Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast -

Episode 5

I had some skepticism last week about whether Ave Mujica's announced disbandment was a fake-out or not, and I stand by the point that it would have been in an ordinary music show. But Ave Mujica is not an ordinary music show. It commits to the bit with the full force of someone like Sakiko, who is Going Through It, scripting full stage plays in a concert as the world's most wildly misplaced coping mechanism. At least at this point, there was really only one way this could have ended, and end it does—split over the shattered hopes of a little beepo who couldn't play the guitar.

The anime addresses some of the more immediate elements of the fallout, which allows me to touch on something it brought up last week: the obligation of performers to the audience. It rings with the same relationship between the two I discussed at the beginning of these reviews and aligns with Nyamu, the proverbial Worst Person You Know, making a great point: It's not that performers' creative choices should be beholden to the audience's whims due to their funding and attention, but said audience has invested their time, work, and resources with the hopes of seeing some sort of show go on. The ostensible professionals that make up and manage Ave Mujica ultimately recognize this. So the end comes, not with a bang, but with an unplayed, refunded concert and a solemn-ass Twitter text graphic.

Compared to all the calculated pomp and performance that preceded it, what follows is a deafeningly quiet episode. It's all about a return to the previous daily lives of these characters, especially centered on long, held shots of Sakiko just walking to and from places like something I'd have expected to see in The Flowers of Evil. It's an agonizing, ominous calm, though, in that it's so clearly the eye of the storm. "The middle of the abyss," as is narrated over Uika finding that Sakiko has left her, where the sound of the cast die doesn't carry through.

Uika is still brewing two cups of coffee and piningly waiting for Sakiko to text her back, the same way Soyo did. I'm sure she's going to be just fine in all this.

What's cool (for a given value of "cool" in a psychological tragi-thriller) is how Sakiko's fall here in the aftermath follows the exact opposite trajectory of her prior plummet. She retreats back to her father's tiny home to return to working at the call center, only to be brought back into her grandfather's mansion as a prized doll supported by him. In so many other situations setting up this type of story, Sakiko reclaiming her station like this might be a triumphant victory—the return she had been working toward all this time. But here, it's simply another reminder of how catastrophically her efforts were for naught. Covering the concert refund means she's even more in debt to her grandfather than before, if paying that off was indeed her original plan for Ave Mujica. The knife twists further as the credits roll, with Tomori asking Sakiko to join a band with her, bringing her right back to her beginning moment and fully closing the loop in which Sakiko has found herself trapped.

A neverending nightmare for Sakiko, but expected, extra-dramatic entertainment for the audience, and getting Tomori in there marks its own strong element of this episode. After skulking in the background for a bit, the MyGO!!!!! girls at last come to the fore a bit more (we even catch sight of the back of Rāna's head!). It turns out they were fully set up for this, too, as Tomori's collected post-it notes from the first episode are plot-relevant post-it notes that she uses to attempt to reach out to Sakiko. It doesn't work, naturally, and it is kinda sad, but it's ultimately worth it to allow MyGO!!!!!'s true MVP, Anon, to step up. Look, the shippers have been dying to see Anon and Sakiko properly interact. If Anon using all her alleged track and field skills to hold Sakiko's limousine so Tomori can catch up is all there is as a moment of comic relief from this wonderful pink idiot, I'm still going to be grateful for it.

Tomori, reflecting on her connection to Sakiko, arriving at this episode's ending, reaffirms what a proper sequel Ave Mujica is to It's MyGO!!!!!. These are two divergent halves of the same story, rooted in the flashbacks to Tomori and Sakiko's cherished moments composing songs together. Both are nigh-unrecognizable from the people they would become in the present. Still, pointedly, they are genuinely happy, which must conjure up the always terrifying question of what happiness actually is. It's not something that either band properly plays for now, but Tomori recognizes that Sakiko felt it while they were in CRYCHIC. It's a simple through-line drawn to why Tomori would ask Sakiko to join a band with her, even as it represents Sakiko's return to step zero of the failure that brought her to hate herself where she is now. She likely feels she wants it at this moment, even less than a well-intentioned post-it note.

Of course, as far as intentions go, Sakiko and Tomori, with Anon standing blissfully off to the side, are doing a damn sight better than Soyo. I imagine there will be plenty more to cover in next week's episode. Still, I've got to bring this up now since what's already delivered in this episode's post-credit scene is so delicious, and I feel bad for neglecting the Soyo/Mutsumi elements of the past few episodes. Soyo had started to grow a little through It's MyGO!!!!! and being trapped in her own personal band purgatory, but she was still very much…Soy, and aware of it. So it's been a treat watching her sweat the last few weeks as she realized something was up with Mutsumi, and maybe realizing that she was partly responsible. It's darkly, wonderfully hilarious that this, of all things, is what makes Soyo more aware of what she did wrong and seemingly remorseful of it. You really should have accepted those cucumbers, Soyorin. The anime's direction using the full force of its horror-movie framing of Mortis to freak out Soyo is incredibly worth it in this specific instance. Next week cannot come soon enough. We have never been so back.

On SubsWatch 2025, I almost swear they've got two different teams alternating localizing this series since this week is back to the more passable translation tone. Most of the on-screen text is translated, and they even properly render the tildes this time. It's still stiff, though, especially with the benefit of comparing the previous It's MyGO!!!!! translation via flashbacks. "I wish you happiness" just doesn't hit the same way in that situation as "I hope you're happy."

Rating:

Chris is a fan of angsty music girls, BanG Dream or otherwise, and has even written a few posts about them over on his blog. You can also hit up his BlueSky where he's surely reskeeting all sorts of wild Ave Mujica art.