Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast -

Episodes 1-3

Elated as I am to at last have a BanG Dream! anime in for streaming reviews (thanks for voting, by the way), I am in a bit of an odd place for reviewing the first three episodes of Ave Mujica, as I've already covered the beginning of this anime a couple of times. That said, those initial previews mainly contained my overarching thoughts on the beginning of the production, necessarily not going into specifics. Freed as I now am from Bushiroad-enforced spoiler embargoes, I can use this space to go into the grisly details of everything that goes down in the first stages of this group's downward spiral.

And starting with next week's episode, my work schedule means I'm the one who will need to dodge spoilers all Thursday before I can get home and watch the new episode in the evening. Turnabout is fair play.

"Details" is the operative word here. Yuniko Ayana's writing is defined by smaller, subtler details that dot the stories, eventually stacking up and spilling out, for good or for ill, for characters and plotlines. It enthusiastically rewards repeat viewing, as well as reflections on previous material. It appears in simple gestures, like Soyo momentarily looking askance at Tomori's new hobby of collecting post-it notes before offering to bring some for her. Soyo may not still fully understand Tomori's behavior, but she's willing to really try to engage with her now. She's in this band for her entire life, after all.

As glad as I am that the MyGO!!!!! girls will be a continued presence in this series, this is the Ave Mujica show, and they're the ones truly beholden to those cascading, crashing details. It's present in exploring elements like Sakiko's backstory, where it's shown that the police station that frequently picks up her alcoholic father is labeled in her phone's contacts. That's a bit obscured by Crunchyroll's subtitling job on the show, but don't you worry, I will get to that.

The long-awaited reveal of Sakiko's backstory was a point of minor contention for me on my first pass with the first episode. The setup seemed to be giving her an out, a sob story, if you will, for her actions with CRYCHIC and her new agenda with Ave Mujica. On revisit, however, it's definitely more ambiguously complex than all that. Sorry Ayana, I momentarily forgot about your game. Sakiko attempted to stay with CRYCHIC for a while after being thrust into her new financial and family struggles, so she had the opportunity to reach out to her bandmates about the problems she was having, to try to compromise and find a way to make it work. Instead, in a moment of admitted impulsiveness (she was a middle schooler, after all) she chose to break it all off herself, damn the consequences for everyone else.

Even with the pathos of showing that Sakiko did, in fact, grieve for CRYCHIC after what she did, how she did it still speaks to her overall need for control—not necessarily surprising, given her powerless point in life. But while it does contextualize so many of her moves for the audience, including how hurt she really must have been by Tomori and co.'s performance of "Haruhikage" in It's MyGO!!!!!'s seventh episode, being couched in that need for control helps keep Sakiko on the hook. That means seeing that control slipping away from her already is…well, "satisfying" isn't the right word, but it's building up for a rush of multilayered emotional catharsis that is the reason people have been coming to this anime since It's MyGO!!!!!. She's playing with forces beyond her control, i.e. YouTubers. Nyamu, for her part, seems unprepared for what she's unleashed in unmasking the band before Sakiko was ready (even as additional details indicate that Nyamu got the concert crew in on it ahead of time), reacting with equal parts frustration and disturbance at how Mutsumi is forced into the spotlight over the next two episodes. Speaking of, let's check in on how Little Beepo's doing!

Mutsumi's mounting breakdown in the second episode is effective from a pure production standpoint. BanG Dream! hasn't shied away from this level of intensity before, especially in It's MyGO!!!!!, but it's different here—harsher and darker, even as Mutsumi is frequently framed in the show's now-regular whacked-up exposure. It's a slow suppression of her heart's scream that breaks through to where the viewers can see it in the third episode, and that explosion uses all sorts of little details as kindling. Some of it is of that retroactive variety, like Mutsumi's basement seeming to obliquely recall Arisa's own basement room from the original BanG Dream!. It's across both these episodes that the full context becomes apparent in Mutsumi's mom (after co-opting her group to show them one of her own movies here) remarking that the basement supposedly doesn't see much use, while Mutsumi looks on at a chair that's been worn down by her sitting in it so much.

The details on Mutsumi, delivered in this third episode, were another element that initially rang as close to a cliche sob story on first pass. But look closer to see those intimate details, and it stretches backward and forward in compelling ways. It's once again about clarifying a point from that fateful day in the rain with CRYCHIC, and why Mutsumi would claim that she never had fun playing in the band. It's not just that she has an inferiority complex due to her celebrity parents and people's inability to regard her separately from them. Her mother crowbarring herself into music, the skill Mutsumi cultivated for herself and ostensibly enjoyed, led to her cutting even that off "for fun." Playing in a band with others, for the sake of others, even those she appreciated doing so with, unlike with her mother, became her only way of interfacing with her musical ability.

This leads to a frankly raw question from the narrative about the value of self-care and satisfaction in the face of doing what you think is best for others. Mutsumi is playing in Ave Mujica for what she thinks is Sakiko's sake, but she's thoroughly killing herself in doing so. What's the line between selflessness and self-destruction? This ties into broader themes Ave Mujica is already interrogating, in the relationship between creator and audience. That's embodied in the ongoing argument between Sakiko and Nyamu, as they battle over whether to adhere to Sakiko's agenda, or give the audience what they want. And poor Mutsumi is stuck in the middle, recalling the blow-up that ended CRYCHIC and looking like she's one more shout away from desperately singing "Surrender" at her arguing band parents as a coping mechanism.

Instead she suffers a full psychological break that pushes the approach and visuals way beyond anything BanG Dream! has done before. Again, the franchise has played with it, as in Mashiro's visions in the Morfonication special. It also calls to mind the fanciful first-person approach of It's MyGO!!!!!'s third episode, co-directed by Hajime Yamanokuchi, who also helms Ave Mujica's third entry here. Yes, Mutsumi's overt hallucinations including scary puppets and a strung-up burning chicken are shocking in how outside they are, but the more restrained visual flourishes are just as arresting. Mutsumi interfacing with others as projections highlights her detachment from these connections and how she views herself as a person on these stages. It all makes impactful use of SANZIGEN's well-developed 3D CGI animation mixed with more traditional 2D elements (decidedly moreso than the lesser moments where they mix in 2D characters like Mutsumi's mom with 3D ones). The final punch, with the hallucinated Mortis puppet monstrously morphing and devouring Mutsumi as the umbrellas that shielded the MyGO!!!!! girls are scattered to the winds, feels like but the first of many shoes this series will be dropping. Oh, this moment confirmed for me, that's why it was marketed as a "psychological thriller."

Part of me does worry about the potential for over-sensationalizing the likes of Mutsumi's psychological issues, especially with this level of charged imagery. But this is the series that previously provided one of the most achingly empathetic portrayals of a neurodivergent character with Tomori in MyGO!!!!!. So whatever other horrors are waiting for Mutsumi and the rest on the other side of this, I can give that element the benefit of the doubt for the time being.

Ayana and pals are building up to a lot that I'm absolutely looking forward to picking apart and analyzing in the coming weeks—I can't wait to give Nyamu her due, and something about Uika makes me think she might be the one to really watch out for. I just wish Crunchyroll's streaming release made it smoother to dissect and discuss all this. The subtitles for the next two episodes aren't quite as rough as the first. Some on-screen information is actually being translated, for one. But it's still hitting viewers with needlessly clunky phrasing like "All those praises belong to Minami-chan and Ta-kun." It's watchable, but it's not doing the detailed approach of this series' writing justice. It especially struggles with the kind of duplicitous, multi-layered language a character like Nyamu trades in. I'm sure that won't screw anything up as the story goes on.

Pushing past that issue for now (I'll try to continue documenting any improvements or egregious issues), Ave Mujica in its first three episodes provides a rumbling, sensationalized sense of what could possibly be to come. The series tasks viewers with paying attention to the individual, incidental details and making their own guesses about what they're gesturing at—and what it might mean for all these people down the line. Mutsumi had one mask forcefully ripped off of her, and now she's constructed a new, far more elaborate one to wear. Like the scattered snippets glimpsed of the band's stage-play storyline, the full picture isn't shown, but it can be inferred. And it looks both mesmerizing and horrifying.

Dang, I guess reviewing these episodes once before really didn't impact my ability to find something to say about them.

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.