Interestingly enough, I ended my Given write-up last week by saying about Mafuyu writing his lyrics that “Whether it will prove to be a good or bad thing for his state of mind is still very much an open question” – and that’s exactly the question Akihiko asked at the end of this episode.  There was a lot of ground covered in-between of course, but I do rather like that the series followed what seems to be a natural flow.  Predictability gets a bad name, but sometimes it just means you have characters behaving like real people actually would.

The headline this week should, I suppose, be the fact that Given addressed the elephant in the room directly.  That it did so in such a low-key and matter of fact way might seem anti-climactic, but truthfully, this is what we should be striving towards in anime.  People dealing with same-sex romantic feelings shouldn’t be a big deal, including guys.  The medium needs to move past same-sex relationships being mostly about pandering to a rigidly-defined audience (it’s a different sort of pandering depending on the gender of the characters, but no less so in either case).  It probably doesn’t help that any series – including this one – which openly pairs guys romantically gets a genre label slapped on it and the manga stuck in a specific shelf in the bookstore.  But baby steps are being taken, and Given certainly isn’t hurting that process.

In real-life of course there is an additional complicating factor when feelings are for someone of the same gender as you, and societal pressure is nothing to be sneezed at.  I’ve never had to confront what Ritsuka is dealing with here – the fear that his feelings are somehow wrong, and that makes him broken as a human being – but it doesn’t requite a huge leap to feel empathy for him.  It seems very likely that this is the first time he’s felt this way about anyone, boy or girl, and he’s not a kid who strikes me as extraordinarily comfortable dealing with his emotions to begin with.

What we’re really seeing here is the two older guys stepping up and taking responsibility for the younger ones.  It’s not as though their lives are models of emotional health by any means – Haruki is pining for Akihiko and can’t tell him, and Akihiko seems to be in a fundamentally unhealthy relationship.  But they have experience – they’ve been through what the boys are going through (Akihiko at the bare minimum has, anyway).  And it’s Akihiko who takes the lead in trying to steer things away from the cliff.

There’s a practical and selfish reason for this of course – the unresolved feelings between Ritsuka and Mafuyu have the potential to blow the band apart, right before their first gig.  But I believe Akihiko does have altruistic motives too.  As for that unhealthy relationship, it’s with the roommate we met earlier – Murata Ugetsu (Asanuma Shintarou).  He’s a genius violinist – so much so the gap between them prompted Akihiko to give up the instrument – who transferred into the same school when Aki was in 10th grade.  Murata clearly represented a sort of semi-divine ideal to Akihiko, an allure that was closely tied into but not limited to his talent.  Still, it’s surprising that they’re still together based on what we’ve seen on their relationship.

Akihiko pushes Ritsuka to confront his own feelings for Mafuyu – for the band’s sake or his own – and pushes Haruki to help him push even farther.  But he also takes an interest in Mafuyu, and it’s easy to see why.  There are elements of the savant (sudden leaps in proficiency, etc.) that probably remind Akihiko of himself.  But he also sees the danger for Mafuyu in confronting what’s in his past.  Maybe he needs to, or maybe it’s better – at least for now – to let sleeping dogs lie and think about the present and future.  I like the nuance Given sees in this situation – it’s kind of the anti-Shigatsu in the sense of how it believes emotional trauma should be processed.  That said though, there are no easy answers for either Ritsuka or Mafuyu – and even if their aniki want to guide them, ultimately they’re going to need to work out their issues both together and alone.