given

A gifted guitarist who's hit a wall, Ritsuka Uenoyama finds that music just doesn't move him anymore. Then he finds Mafuyu Satou asleep on a staircase, hugging a beat-up Gibson with rusted, broken strings. Mafuyu barely knows how to hold the thing, but something about him makes Ritsuka agree to fix it and start teaching him. When Ritsuka brings Mafuyu to meet his bandmates — chill bassist Haruki and effortlessly cool drummer Akihiko — nobody expects much. Then Mafuyu opens his mouth to sing, and everything shifts. Given is an 11-episode TV series that understands something a lot of music anime don't: the silence between notes matters as much as the sound. It's a story about grief and creative expression and falling for someone before you even realize it's happening. The romance builds slowly and honestly, carried by small gestures and unspoken tension rather than dramatic confessions. Studio Lerche nails the performance scenes — they feel grounded and earned, not flashy for the sake of it. The emotional weight here is real without being manipulative. If you liked the way Your Lie in April tied music to heartbreak, or how Doukyuusei captured quiet intimacy between two people figuring things out, this hits a similar nerve. It also shares DNA with Nana in how it treats band dynamics and adult-feeling relationships. One of those shows that lingers with you after it ends.