Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast -

Episode 7

Ave Mujica, both the band and the show, has always existed as a reflection. Sakiko forged it as the antithesis to MyGO's raw, cathartic screams from the heart. It's built on characters presenting alternate versions of themselves, from the masked onstage appearances to one of those personas calcifying into the character of Mortis. Ave Mujica is opposite MyGO, with the mirror of CRYCHIC equidistant to those reflections. At one point in this episode, Mortis literally shatters the mirror reflecting her because Yuniko Ayana's best writing has always been devoid of subtlety. In the seventh episode, members of Ave Mujica arrive at a breakthrough as MyGO did in their seventh episode, crossing through from the opposite side of the tunnel.

The pacing is perfect, timing-wise. I'd just begun to think that Ave Mujica might be piling the trauma porn up too high over too many episodes, so this episode is the ideal moment for a release. Sure, it starts with Soyo falling over Sakiko on all fours, both dispassionately splayed out in plain view of the school. And yes, Mortis does throw several things (some of them at Sakiko!). But these are the last splashes of boil-over before the heat can finally be cut. The remaining intensity had to be pushed through before arriving at that crying catharsis.

The imagery of reaching out and crossing over lines of conflict is all over this episode, making clear the long-awaited mending that is happening. Mutsumi reaches through the mirror towards Mortis in a frankly bold visual choice, then repeats the outreach through the bars of her home gate towards Sakiko before she's pulled in. Soyo hands an olive branch in the form of cucumbers to Sakiko, intended to make up for her own spurned gift from Mutsumi (and also, adorably, indicating that Soyo has been caring for Mutsumi's cucumbers during her sabbatical). Anon hands her guitar to Mutsumi when the time comes, showing how the lines of conflict implied by Sakiko's drawing of Ave Mujica have well and truly been crossed. These are bands who became so defined by their internal strife that any true "rivalry" between Ave Mujic and MyGO never had a chance—they could only ever support each other standing back-to-back.

Talking about Anon handing off her guitar, it's downright beautiful that so much of the support that pink poser supplies in this episode is borne out of her accepting that she's not even close to being a main character in CRYCHIC's story. And that idea spreads out to those who are the main characters. Soyo's aggressive outreach is punctuated by her conceding to Sakiko that she hadn't considered how much her bandmate was going through at the time. Sakiko then reconnects with Taki, who she hasn't interacted with since the breakup, and hears an inkling of the drummer's troubles. It resonates with the truth that everyone has and hopes to learn someday: you can't be a person without other people.

As effective as I felt it was to hold back Taki's troubles until they could punctuate and make this point here for Sakiko, I hope that's not the last word there. Taki remains an underexplored character whose issues could use a bit more resolution, and it would seem unfair if they only ever amounted to a prop for ironically teaching others about empathy. Here's hoping for a proper It's MyGO!!!!! Season 2 to address that!

Here, in this moment, for the story of Sakiko, it's exactly what's needed. Her realization about the feelings of her former bandmates in parallel to her bottled-up issues is what she tragically didn't realize in the past: "We would've helped you, you know." After everything this group has been through, it might have seemed like an absurd miss for their issues to be resolved simply by getting together and talking through it. But with an understanding of how isolated they were keeping themselves, the appeal to understanding lands. It was none of their faults that CRYCHIC broke, and it was all of them together who could come together to fix the band with the one thing it never got: closure.

It is a choice that, seven episodes into this music anime, this is the first proper musical performance since the first episode, and it isn't even by the titular band. It's a celebration of life for CRYCHIC, as only Tomori could communicate through her lyrics, and it's an achievement right at home with all the messy disasters that define this series. This isn't a single slapped over the animation, this is a performance, with Hina Yomiya's imperfect intonation of Tomori's freshly cut lyrics achingly being belted alongside instruments these characters haven't practiced or played together in ages. It's a make-up song for a broken-up band, a symbolic sequel to their original "Ningen ni Naritai Uta" with revamped lyrics once again credited to Yuniko Ayana herself—true to form as a brutally, consciously incomplete ballad. The series is even able to translate those lyrics for us and subtitle them, knowing the meaning of moving on is unmissable.

Of course, they time and place those subtitled lyrics in such a way that they're constantly jumping and competing with the intercut dialogue subtitles during this section, and the translation quality is back to "pretty damn stiff" for this episode, which isn't great for an episode all about navigating the densities of intangible human empathy. Oh, and they also completely neglected to translate the on-screen title of the intensely important "人間になりたいうた" or "Song About Wanting to Become a Human." One step forward, two steps back, Ave Mujica subbers!

If there was ever a doubt that this was meant as the opposite page of It's MyGO!!!!!'s seventh episode, then the onstage assembly climaxes with an impromptu reprise of "Haruhikage," just as that previous entry did, now under completely different emotional circumstances. This time, Soyo and everyone else know exactly why they're playing it, and that's closure well earned. It doesn't make the irony any less vicious, of course, in having Umiri come in to witness it and ponder, as Sakiko did back then, what this means for her own place in the shattered remains of her previous band. But in Umiri's case, that's arguably constructive, as the career musician now experiences the unnerving new feeling of actually caring about a band she was in. It's just one sign of the incredible journey these characters have undertaken, that even through the operatic hell that the Ave Mujica ride has been so far, the former members of CRYCHIC were still able to find their own reflection of the eternal BanG Dream! thesis of "being in a band with your friends is fun."

Rating:

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Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast - is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Thursdays.

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.