Given (2021)

barely makes sense without the original material

i tried to be unbiased and review this as a stand alone work, but i find that really difficult, as i keep referring to the anime in order to fully understand what's happening in certain scenes, and that's not a good sign. i feel the way the original story was cut in order to fit six episodes, only works if you're already kinda familiar with the characters and their struggles.
making uenoyama full on the pov character is a wonderfully idea on paper, it makes us empathize with ue's intrigue and frustration while trying the decipher mafuyu's mind, YET, in practice, what results is mafuyu looking more like a depressed manic pixie dream boy than an actual main character facing trauma, and it's frustrating. i get you, ue (see? it works!).

on to the important part: the romance... it's alright I guess. two goodlooking boys staring at each other always looks cute, and you actually believe that uenoyama is interested in mafuyu. as of sato... most of the time you believe he's not a mannequinn. as of world building, there's none, and that also affects the romance, we know they're students and they're in a band together, done. there are so little scenes of them spending time together, you don't really get an ideas as of why they would have feelings for each other, other than pure proximity principle.

remember i talked about mafuyu dealing with trauma? man, did they brush over that part! we see other characters talk about it more times than we actually see sato dealing with it. i will go ahead and assume this has more to do with tv regulations and censorship, as it is quite a sensitive topic, but i insist they could've done so much more with sato's character building up to the last episode.

as a music drama... i will say its actually nice, like the outro song is something i would listen on a regular basis, and the final song, although didn't quite met the standard of the anime's (its alright, not even the movie sequel achieved that), it's a nice touch that they decided to do an original song, if not to separate the drama from the original work, to highlight Sanari's voice.

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