Note: I've been out of touch with anime and manga for years now, even though I loved it so much since childhood, yes, I was watching anime since I was 4 and my first one was Windaria, you can imagine how that fucked me up. But what greatest impact it had on me is that was my first tragic story I guess. Even if I did not understand it at all, but some of the imagery was burned into my memory. And as a grown-up I came in touch with BL as genre. I was reading a lot before I settled down on few autors that I may check from time to time. One of those authors is Kizu Natsuki, author of Given manga. I'm honestly happy for her success, she has distinct style of art and storytelling. This is why despite my detachment from anime overall I still kept coming back to finish the manga and also watched its' anime adaptation.
This is why we're here.
I don't see myself picking up anime again, but I see myself still supporting authors and their works that were with me for years and years.
Well, Hiiragi mix is obviously concentrated on Hiiragi and Shizusumi, who were part of Yuki's band when he was alive. I think it follows the part of the manga that also had "mix" in the title. I honestly forgot, my memory isn't that extensive.
Now that they're facing the fact that their own guitarist quit the band the borrow Uenoyama as temporary member. And now Uenoyama came closer to what Yuki's music sounded like.
Part of the movie is the part with Uenoyama finding out that there is a possibility for them to debut as Given band, but Mafuyu avoids this topic.
Another extensive part of it is of course about Hiiragi and Shizu, having a glimpse at their childhood, how they came together and became friends. How each of them copes with the loss of Yuki and how they treated their music from then on. And of course how one loves another secretly, but definitely have misunderstandings about each other. Shizu thinks that Hiiragi once loved Yuki too, but because Yuki was with Mafuyu he did not want to be a third wheel, but Hiiragi actually just idolized Yuki as a person and never wanted to be with him in that sense, he loved Shizu a lot, but it never came across.
Actually some of it is humorous and cute how they animated the interactions.
But I'll be honest, sometimes I find the inner monologues that mostly deliver all the inner thoughts of characters be very Japanese, it gives off the feeling of "I'm 14 and this is deep".
In general the production of this anime is great. I like that for years now the industry finally found the key to get BL to a bigger audience, they concentrate on the plot and skip anything explicit. And suddenly we have so many BL animes coming out.
The style is great, it follows the manga closely giving this story life in motion.
Still one thing that makes me lol a bit since the time when the anime series came out is the music. Music is the big part of this manga and the lives of these boys, but honestly it works so well in manga, but it does not have the same feeling in anime for me.
Simply because the manga and anime, which follows the plot, make you feel like Mafuyu has the most insane voice you can think about (judging by reactions of Uenoyama and others), but when it comes to singing it's just a generic voice actually. The same goes for this movie, they mulled so much about the demos that Yuki left unfinished and they have such intense reaction to it that I thought I'm going to hear something out of this world, but nope, it's the same generic sound that many bands have. The song may make it sound different, but the sound is so forgettable that it's painful. Maybe for boys it's meaningful, but otherwise they make me feel like I'm tone-deaf and don't understand music at all.
RATE: 8/10. In general it's a great story with laughter and sadness. And it's great they're doing projects like these.