This article contains spoilers through Given: Hiragi Mix (2024).
Hiiragi Kashima is easy to misread.
He’s Yuki’s childhood friend. He’s close to Mafuyu. He carries himself with a kind of loose confidence that makes him hard to pin down.
For a long time, he reads as a secondary character. Someone who exists at the edges of the main story, showing up when the plot needs him.
Then Hiragi Mix arrives.
And suddenly, Hiiragi has a story of his own. A complicated one. A very human one.
Turns out the confidence was partly performance.
Turns out the boy who seemed fine was carrying quite a lot.
New to Given? Start here first: ✅ What Is Given? — A Story About Music, Loss, and the Feelings We Can’t Put Into Words
What He Felt for Yuki — Not Love, But Something Just as Consuming
Before Hiragi Mix, it was easy to assume that Hiiragi’s feelings for Yuki were romantic.
He spoke about Yuki with such intensity. He kept Yuki so close in his memory. Even Shizusumi — who was watching more carefully than anyone — seemed to wonder.
But Hiragi Mix clarifies something important.
What Hiiragi felt for Yuki wasn’t romantic love.
It was admiration. Deep, consuming, formative admiration.
The kind of feeling you develop for someone who seems to embody something you want to be — or something you want to have — without quite being able to name what it is.
And here is the thing that makes this so interesting: Hiiragi didn’t know that for a long time either.
He had been carrying an intense feeling about Yuki for years without fully understanding its shape. Sorting out your own emotions is hard enough. Sorting them out about someone who is no longer here — someone you can’t ask, can’t test your feelings against, can’t get new information about — is something else entirely.
Hiiragi’s emotional obliviousness isn’t limited to Shizusumi. It extends to himself.
That is part of what makes him so real.
For a deeper look at who Yuki was — and what he left behind in the people who loved him: ✅ Yuki from Given: The Character Who Isn’t There — and Never Really Leaves
He Kept Shizusumi Close Without Knowing Why
Hiiragi had always kept Shizusumi nearby.
Always wanted him in the same space. Always pulled him along. Always, somehow, needed him to be there.
And yet — for a long time — he had no conscious understanding of why.
From Shizusumi’s perspective, this was its own particular kind of painful. Hiiragi’s attention seemed to point toward Yuki. Hiiragi’s emotions seemed to live somewhere Shizusumi couldn’t reach. And yet Hiiragi kept him close, without explanation, without acknowledgment.
It would have been reasonable for Shizusumi to conclude that he simply didn’t register — that he was convenient company, nothing more.
The truth was almost the opposite.
Shizusumi was the person Hiiragi needed most. He just hadn’t figured that out yet.
The gap between what Hiiragi felt and what he understood about what he felt — that gap is where so much of his character lives.
For the full portrait of what Shizusumi was carrying during all of this: ✅ Shizusumi Yagi from Given: The Person Who Understood Everything — and Said Nothing
The Same Species as Ritsuka — Which Is Why They Clash
Hiiragi and Ritsuka argue. Repeatedly.
But if you watch those scenes carefully, there’s something underneath the friction that doesn’t quite feel like genuine conflict.
It feels more like two people recognising each other and finding that recognition irritating.
Because they are, in important ways, the same.
Both have high standards and don’t like being outmatched. Both find it genuinely difficult to concede a point. Both lead with pride in situations where a softer approach might serve them better.
And both, underneath that pride, actually see the other person clearly.
They don’t admit it easily. But it’s there.
Which is why the moment Hiiragi entrusted Ritsuka with Yuki’s unfinished song lands with such weight.
That wasn’t a casual request. For someone like Hiiragi — someone who doesn’t defer easily, who doesn’t hand things to people he doesn’t trust — asking Ritsuka to complete what Yuki started was the highest form of acknowledgment he knew how to give.
I’m trusting you with this. Because you’re the right person. Because Mafuyu is yours to take care of now.
He didn’t say any of that out loud, of course.
He didn’t need to.
For the full story of what it cost Ritsuka to carry that trust: ✅ Ritsuka Uenoyama from Given: The Boy Who Acts Before He Thinks
He Cries. A Lot. And That’s the Point.
Hiiragi presents as someone who has things under control.
But he cries easily. More than you might expect from someone with his level of front.
When Ritsuka quietly adjusted his playing during a live performance to give Hiiragi more space on stage — Hiiragi cried. When Yuki’s song was finally performed — Hiiragi cried. In front of Shizusumi, when the walls came down — Hiiragi cried.
These tears are not a contradiction of his character. They are the truest part of it.
The bravado is real. The pride is real. But so is the feeling underneath it.
Hiiragi is someone who gets moved. Genuinely, openly, without apology.
He cares about Mafuyu the way you care about a younger sibling — fiercely, protectively, in a way that bypasses self-consciousness. The scene where he thought Mafuyu was pulling away from him — where he genuinely feared he’d lost that connection — broke him in a way that was hard to watch.
Because it was so honest.
The boy who seemed unbothered was, in fact, very bothered by the people he loved.
He just didn’t always know how to say so.
What Hiiragi Leaves You With
Hiiragi Kashima arrives in Given as Yuki’s childhood friend — a supporting character defined by his relationship to someone who is already gone.
But Hiragi Mix gives him his own story. His own confusion. His own slow, stumbling path toward understanding what he actually feels and who he actually loves.
He figured out that what he felt for Yuki was admiration, not romance.
He figured out that the person he’d been keeping close all along was the one he couldn’t be without.
He cried a lot along the way.
Pretending to be fine, until he didn’t have to anymore.
That is Hiiragi. Proud, emotionally oblivious, genuinely loving.
And in the end — surprisingly, movingly — honest.
If Hiiragi’s story stayed with you, these go deeper:
✅ Shizusumi Yagi from Given: The Person Who Understood Everything — and Said Nothing
✅ Yuki from Given: The Character Who Isn’t There — and Never Really Leaves
✅ Mafuyu Sato from Given: What His Silence Is Actually Made Of
✅ Ritsuka Uenoyama from Given: The Boy Who Acts Before He Thinks
✅ When Your Partner Finishes Their Ex’s Love Song — What Given: To the Sea Understands About Love
✅ What Is Given? — Where to start if you’re new to the series
