Given

## Given *Given* is one of the most acclaimed boys' love manga of its generation — a deeply felt music story about grief, connection, and the way a song can reach something in you that words alone cannot. Ritsuka Uenoyama is a guitarist who has lost his passion for music — going through the motions of band practice without feeling anything. One day he finds a quiet, disheveled boy sleeping in the stairwell of school, clutching a battered guitar with one broken string. That boy is Mafuyu Sato, who doesn't know anything about music but has a voice that stops Ritsuka in his tracks when he first hears it. As Ritsuka reluctantly teaches Mafuyu to play, he discovers that Mafuyu carries a grief so profound it has rendered him nearly silent — the memory of someone he loved and lost. *Given* uses music as its emotional language: Mafuyu's eventual song becomes one of the most moving moments in manga, the culmination of an arc about putting unspeakable loss into sound. Natsuki Kizu's art is spare and expressive, perfectly matched to the story's quiet intensity. The anime adaptation by Lerche (2019) is outstanding; the manga continues past the anime's events.