50: Given Volume 6-9

“I don't always love side couples,” Kate says early in this episode, and that blunt confession sets the tone for a conversation that is less about fandom and more about what a story owes its characters when it asks them to grieve, grow, and make choices. Matthew and Kate are covering the second half of the manga and film series Given (volumes 6–9, plus the movies), and the throughline is unmistakable: everyone in this story is about to have their life change, and they are all terrified of what that means.

The weight of an unfinished song

The central conflict of these later volumes is whether Mafuyu will commit to music—and by extension, to a future with his boyfriend Uenoyama. But the real engine of the plot is a song Yuki left unfinished before his suicide. Hiragi and Shizumi, Mafuyu’s childhood friends and Yuki’s former bandmates, are the ones who bring it to the surface. Matthew explains that Hiragi and Shizumi are not just side characters; they are the people Yuki left behind too, and they have their own unspoken grief. When Mafuyu walks away from the band, Hiragi and Shizumi are left with nothing: “the only thing that we had with our friend who is now dead is also now dead because both people are gone.”