stereotype somewhere and ran with it. He does open up a bit in the later half of the movie, but overall he felt flat and one demensional with just one motivation behind everything he does. It felt like a waste tbh.

In terms of comparison to the previous this is a slight dip in story and quality as it does switch focus from the main charachters and the given band and turns to a much more heavy focus on hiragis band syh and his relationship with shizu - however what doesn’t dip is the quality of the music and the concert once again - with the debut of syh and ritsuko being a support guitarist the parade song is incredible as always - the team behind the music in this show has done such an absolutely flawless job from the lyrics to the sounds resonates to everything - the fact that the vas itself are the ones voicing the charachters is incredible and the movie ends off on a solid foot with mafuyu realizing he hasn’t sang or done anything related to music in a while

I just finished Given The Movie: Hiiragi Mix and I honestly don’t even know what to say TvT The movie was so beautiful and emotional, and I really loved seeing more of the characters and their relationships. The animation was amazing, and the music fit the whole atmosphere so well >< Overall, I really enjoyed Hiiragi Mix, and I’m really glad I watched it. I really wish it was longer because I’m already missing the characters and I NEED the next part >< Given really knows how to make me way too attached to fictional characters T_T I also really liked how natural the conversations and interactions felt. Even the quieter moments were really enjoyable to watch, and I never felt bored while watching it. There’s just something about the Given series that makes every little moment feel important without trying too hard. I’m definitely going to be thinking about this movie for a while now because there were so many things I liked about it. I really hope we get to see more of this story soon because I’m already curious about what comes next >< :'D