This Week in Anime

Girls Band Drama

Chris
Steve, I've been a fan of BanG Dream! since its early days, but even I'm not entirely sure. The franchise did start with Kasumi inadvertently robbing Arisa, so escalating to even wilder crimes was always inevitable.

As someone who was heavily anticipating this series, I expected this going in, but not to this degree. Ave Mujica the band were teased at the end of It's MyGO!!!!!'s original run, and already there they were positioned as the ostentatious artifice opposite the bluntness of Tomori and the gang. I thought the melodrama would be contained to Sakiko's ridiculously scripted stage performances.

Given that the masks come off in the first episode of this anime, it follows that the insanity would spill out into multiple layers of reality, letting us arrive at last week's most hilariously deranged episode of Ave Mujica yet, and as perfect a place as any to discuss the show, and the seeming broader tonal trend it's reflecting in the girls' music anime space.

So come along with us on this ride. For your safety, hold onto the handrails.

We thought the Ave Mujica moment would be a momentary wild peak rather than setting the stage for what would come. It makes sense when the resulting plot point here is that Mutsumi manifests her split personality, who has become the main axis, so much of the show's story has tilted.

Your credit to Ayana is a good place to start tracking the drastic direction of Ave Mujica. Ayana's been the BanG Dream! anime writer since its inception. To hear her tell it in an interview, the more dramatic direction of It's MyGO!!!!! wasn't initially her idea, but originally came at the request of a producer. Luckily, she took to that new direction like a duck to water.

It makes me glad that Ave Mujica has committed itself to be a proper follow-up to MyGO!!!!!, with those characters still around and integral. And Anon is still Anon.

It's smart because their down-to-earthiness and slightly more progress on working through their issues make the MyGO!!!!! girls great for contrasting with Ave Mujica's theatrical escalations.

They never feel like ass-pulls or cop-outs because these characters were kept out of focus in the previous show. After a season where she just seemed like Taki's cool classmate who played in thirty bands, Umiri turned out to be a rizzless wonder both a) tracks and b) is hilarious.

The writing was playing the long game, such as having a whole previous show and three episodes of this one where I was wondering precisely what Mutsumi's deal was, and the payoff with Mortis has now been enough to propel the whole series. The escalations and melodrama are technically absurd, yet they've been led into in a way that feels natural from the preceding series, and even BanG Dream! as a whole, to a degree.

There's always been a place for dramatizing the lives of performers in anime. Perfect Blue is a beloved classic, after all. I wouldn't doubt that the dramatic abilities Ayana honed with MyGO!!!!! and Ave Mujica weren't first flexed when she wrote the anime adaptation of the boys' band series Given.
The notice of this "trend" ticked up during the double-dramatic musical girls event of the spring 2024 season. Girls Band Cry was already a series whose previews were giving those of us who'd watched It's MyGO!!!!! a lot of It's MyGO!!!!! vibes. And then Jellyfish had its own set of parallels with GBC itself!

Not to dunk on one show over the other too harshly, but dang did we miss out by getting Jellyfish over GBC.

I should've confirmed that Jellyfish wasn't a girls' band, turning out to be three girls and one extremely excellent enby.

GBC is a show that felt like it coasted to its close. I'd be down if they picked it up for another season. But I still love the series as it is for feeling so unique, which is pretty impressive given my initial impulse to compare it to one show that aired before it and another from the same season!

Now, I do think it's notable that GBC, Jellyfish, and Ave Mujica all derive some of their drama by touching on the industry side of music-making. That's something that previous BanG Dream!s, even It's MyGO!!!!!, hadn't delved into as densely. It's an aspect that makes the worlds of these stories feel more broad and adult and lends to that messy, dramatic complexity.

A dropout, a runaway, the platonic opposite of the kinds of schoolgirls those other shows were sold on; an icon.

Your invocation of K-On! and the more club-based approach of girls' music anime naturally calls to mind those previous standard-bearers and how these sorts of shows used to be, which the earlier BanG Dream! felt to be patterned on!

Between this and GBC, any of these shows where the girls jump in front of moving vehicles will be fun one way or another.

I was on board for a third season of Love Live! Superstar!!, except by the time it came out, MyGO!!!!! had aired and flipped my perspective on the whole landscape. An easy redemption arc for Wiene Margarete was never going to land effectively, but the character comes off even more toothless in a post-Togawa-Sakiko world.

We'd seen broader possibilities for what this genre space could do, and the latest Love Live! didn't do any of them, even given the opportunity.

I want to stress that I am genuinely interested in seeing what this Bluebird project does; I can't criticize Love Live! for not evolving and then dismiss it when it does try. But that said, it is extremely funny how obvious Bluebird already is about what specific style it's biting. You can practically hear the board members sweating because Love Live! closed down two mobile games while BanG Dream! is still going strong.

From K-On! to Liz and the Blue Bird, even Naoko Yamada's career follows the silly-to-serious musical girls' pipeline. Still, this underscores the point about these sorts of shows turning drama-ward because, as you said, it seems to be what audiences want. Ave Mujica is the most I've seen BanG Dream! talked about in all my time following it, and it's tearing up the charts in China.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Oshi no Ko and its success in the "dramatic show business of idols" space, even as it feels like it's playing in slightly different genres than others mentioned here.

It's a space that's always been there. Even in the heyday of Love Live!, you had series like Wake Up, Girls! trying to trailblaze into the Industry Evils Bummer Idols sub-genre.

Maybe it was just ten years too early. Or its production circumstances were too much of a tire fire to let it catch on. You could ask similar questions about also-rans like Selection Project and 22/7.

It's also worth noting that the other side of this is that "fun" girls' band shows are still absolutely a thing. Bocchi the Rock! outperformed all of these that weren't Oshi no Ko, and it's got a second season poised to do it all over again.

Though I think you could make the argument that part of what propelled Bocchi was its intonation and exploration of the more human, messy emotions.

Most pertinently, the Ladies of Rock look Extremely Normal, an important factor in the success of all these shows.

And I'm only half-joking. As you described, complexity seems to be a unifying element driving this seeming shift in these anime. Whether goofy or melodramatic, audiences seem to be gravitating towards messier people and plots, compared to the more polished idol personas of previous generations.

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed the Love Live!s and BanG Dream!s of yesteryear, it's been a cool evolution. It's even affected the broader BanG Dream! franchise, as post-MyGO!!!!!, the mobile game stories started taking on heavier plots and interfacing more with industry drama. It's been an interesting time!

As of this writing, we still have four episodes of Ave Mujica left to get through. Given everything the series has already done, I'm excited and terrified to see what it gets in before it's done. Some ex-girlfriends could very well end up sword-fighting in Denny's parking lot at this rate.

Thankfully, their musical careers don't seem to come with health benefits.