given The Movie

映画ギヴン (Given Movie 1)

8.4(3)

OtakuDen

8.1(144,623)

MAL Score

Ranked #580

Popularity #1072

Boys Love
Drama
Music

Episodes: 1
Duration: 59 min
Aired: Aug 22, 2020
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Ritsuka Uenoyama, Mafuyu Satou, Haruki Nakayama, and Akihiko Kaji move closer to a major turning point as their band, given, reaches the final round of the Countdown-fes Amateur Contest, where everything will come down to a live performance. Excitement is tempered by a practical worry: they only have a single original song ready for the stage.

Determined to grow as a songwriter, Mafuyu throws himself into learning more about music and searching for a sound that can carry real emotion. Unexpected guidance comes from Ugetsu Murata—Akihiko’s on-and-off partner—whose own inability to fully let go mirrors Akihiko’s struggle between lingering attachments and an uncertain path forward. With the contest approaching, Haruki begins to question his role in the group and the trust he shares with Akihiko, forcing each of them to confront what can be rebuilt after heartbreak—and what may be left behind.

Otaku Consensus

Given the Movie earns its reputation by turning the franchise’s gentler healing-through-music appeal into a sharper adult relationship drama, with Hikaru Yamaguchi’s restrained direction and Yuniko Ayana’s focused script making Akihiko’s arc feel painfully credible rather than melodramatic. Its strongest asset is adaptation texture: the music is not decorative, and the Haruki/Akihiko/Ugetsu material lands because the film lets performance, silence, and unfinished attachment carry emotional weight. The most consistent caveat is that its mature turn is abrasive, especially the non-graphic scene implying sexual assault and the compressed intensity of Akihiko’s redemption arc.

Why You Should Watch

Watch this if you want boys-love drama that treats desire, dependency, and creative ambition as adult problems rather than clean romantic obstacles. Given the Movie scratches the same itch as Nana’s musician melodrama and Kids on the Slope’s belief that sound can express what dialogue cannot, but it does so through a specifically queer, post-adolescent lens. The film is best for viewers who liked the TV series but wanted the university-age characters to take center stage, with fewer school-romance rhythms and more consequences. It is also a strong case for anime as the ideal form of a music manga adaptation: centimillimental’s vocal work and Michiru’s score give emotional scenes a physical register that a printed page can only imply.

Key Characters

M
Mafuyu Satou
Mafuyu remains compelling because his musicianship feels less like sudden talent than a fragile method of translating grief into something other people can hear.
H
Haruki Nakayama
Haruki is the film’s emotional pressure point, a gentle band leader whose patience is tested without reducing him to a passive romantic victim.
A
Akihiko Kaji
Akihiko is the character viewers most often debate, because his charm, talent, and self-destructive intimacy are framed as damage he must answer for rather than excuses.
U
Ugetsu Murata
Ugetsu gives the film its most haunting mirror-image dynamic: a brilliant musician whose inability to release the past makes him both magnetic and painful to watch.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Lerche’s film format changes the texture of the franchise by concentrating on the older cast rather than spreading attention across a full TV cour, which is why the movie feels more severe and less episodic than the 2019 series.
2
The soundtrack pipeline is unusually unified: Michiru is credited for music, Hiromi Kikuta as sound director, and centimillimental performs both the ending theme and insert song, giving the film a consistent musical identity across score and vocal performance.
3
Yuniko Ayana’s script is built around emotional fallout rather than new-couple escalation, which matches why fan discussion so often singles out Akihiko’s arc as difficult, realistic, and divisive.
4
The movie’s AniList tag profile is revealing: Band and Love Triangle both sit at 93%, higher than Rock Music at 60%, signaling that the film’s music scenes function primarily as relationship drama rather than concert-show spectacle.
5
Its reception numbers show unusually durable interest for a single sequel film: an 8.11 MAL score from 144,623 votes, MAL rank #580, AniList score 81/100, and 4,669 AniList favorites.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Given the Movie was released in Japan on August 22, 2020, making it a pandemic-era continuation of a 2019 TV anime whose overseas fans were already waiting for the music-centered manga material to be animated.
Fun fact 2: Natsuki Kizu is credited as the original creator, while the anime film reunites the adaptation side under director Hikaru Yamaguchi and character designer Mina Oosawa.
Fun fact 3: centimillimental is credited twice in the film’s music staff list, for both theme song performance and insert song performance, which helps explain why the movie’s vocal identity feels closely tied to the Given anime brand.
Fun fact 4: The English-language version has specific localization credits in the research data: Marissa Lenti handled the ADR script, and Peter Hawkinson is credited as ADR engineer.
Fun fact 5: AniList’s LGBTQ+ Themes tag sits at 86% and Bisexual at 67%, reflecting that the movie’s queer identity is not limited to genre labeling but is also embedded in its adult relationship dynamics.