BanG Dream! Ave Mujica

ill be honest i wasn't expecting much of this series cause you know how peak was in previous season but deer goodness gracious THIS.ONE.ALSO.HAS.IT! and they step up even further in a unique way too, if bang dream My Go is friendship drama, then this one would be gothic drama!, just watching this was pure cinema literally! even the opening and ending is so lit like a battle anime,(which is not your usual bandori at all),

while watching im starting to realize this anime was way too maturity for a bang dream series anime, im not talking about their personal life problem or etc.. i ... mean technically that still counts but what i really talking about is how they show their "Melodramatic" in a unique way possible it can be to us viewers and if you understands that then your perspective reaction would be absolute cinema! its like drama-dramatic-dramatic cinema are transforming as one, slowly but surely that why kudos to whos the one directing this show,

also this may sound like im dissing but ill still say it, ngl ever since MY GO i was starting to think of this but i couldn't conclude it yet since im not sure but after watching THIS season anime im super sure now thattt "OG BANG DREAM SERIES IS A KID SHOW" well technically at first was kid show then at some point it turn into "showcasing characters" show for their game's player based entertainment and for promoting their songs overall, that why im grateful MY GO and Ave Mujica series didn't do that path

ANYWAYS

guys, if you want to watch this anime just be ready to be slap ok? cause they will literally slap you with GOTHIC! trust me on this, gothic opening and ending, gothic theater, gothic costume, gothic songs, and gothic melodrama. so i recommend you to watch it

P.S its still episode 3 so i maybe exaggerated this anime too much but i expect more will come, either that or ill edit this review later if im wrong when this anime is about to end its series

There's a lot to like about Ave Mujica: it's rather cool to see an anime sequel in this style coming off of MyGO, the aesthetics of the band have as much mass appeal as they are purported to have in-universe, and the whole concept of a 'darker' girl band has immediate appeal through the power of antithesis. I even came to like the 3DCG style quite a bit. So why do I rate the show so lowly?

Well, the problem we face here is that Ave Mujica has one glaring problem: the writing. As is currently well-known, the scriptwriter for MyGO was removed from Ave Mujica ... after creative differences arose, and then their existing plot for Ave Mujica faced a series of rewrites and revisions that morphed it far from what it was originally conceived to be; I would not be one to criticize a work purely for external elements of that nature, but it's important to understand there is a real-life context when I say the writing of Ave Mujica feels misshapen and all over the place. The start of the show derails itself by bluntly infodumping to explain a key mystery behind arguably the most important character in both shows, rather than developing the narrative over time, and from there Ave Mujica feels like it never manages to get back on track.

We know, factually, that the original conception of the show was going to center around Sakiko in what the seiyuu described as a sort of 'murder mystery' style to the show; however, due to the new scriptwriters (or production staff in general) wanting to introduce a totally new character that disrupted the intended flow of the story (simply due to the space a new character will need), there was no time for who was previously the main character. Their story is ingloriously shoved into the first episode, as mentioned, and then the bulk of the show starts almost schizophrenically focusing on one other character at a time almost as if there was no longer a cohesive story of the band Ave Mujica to tell, but rather the independent stories of the band members one at a time.

I'm trying to focus so much on 'the facts' when criticizing Ave Mujica because online I frequently see more personal criticism ending up inspiring vicious arguments. It is a show that has an immense amount of "forced drama," bad-feeling arcs, unresolved tension, etc, but at the same time, as a "darker" anime it positions itself in such a way one can say 'and that was the point!" So normal criticism just leads to an endless back of forth of "I didn't enjoy this / I thought this felt bad" -> "You weren't meant to enjoy it / It's supposed to feel bad" etc. I don't want to inspire that kind of argument, or upset Ave Mujica fans.

Instead, I just want to express: be warned, ye fan of band girl anime, Ave Mujica's script is all over the place. There's still a lot to like in the show: toxic yuri fans rejoice, grimdark girl band fans rejoice, drama fans rejoice, etc. The plot gets so insane at points it was regularly compared to being akin to watching Code Geass back in the day. I wouldn't deny that for the world, and I think at the end of the day, I may even call myself a fan of Ave Mujica overall. But in terms of the show... the script, the story, is just explosive, and I would say not in a good way. It is so explosive that for me, it's hard to overlook the damage it does to both its characters and MyGO. There were real-life problems going into the development of the show that lead directly into the original story and plan for the characters flipping completely around. For me, that's a dealbreaker, and I wouldn't like unsuspecting anime fans to hear the praise heaped onto the show then be surprised when the story is insane in a different way than they expected. This kitchen had too many cooks and some of them were particularly bad. That is all. Godspeed, girl band anime fans.

I have never had my mind occupied by something that I have arrived upon hating so much.

There's things I do like. Watching episode by episode was fascinating. The BGM and sound design are a marvel. The voice acting is strong. The whole idea is great, and had so much potential. Sakiko's long-awaited (evil?/redemption?) arc! Mutsumi's getting real focus now, with a very interesting psychological angle to play off of! Starting the first episode with such a big play, where do they go from here?

I had hoped. Anytime something that didn't particularly make sense happened, I would brush it off. It's something for the viewer to ... analyze, and we will be rewarded for our attention later, you'd assume. But that continues to pile up. Episode by episode, there seems to be a lot to unpack and think about, but the real problem is how none of that is ever to be expanded upon. Looking back on it, it seems like so much wasted time for both the show and the viewer for these threads to be put out there to ponder only for them to mean nothing but shock value in retrospect.

Not sugarcoating it- a lot of this comes down to a misusage of time. The pacing is staggeringly bad. So many times there'd be a sentiment of "They're rushing into this headfirst into this in the plot, so the episode feeling rushed isn't weird." No, that's not the issue. Things are being left out. Important things. Thirteen episodes can quite easily tell a coherent story. No, it doesn't "get continued in the BanG Dream mobile game" like some people may believe. MyGO!!!!! ended in a way that an anime-only could be satisfied with it, without straight up telling you you need to go and download a mobile game if you want a satisfying conclusion. You can't patch up and ignore plot holes and dredge up discarded plot lines like this with a the promise of some random in-game event down the line.

There's many elephants in the room. Some of the elephants in that room are the members of MyGO!!!!!, and they are particularly quiet elephants, spectating silently for most of the time. Their involvement in the plot is watered down and cut out especially in the back half of the anime, which makes their very focused sections in particular all the more polarizing as the show treats it like they have been key players in the plot the whole time, and not just something for the plot to fall back on and tread over for fan (dis)service. MyGO!!!!!'s hindered involvement makes even less sense to me with the announcement of a sequel, featuring the two bands coming together for... something. Now it makes all those times where their reactions and conversations weren't shown even more frustrating, as that would have been a great way to actually build the dynamic between the two in a natural manner. That excuse I kept wanting to give the show that "It's Ave Mujica's anime, so focus on them, and they will solve the problem themselves" folds much harder hearing this whole setup, and the pacing starts to look even worse for it knowing that episode thirteen is not going to be the conclusion of the story.

By the end of the show, I can't help but hate most of the characters more. Not in a flawed character way, in a non-believable character way. The inconsistent flip-flopping happens so often that it's not a "human thing" anymore. It just means the character is only making the decisions the plot needs at the time. Everyone, except maybe Umiri- despite her still having inconsistencies- has ended the show feeling like flatter characters than they began as and leaving a negative impression on me. But maybe it's because of how much the narrative likes to ignore Umiri's problems and use her only as comic relief in favor of whatever it was we received instead of exploring her many mentioned issues.

Ave Mujica and its characters are a foil to MyGO!!!!!'s. Nearly every episode contrasts one from the previous entry in some way, hitting the same beats purposefully. It's commendable attention to detail, obviously, carefully constructed to be that way - but it honestly feels like they were more concerned with mirroring their praised predecessor and shocking the viewer rather than actually trying to tie this story together cohesively. These contrasts between the two shows and their character relationships are on full display so many times over.

The biggest contrast, however, is the writing quality.

I find myself grappling with how much I ended up enjoying Ave Mujica even after the final episode. Throughout the weeks as this show was airing, I often found myself second guessing at the creative choices in its story, as well as coming to terms that the story I came up with in my head will never be the same story put to TV.

There had been tremendous amounts of hype going into Ave Mujica, in part due to its very unconventional (especially by Bandori standards) ARG, portraying Ave Mujica as being this dark, cult-like underground band that kidnaps unsuspecting young girls. Not helping are all ... the interviews and advertisements depicting the show as “The craziest band anime ever”. I had been through Revue Starlight and how that turned a wild premise into a boring conclusion, surely, I’d have learnt my lesson going into this, right?

Well, I’d be lying if I said I was completely satisfied with the final package. The ARG and Live Intermissions painted a very different picture of the show for me, not helped by the exaggerated hype from the many interviews. Still, if Ave Mujica had aired immediately after MYGO, I’d have enjoyed it a lot more, although that still doesn’t discount the show from some questionable decisions when it came to its storytelling.

Episode 12 was tipping point for me, as I was initially disappointed at how fast and rushed it all wrapped up with the main characters effectively telling the viewer to forget about it. It took me a long time to mull it over, but over time, I’ve came to accept the ending for what it is, and how it thematically connects to the overarching theme in Ave Mujica. That is to say, everything sucks and there is nothing you can really do about it, so forget about things and live happily. It’s surprisingly nihilistic especially for Bandori, it’s just wrapped up so cleanly and neatly that you really just wouldn’t notice on the first go around. Effectively nothing has been resolved, and there’s the sense that nothing really will be. The execution however, was lacking in almost every way.

Interviews have described this as being a “horror” anime, and that’s just really not the case even in the most charitable definitions of the genre. Occasionally Ave Mujica does use the language of horror to construct some scenes, but horror is almost never the intent, and if it was, there is no scene in the entire show that comes across as even remotely frightening. Not to say that “Band” and “Horror” are mutually incompatible, look at Alan Wake for an example of something that manages to combine those two genres well for instance, it’s just that by calling Ave Mujica a “horror” or even “psychological” series, you’re setting up a series of expectations that the show can never quite reach.

Credit where it’s due, Ave Mujica does go further than most similar shows in some aspects, I just hoped that they went a bit further than what we have in the show. There’s an underlying sense that the producers are too afraid to take just that little extra step in fear of losing revenue in regions with heavier censorship regulations. We have explorations of mental health, domestic violence, and lesbian romantic relationships that would make SayoHina look tame by comparison. Yet nothing too far out, punches get pulled at the last minute, there is no kiss, and most other things just get brushed off without much care or thought.

Which brings us back to execution, which is where I find the show most flawed. The show is incredibly rushed. With MYGO, it was a simple story told very well, with the show paced so well it had room for an extended epilogue and even extra time to set up Ave Mujica. Ave Mujica on the other hand is juggling at least 3 different plot arcs which don’t mesh together well. You have: Mutsumi suffering from DID, Saki working out her issues with CRYCHIC, and Uika’s mad obsession over Saki. There are only the loosest plot threads connecting these three arcs together, and they all come at the cost of essentially ignoring the other two main characters, Nyamu, and especially Umiri. And not all arcs are created equal. Mutsumi’s arc got the most attention at about 8 episodes, CRYCHIC’s fallout took about 5 (5 times longer than it needed to be), and barely 3 episodes for Uika’s arc, which was hyped up to be the craziest thing ever, and it kind of is, but resolved in the most disappointing way imaginable.

Sakiko is just not very likeable as a main protagonist. The show does occasionally (and correctly) call her out for being a spoiled rich girl callously toying with other people’s lives while pretending that she isn’t, but she never takes charge or responsibility for her actions until the very end. And even then, it’s less character growth and more “We’ve got to wrap everything up in one episode so let’s call back to the original themes in a rushed and haphazard manner”. Two of the three arcs just have her in an antagonistic position as Mutsumi or Tomori drive their arcs forward as Saki just reacts to the world around her passively.

In spite of all this, I still thoroughly enjoyed Ave Mujica. For what it is, it has never been boring. Look no further to Bandori’s own S1-S3, which are the very definitions of safe, stale, and mediocre idol/idol-adjacent shows, being only slightly better than something like Cue or World Dai Star, yet completely outclassed by shows like Love Live or even Show By Rock. The reverence for the status quo is what kept Bandori in its rut, unwilling to explore any possibilities in its storytelling. MYGO was Bushiroad being willing to test the waters, even a little, and Ave Mujica is them diving head first into the Mariana. It’s strange, mesmerizing, and even a little uncomfortable at times. Sure it’s not as polished as it could have been, but the ambition is admirable, even if it fumbles along the way. What I can’t fault Bushiroad at the end of the day, is that they’ve tried doing something different.

At the end, I suppose that may explain the final score you see in this review. Ultimately, I’ve enjoyed the show, but it is a very personal enjoyment and most of the enjoyment came from extrinsic factors unrelated to the show. I love the music, I love thinking about the show, and I certainly love the fanart and memes sprouted from this show. It’s better than Bushiroad’s previous attempts at something different, ie Revue Starlight. It’s just that I wish it could have been so much more. And maybe at the end of the day something simpler like MYGO may just be the peak of what’s possible within the confines of this genre and the 13-episode format.

9/10

Here's my problem with this,

It teases something darker. It teases that bad things will happen. Bad things do happen, but the consequences of those bad things simply disappear. It's just the way in which the BanG Dream universe is set up, we must get a happy ending. The bands exist in real life and for it to tie in properly with the anime and gacha game, then the stories and plot in the anime and game need to be in a state that reflects the band in real life. What I'm saying is, since the band exists in real life, we cannot have an ending ... that would jeopardize the band, canonically speaking.

Episode 5 introduces some really surprising and dark themes. Anyone who watches this, you cannot tell me that episode 5-6 did not have you on the edge of your seat. I was eagerly waiting every week for what would happen next. How dark could this show truly get? We are actually exploring some serious themes here. Think Madoka Magica. At this point, it's a full blown psychological drama. All of the characters are flawed and some of them really do go through some traumatic things. But when this was all happening, I had a feeling in my mind that I knew this was all going to be temporary, I knew that the writers would find a way to put all of this aside in order to reach the expected happy conclusion.

Episode 12 was pretty much that. The band is reformed, all of the characters are suddenly A-ok, even if that means certain characters need to do a complete 180 of their personality. I really wish they dark themes and trauma were explored a lot more after episode 6 but they weren't. It was forgotten. I know there's one episode left but we all know it's going to be a happy ending. There's no baggage, there's no trauma left, characters haven't changed, it's not even going to be a bittersweet ending. Maybe they will explore these themes some more in the gacha game? That's another problem right there.


It's a good show along with MyGO!!!. Very good actually. But I am very disappointed that they couldn't stick with the dark tones and themes they introduced, they slowly just brushed it aside.

i was hoping to love this series even more than mygo, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

for me, the biggest issue was that i had too many expectations. if they could write such an impressive and charming story for a band as seemingly "ordinary" as mygo, i wondered what they could create for a band with a gothic and mysterious aesthetic. unfortunately, i ended up feeling a bit... disappointed.

the story mainly revolves around mutsumi and sakiko. umiri and nyamu barely gets scenes...... ah. we got almost three episodes focused on mutsumi, one episode where umiri gets some attention, and the two episodes are abt *sign* uika. ... honestly, my biggest disappointment was uika. giving her such a background felt completely irrelevant to a band anime. mutsumi’s situation at least created conflicts between avemujica and crychic, adding tension to the story, so it didn’t bother me as much—but uika’s felt completely out of the blue. sorry but... whatever you say, it was literally unnecessary.

the scene transitions, dialogue gaps… they’ve slowly started to get on my nerves. everything in this series felt incredibly rushed. i’m not even sure if the writers read through the script one last time before finalizing it, because there were way too many plot holes. did they write this while high or ????? it's as if they can't cope with the themes they put forward and are trying to escape......

the music... where's the music honestly? where's the passion? i'm not talking about the sudden performances. how and why was saki composing songs like this? how did uika write lyrics like that? the outspokenness found in mygo is completely absent here. i get that their stories are meant to be polar opposites—that’s what the writers were trying to convey—but you can’t do that by treating the audience like stupid asf. if a music anime doesn’t show a single scene of the vocalist and composer actually working on music, that’s... weird. the only moment i remember is uika looking at tomori’s lyrics in ep9 and then this got tied to fear of abandonment. uhm okay? cool, i guess.

ugh. as an ave mujica fan, i ended up facing a lot of disappointment. i wanted a carefully crafted and deep story for my favorite band, but this ended up being one of the most underdeveloped and immature stories among bandori bands. it felt like, "we can write whatever we want, you’ll like it anyway, so we’ll just keep being ridiculous." even hello happy world, which is often seen as the most childish and unserious band, made more sense than ave mujica. sorry. the whole "forget everything and disappear under the moon" concept also felt bland because we only ever heard about it from saki. i mean… you had damn 13 episodes. not a single character showed any real connection with this concept.

it probably seems like i’ve written an extremely negative and hateful review, but really, my only complaints are about the writing. to put it simply, i don’t hate the scenes—i hate the way they were put together. yeah like... they had so many great ideas but in the end they couldn't put them together. i feel so sorry. maybe instead of making a series, they should have just made yt shorts or something /j

I started watching this with zero context on this universe, only to find out an hour ago that this anime is actually based on a real Japanese band, and that this anime is not even the first season of its series. I seem to have enjoyed it even so.

Now, as a guy that usually watches action packed anime, I rarely watch shows with full female cast. However, I'm a sucker for dark, fast-paced, psychological drama (ahem, Madoka Magoka, I'm looking at you). And even though this show is technically slice of life (no supernatural so far), the drama of the characters is very real. Unlike ... a show like Oshi No Ko that depicts mostly the same setup, but ends up being too exagerated or inconsistent at times, Ave Mujica ends up much darker without even trying hard.

Each of the 5 main girls have their own issues and reasons for being in the band. Their interests are not aligned. They try, but end up making mistakes that upset the others. They break each other's expectations, then they try to compensate in the way they can.

At the end of the day, there is no villain.
You can't really even call it miscommunication.

It's just different people with different visions that try to sync, and sometimes fail. All of that despite the fact that their band seems successful for people on the outside.

Story: 9/10
Music: 10/10 (listen to it on youtube as well)
Animation: 6/10 (I hate the 3D CGI , and they DO seem like EMOTIONLESS DOLL sometimes)
Action: 8/10 (quite faster-paced compared show with full female case)

This story is gripping. It's one of its specialities to surprise and show everything you might not have expected. Following on from “Bang Dream it's MyGO!!!!!”, we had to expect an even more psychological aspect to this work, focusing on the members of Ave Mujica. And it's perfectly realized.

The gothic ambience associated with a turning point in history towards horror, where everyone has to face their own torments, is very well realized. The animation is beautiful, the music immerses us in the particularly dark atmosphere of the plot, everything is special. You could almost forget that this is a work in the Bandori universe. In ... the other BanG Dream! series, music is often a means of finding one's place, expressing emotions and connecting with others. Here, music also becomes a prison. Music is like an outlet, but also as a curse.

It's a very absorbing viewing experience, you can see the effort that has gone into producing such a good result, and each character expresses a very specific theme, which leads directly to the moral of never trusting appearances; nor judging a book by its cover. Ave Mujica is an example of this, and well worth the detour.

Then, If you like stories about musical groups but with strong psychological tension, a dark aesthetic, and a reflection on loss and illusion, Ave Mujica could be a striking series to follow. Definitely not to be missed !

Loving the show so far.
This is a sequal to BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!, which is a part of the BanG Dream! franchise. But need not to worry!! I have never watched the other series and found no difficulties understanding these two seasons because of my lack of previous knoledge.
I enjoyed It's MyGO!!!!! very much back then, and thus I was looking forward to the new season. But t the same time, I told myself that MyGO!!!!! was almost like a miracle of how well executed it was, so I shouldn't expect Mujica to be on the same level because to be honest, MyGO!!!!! was my ... favorite original anime series in the past few years.
But DAYUM!!! the first 4 episodes of Ave Mujica just blew my mind. The setting, the music, the plot twist!!! And just like MyGO!!!!! shining its spotlight on Tomori, the autistic girl, in this season, they are not hiding their care for mental illness. The representation so far is very truthful with its straightforward depiction and subtle hints throughout the show.
The plots itself is also my favorite in this season! I personally didn't really like music genre because usually the music is abrupt and contributes nothing to their character development, and the only reason I watched MyGO!!!!! was because I was too bored. But both MyGO!!!!! and Mujica's music are FIRE and you can definitely see their characters in the songs. On the other hand, Mujica no longer fixate on music, but rather the production behind the scenes, the struggles, the conflicts amongst the members' desires and restrains. The drama in Mujica is a LOOOOOT more realistic and suffocating. Especially when it enters episode 4, it's more of a psycho-horror movie than a band anime!!!
Anyways, if you like psycho-horror, band, complicated relationships, Ave Mujica should be your first choice this season!!

The end of *BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!* showed Togawa Saki appearing to move past her memories of CRYCHIC and work behind the scenes to get a new band started with the help of the shy and melancholic Mutsumi. Contrasted with the long performance debut in which the onstage cast are treated like dolls by the edgy script, Saki returned home to a small, dark apartment and a sorry excuse for a father full of beer, often finding himself escorted back from the police station, and going nowhere. The reason for Ave Mujica’s creation therefore seemed less like the whims of a rich girl who was ... bothered by something as-yet unknown (though that was still quite true) and more as a coping mechanism for a life that was, by all accounts, horrid.

As if exorcising her own demons in the only way she knew how, Saki’s vision for her new band was defined. Underneath the gothic costuming, stark lighting, and trying-way-too-hard-to-be-metaphorical attitude, Saki seeks an escape. That coping mechanism function the band provides transmogrifies for each member, and it becomes more obvious that as time goes on, not everyone within Ave Mujica’s group sees the band in the same way as Saki. Uika, Umiri, Mutsumi, and Nyamu need the band for their own selfishness, too. It is shortly after they perform for the first time that pushback against Saki’s perception of how the band should function begins to take shape, throwing the band’s idea of secret identities out the window in a gesture that leaves Nyamu smiling and most others shocked. The narrative takes what would on the surface appear to be its main concern, that of maintaining secret identities as stage personae, and throws it out the window. In so doing, it plays its hand early – the personae on stage are at odds(?) with the personae that wear the masks in the first place. It is a clash of dualities on multiple fronts, ego against ego, The Stage against The Real.

With duality as a binding tether, just about every character in *BanG Dream! Ave Mujica* is split or tinkering with their own inner convictions. Even here, there is a duality between how the members perceive the band and how they use it accordingly. On one hand is the cold materialistic nature of the music industry and the success that Ave Mujica’s early theatrics bring. Nyamu, evident from her behavior at the end of *BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!*, is willing to do just about whatever it takes to become a viral sensation, and it’s her rashness that forces the band to reconcile their first real problems. Her materialistic approach with a “whatever happens, happens” treats the band as a thing to be used for her fame rather than a group to be lived in. How else to explain her enthusiastic adoration of Mutsumi’s famous mother, fawning over her with idolatry that we viewers see as shallow and vain? Umiri fails to recognize the band as anything more than a job, one of the many that she’s involved in (like a true session bass musician) and recognizes the group’s capacity to become a bigger splash. She’s dismayingly oblivious to what transpires around her as the threads come undone, doing what she’s “supposed to do” instead of stepping in proactively. On the opposite are Saki, Uika, and Mutsumi, all three of whom rely on Ave Mujica for some kind of mental grounding, therapy be damned. Either as a retreat from their ails or a putting off of what must be faced, they cling with broken nails to the precipice hoping it doesn’t give way under the weight.

A crash is inevitable from the very start. The old adage may say that “opposites attract,” but that doesn’t mean they’ll get along. With Ave Mujica’s status as a band that also does short dramatic plays, arguments both onstage and backstage are played out in vivid detail, replicated for audience members who may be none the wiser to the actual venom being laced. It’s all too real, but under the veneer of the theatre. By the time a few episodes are complete, it becomes clear that all potential stage markers have been replaced with metaphorical chalk outlines instead, the world of The Stage and the world of The Real intermixing with, at times, barely any distinctions.

It’s through these disparate parts coming together and colliding that poses its own duality between this series and its prequel. In my original review of *It’s MyGO!!!!!*, I stressed that that series separated itself both tonally and in the construction of its band from nearly everything that had come before in a bid to be new. Despite all those changes, it still seemed at least somewhat concerned with the real world rather than masquerading as a particularly heightened version of reality. It seldom opted for abstraction if it could help it. Almost like a counter, *Ave Mujica* commits the full dive into its melodramatics, often abandoning logic for the most-deranged idol soap opera imaginable. Given the bombast and superpolymegadeathcorehellmaidens quality of its theatrics both in-universe and as representation of character psychology, to expect anything less would be to uphold a standard of *BanG Dream!* that was cast aside more than a year ago for this newer take. If *It’s MyGO!!!!!* wandered into the ocean, *Ave Mujica* deliberately drew in its breath before surfacing, basking in the sensation of water filling its lungs, and loving every second of it.

As such, *BanG Dream! Ave Mujica* treats many of its events as earthshaking and monolithic, pulling back layer after layer of defenses for its characters until the only thing left is the empty melancholia and how to deal with it. Every character, often violently, is in a new place from where they started, and even if it cannot give the fullest time and attention to everyone, it rarely misses. Director Kakimoto Koudai, main series writer Ayano Yuniko, and music director Fudanotsugi Taiki knew that in order to sell *Ave Mujica’s* central ideas, it needed to give every scene a heavy and focused intensity that constantly flirts with toppling over. The result is anxiety within the viewing experience through wondering whether it will fumble, within the text itself through things and imagery only getting more abjectly horrifying, and paratextually through a series made by people loving what they’re doing and abandoning the old standard that tied them down before. By performing as a *BanG Dream!*, they have moved into a new realm altogether. It is precisely because they love *BanG Dream!* that they have “killed it.” Lovedeath.

We cannot pretend that this series (and the franchise as a whole) is not made for the purposes of making Bushiroad a truckload of money. Most entertainment, especially of gacha properties, acts in this way. *BanG Dream! Ave Mujica* is a reminder that even if the everlasting hunt for the bottom line looms overhead, you can still create something new and truly distinct within yourself and show that it can succeed after all. Flirting with disaster every step of the way, it dared, it committed, and I adored the ride through and through.

As Uika proclaims, “Welcome to Ave Mujica’s world!”
What a welcome—and what a world—it was!

Oh thank you Bushiroad for giving us the wonderful Umineko anime adaption that Studio Deen was never capable of creating that we yearned for

(I wanted to just write my first setence of the review but its to short for mal, so some thoughts!)
Episodes 1-10 are a masterpiece, a great drama, each episode left me on the edge wanting for more. The real show stealer though will always be the beautiful representation of Dissociative Identity Disorder displayed in Mutsumi. No anime, no media has ever been able to captivate DID as great as Ave Mujica has. Her mannerisms, her struggles, her ideals, and her conclusion for ... her arc all fit perfectly and accurately. After episode 10, things get a little wishy-washy, but it is never not interesting. 9.5/10

I absolutely recommend this anime! Firstly, because I love how bandori is become more mature. Yeah, there used to be drama. BanG Dream is not a comedic bocchi without conflicts. But the problem that bandori was always scared to keep push drama, interesting Ras conflict ended in two episodes. But now they taking it more seriously. And I support that, because i want more of this kind of anime
Secondly, because such a serious attitude create better plots and better characters. What we can say about Rimi? That she likes chocolate cornets, yeah. On the other hand, Umiri can be discussed a lot. Because she a ... complicated character. She such a complex character that some people didn't even understand her. It's really cool
Third, I like how mygo and mujica are connected. The one is impossible without the second. It's amazing to see how two stars were born out of one failed band
Really liked that mujica doesn't take me for an idiot. The anime understands that I can figure out the character arc, the plot. The anime don't need to explain me anything. It's became a problem for others maybe, but not for me honestly. I loved every week when I analyzed one episode waiting for the next. And then I read the interview, finding out if I was right or wrong. Mostly yes. It's great

Oh, yes, the music. Incredible metal. Also mujica is more theatrics than anything i've seen before. The seiyu's was played wonderfully, and the 3d itself is very beautiful. I think that bandori's 3d is one of the best actually. It's a little worse than the gbc 3d, but gbc 3d taking much more time. So, I prefer bandori 3d

The story is quite different from BanG Dream! It is not just a music anime, but a psychological anime that tells about various mental illnesses through the main characters. The story is full of tragedy. Some people may think that the second half of the story is bright and solves problems too easily, but in fact, it is just escaping some problems behind. These problems still remain. Even though the characters have developed, they cannot escape the cruel reality. One day, they will have to face it again. It is an anime that makes us aware of our own lives. Are we doing what we ... want to do or are we forcing ourselves to do what we don't want to do? (Are we willing to give up everything for the person we love, regardless of what happens to us?) and whether we care about the people we are close to. (Are we only selfish? What about other people?) So that no one will have to become mentally ill and suffer from these illnesses. Finally, this anime may have some plot holes or create an atmosphere that may make you feel uncomfortable. But overall, it is another anime that I recommend watching. And if you are mentally ill, you should see a psychiatrist.

Ave Mujica is, without a doubt, an excellent show. It and its prequel It's MyGO!!!!! are up there with the likes of Girls Band Cry as genre defining titles for the new age of Band anime. Simultaneously, Ave Mujica presents itself as a dramatic thriller, even more so than its predecessor, with every thread of the plot slowly entangling the characters into one destiny. The production of this show is nothing short of incredible, with beautiful composition, emotional line deliveries, and a supremely great soundtrack. That being said, it's also not the show I wanted it to be, and it doesn't seem to be an ... unpopular opinion for even the biggest fans of the show. Ave Mujica takes a lot of risks, and while many of them pay off and should be applauded, the show is held back by the few that don't. Even more than that, Ave Mujica is held back by the Girls Band genre in which it inhabits, and the obligations of its creators at Bushiroad.

For someone who hasn't seen the original seasons of BanG Dream!, the 3D animation style used in this show and its prequel can be difficult to adjust to at first viewing. After years of trial and error with this style, it seems like Ave Mujica is the first show to finally justify its usage. Performance scenes are dynamic, with the little details of each character represented by their motion capture performers. Composition is regularly evocative, with imagery only possible, or easier, in 3D. Comparing it to the aforementioned Girls Band Cry, Ave Mujica does appear slightly stilted and lower quality than GBC's fluid, and at times over-exaggerated, animation style. While it may be unfair to compare the two shows when their productions are of different scales, it's still demonstrative of room to perfect this style and reach a balance between the two that they just haven't achieved yet.

Ave Mujica's story is a complicated one, but it's one that never felt exceedingly hard to understand. The show takes the idea of "show, don't tell" and runs with it, treating its audience like adults who can actually draw conclusions without needing everything spelled out for them, a welcome change from some anime that reveal the internal monologue of every character and sap any air of mystery from the plot. There's truly never any "filler dialogue", with lines regularly taking on new meaning episodes later, making rewatching those episodes thoroughly enjoyable.

The story includes several aspects of mental disorders, which I wholeheartedly welcome. Representation in media has always been important, and there's a certain stigma around including mental health in narratives worried about misrepresentation, particularly with such a nuanced topic. This isn't to say Ave Mujica's representation is completely accurate and healthy, but an earnest attempt was clearly made and there's a lot done right. Most of all, mental health is just an excellent narrative device, for a variety of reasons. It's an idea infrequently explored and it humanizes characters in ways others don't, and I can personally only hope more narratives follow suit.

While the show does a lot right, there are some occasional hiccups in the story, with some more glaring than others. One decision in particular was so dramatic it practically polarized two parts of the community against each other on whether it's genius or egregious (it's complicated). Outside of that, there's a few minor plotholes, which is disappointing for a story that otherwise took such care with its plot. The pacing of the final few episodes is strange, with a slow, methodical conflict being resolved jarringly quickly, and there's quite a few plotlines that weren't tugged on quite enough.

As a part of the BanG Dream! series, this show had to fill several checkboxes. It had to be about a girl band, the status quo of the band can't be disturbed in the end, and it had to be an incomplete story. If the band is canonically dissolved, how can they be added to their mobile game? How can they sell concert tickets, or albums, or marketable plushies? If the story is complete, how will they sell Gacha microtransactions for side stories in said mobile game? The answer, of course, is that they can't. Bushiroad is in the multimedia enterprise business, not solely the anime production business. Mixed media has to be created out of this show to be a success, and that can't happen if the status quo is permanently disturbed. Ave Mujica presents itself as high stakes drama, but the context around its production spelt out the ending before it even started airing. Similarly, if Bushiroad had to choose between wrapping their anime production in a neat bow of an ending or generating another ¥500 million from their mobile game, it's not a challenge to imagine what they'll choose. This isn't to say the ending is incomplete or unsatisfying, but there's a lack of resolution for a few minor conflicts that were likely justified with "We'll expand it in the mobile game or one of our concert lives." While probably great for superfans of BanG! Dream, it's a bitter taste to not get closure on these things. I'm hopeful things will be expanded on further in the sequel, but it's not hard to imagine other paid mixed media receiving that treatment first before that sequel comes out.

Ave Mujica, like its characters, is imperfect. Silly missteps, strange decisions, and misguided circumstances detract from what could've been a near-perfect experience. Despite that, it's a work that feels human. Every voice actor, artist, musician, writer, and producer has created a product seemingly out of love for the craft, sparing no expense of effort to create something to be proud of. Rather than playing it safe, chances were taken in the hopes that they'd pay off. Some faltered, but many succeeded. Despite the weight and meddling of a multi-billion yen franchise on its shoulders, Ave Mujica is still a show worthy of the chance to invite you into its world.

It's 2008, and Doug Walker is confused.

The famous film critic is doing a ten-year retrospective on Pokémon: The First Movie (1998). While watching the opening scene, in which a group of scientists explore a jungle, he poses a series of questions: "What are those things? Who are you? Where are we? What's that thing? Where am I? Is this Earth? Are we in another dimension? Is this the past? The future? The present? What's going on?! Where does this even take place?! Oh, my God, I'm, like, one minute into this movie, already I'm totally lost!"

To Walker's credit, Pokémon is a notoriously impenetrable narrative, known ... for its high complexity and thematic depth. As he explains: "For those of you who don't know what [Pokémon]'s about, I can't help you because nobody knew what the hell it was about. [...] Nobody could follow it. The only people who understood it at all were the kids."

A similar confusion descended upon me as, on the recommendation of several people in my orbit who called it the criminally underrated sleeper hit of the season, I watched the first episode of BanG Dream! Ave Mujica. They compared it to Umineko, Madoka Magica. None of them told me the show is a sequel (to 2023's BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!!), nor any other crucial bits of context: that plot details and twists have been foreshadowed via ARG; that there are music videos for the songs the show's band plays, themselves containing oblique hints to the narrative; that the band itself is real, not in the vtuber sense where rigged anime girls bob their heads on stream but in the sense that each character is voice acted by the members of a real five-person band called Ave Mujica that plays live shows in goth costumes.

Oh no, I thought. I've stepped into a bear trap!(!!!!)

My initial confusion mostly stemmed from the show expecting the audience to already know all the characters, not simply the five members of the band Ave Mujica but also the five members of the band MyGO!!!!!, who are the main focus of the predecessor series. There are few establishing shots, few immediate character beats that cause one character to stand out from the rest, and the character designs have the traditional sameface of idol anime, so hair and eye color are often the only notable aesthetic differences between them. I watch a lot of anime, and sameface doesn't usually throw me, but here it was a struggle to tell some characters apart (particularly Ave Mujica's two blonde guitarists, Uika and Mutsumi).

Disorientation can cause one to stop thinking at all, though, even to understand things that are perfectly understandable. The irony of Walker's baffled series of questions about the opening scene of the Pokémon movie is how most of them pertain to the setting, when the scene's setting (the real-world nation of Guyana) never appeared before or since in the franchise; even the most dedicated six-year-old had as much ability to answer questions about it as Walker himself. It's not even important, really, in the scope of the plot. It's a jungle somewhere, some distant land. It's in one scene and disappears forever. But Walker, like most parents of 1998, encountered a few details he couldn't understand (the franchise's foreign-sounding name, the endless array of unique monsters) and gave up trying to understand anything at all.

In Walker's defense, the most insidious aspect of confusion is not knowing what you don't know. A Pokémon fan watches that opening scene, well aware of the typical setting of Pokémon, and thus knows that this jungle setting is someplace new, some foreign locale, something they're not supposed to know. Walker cannot, at a glance, discern that. To him, maybe this jungle is the primary location where the action is set. Maybe he really is at a disadvantage for not being aware of it already.

The trick to understanding Ave Mujica is that the five members of MyGO!!!!! do not matter nearly as much as their screentime suggests. There is some connection, as two members of Ave Mujica (Sakiko and Mutsumi) were previously in a band (CRYCHIC) with three members of MyGO!!!!!, and Sakiko's abrupt and unexplained departure from CRYCHIC is the root of the interpersonal drama between Sakiko and Mutsumi. Otherwise, the MyGO!!!!!ites serve as outsiders to the main drama who look in and occasionally comment on it; not knowing anything about them is fine. Once I figured that out around Episode 3 or 4, the show became generally comprehensible.

I think.

It's 2019, and Doug Walker is confused.

Everyone is. A collective confusion as, during the climax of his avant garde musical reassessment of Pink Floyd The Wall (1982), an anthropomorphic mustelid slithers onto his shoulder while singing a Cockney rendition of "The Trial". Across a series of discombobulated fantasy landscapes, Walker has been regaled by this and several other digital creatures designed with an almost obscene attention to detail, lavish fur and fabric textures far beyond the pale of Walker's more workman-like VFX flair. If there was context, it has been lost in the characters' impenetrable accents and vocal layering. All anyone watching can do is ask:

What are those things? Who are you? Where are we? What's that thing? Where am I? Is this Earth? Are we in another dimension? Is this the past? The future? The present? What's going on?! Where does this even take place?!

Nobody can follow it...

Except Doug Walker. This isn't the reason he's confused. If anything, he is oddly, uncharacteristically accepting of the situation. He is a critic best known for animated facial expressions and wild gesticulations, but here he stands perfectly still almost the entire length of the song, even as the CGI creatures pluck his hat off his head or lift him bodily into the air or toss him into a little spike-studded Doug Cage. His face is stone.

No, this is a Walker who exhibits, at last, mastery over the raw facts of narrative. It is not plot, character, or setting that confuse Walker about The Wall. When he criticizes the song "Another Brick in the Wall Pt. 2", he correctly assesses that the song is about the cruelty of the education system. What he's confused about, lacking the cultural context of British grammar schools in the 1950s, is what this means, how to interpret it. He can only do so in the frame of the suburban American education system he remembers, and so ascribes to the song meaning relevant to that context; namely, that school isn't that bad, that teachers can be nice, and that anti-school youth sentiment is meaningless counterculture. It's a misunderstanding, not of fact, but of heart. "Pretentious," Walker calls it, a word he repeats across the video. Pretentiousness is a fixation of Walker's. He loves the word; he uses it often. It's perhaps the perfect word for a workman-like man like Doug Walker, one of the first true outsiders to achieve success in the democratized media landscape of the internet.

"Pretentious" means the author believes their work possesses more meaning and importance than the critic can derive from it.

This confusion of interpretation struck me too as I watched Ave Mujica, even when I understood on a summary level the plot and characters. In the first episode, one of the few characters to distinctively establish herself is Ave Mujica's drummer, Nyamu, who starts a catty argument with the band's keyboardist and founder, Sakiko. The crux of the argument is simple. Part of Ave Mujica's gimmick as an avant garde act that blends live music with acted skit segments is that its five members wear masks on stage, concealing their identities. Nyamu, in Walkeresque fashion, wants to dispense with this "pretension," claiming to be bored of it. Her true goal is mercenary; she believes, as the only band member who is not already established in the entertainment industry, that publicly associating herself with her more famous bandmates will elevate her personal profile.

Sakiko, for whom this project is an artistic venture of deep psychological importance, rejects her proposal. But Nyamu disregards her bandmates' wishes and forcibly unmasks them at the next concert anyway.

I understood the argument. What I didn't understand was how to feel about it, how interpret Nyamu's role in the story. In a vacuum, I could only imagine she was intended as the show's villain. She is vain, petty, a shameless social climber, self-absorbed, a YouTuber, and also the driver of the initial conflict that causes the other bandmates to spiral psychologically out of control. Beyond that, she is commercial. In my preconceived cultural understanding of "fiction about art," the sellout is the villain, and the person with legitimate artistic vision (in this case, Sakiko) is the hero. The rest of the first episode supports this reading: it focuses on Sakiko's perspective and home life in a way that lends her significant pathos, while Nyamu exists solely to cause her grief.

Yet the rest of the show does not support this reading. When a band member has a schizophrenic break a few episodes later, Sakiko is framed as the core cause, due to her demanding auteurism. Nyamu, who sparked the inciting incident, is never blamed, either by the other characters or by the narrative as she slips away, unregenerate, into a minor and isolated subplot. She never abandons or even interrogates her crass commercialism, and despite being the most replaceable member of the band and the least interconnected to the others' social circle (she appears, actually, to be a college-aged adult while everyone else is a high schooler), nobody suggests she be replaced when the band breaks up and reforms. Nobody demands anything of her at all. Nobody even really seems to see her as a problem.

I love it. I love it when shameless little shits don't get any comeuppance at all. I love Nyamu. (Honestly!)

But how am I supposed to interpret her argument, within the framework of Ave Mujica as a story?

The obvious interpretation is that Nyamu is correct, or at least in wake of the show's ambivalence toward her, not wrong. Cynical commercialism has value, is at least an important consideration for artistic decisions. This interpretation makes sense considering it's the artiste Sakiko who winds up shouldering the blame for the band's internal collapse, but at the same time it's a bizarre proclamation to make in a show that is otherwise so concerned with rendering Sakiko empathically, with exploring her psyche and motivations, and with -- ultimately -- selling the audience her artistry. Ave Mujica, as I explained, is a real band. All the goth flair, the arcane skits, the oblique narrative hints, and the doll symbolism that are core to Sakiko the character's artistic vision are also core to the real-life Ave Mujica the band. It's inconceivable to me that the show is actually dismissing its own aesthetic as "pretentious." Why, then, does its own in-universe Nyastalgia Critic go unchallenged, escape unscathed? What does it mean that these criticisms emerge not from unconnected outsiders (even with five members of MyGO!!!!! right there, with their significantly more down-to-earth, more workman-like band) but from one-fifth of Ave Mujica itself?

What, exactly, is Ave Mujica's identity?

It's 2013, and Doug Walker is confused.

Existentially.

The video is titled "The Review Must Go On," with an ominous subtitle in the vein of End of Evangelion: "Demo Reel Finale." Something, indeed, is coming to an end here, and it isn't just Doug Walker's lifelong passion project.

In this postmodern künstlerroman, Doug Walker stares into a mirror, but what he sees is not Doug Walker. It is his past and it will be his future. (Is this the past? The future? The present? What's going on?!) It is the fixed and unchanging edifice of 18 long years and counting, an entity unstuck from time, who, despite changes to format, site, contemporary taste, and the internet itself, remains immutable. It cannot be denied, cannot be destroyed, can only -- briefly -- be bargained with.

And Doug Walker bargains. "Not every week," he says, staring his down his creation. "Once every two weeks." His creation, only somewhat put off, accedes. (Now, in 2025, it's once a week once more.) A single word: "Done," and the deal is made.

"Alright then," Walker says, with a beleaguered sigh. "What's next?"

The cold voice replies: "I think you know what's next."

Walker does know. He returns to his desk, where he had been typing the script to the Demo Reel Finale, and dutifully writes what he has known all along. Donnie DuPre, the main character of Demo Reel, that lifelong passion project, that original creative work, was always him.

The Nostalgia Critic.

It's a final surrender. There will be no more passion projects. No delusions of artistic accomplishment. None, at least, that don't involve this thing that Doug Walker has become, this thing to which he has given the rest of his life.

This moment mirrors the argument between Nyamu and Sakiko. Though Walker claims otherwise in the video, the decision to revive the Nostalgia Critic is clearly commercial; the Nostalgia Critic is popular, Demo Reel is not. Walker has abandoned his artistic vision in favor of what sells. Nyamu has won.

Except it's Sakiko, not Nyamu, who makes the demands that the Nostalgia Critic makes of Doug Walker. "I am not going to let this band be just a passing fad," Sakiko says. "I told you. Give me the rest of your life."

Doug Walker is giving the rest of his life to the Nostalgia Critic. Is trapped by it. As Ave Mujica progresses, its members become similarly ensnared. I claimed previously that Nyamu is never punished by the narrative, never challenged by the other band members or blamed for her actions, nobody ever attempts to get her replaced, but the opposite side of that coin is that she is incapable of getting herself replaced despite her desire to use the band as a stepping stone for a personal career. Though she gains industry connections via a bandmate's actress mother, she is crippled by the memory of one of Ave Mujica's most perplexing images, an image that similarly left me at an utter loss: the guitarist Mutsumi, collapsed in a disassociating stupor, on stage before an audience of thousands.

This moment is the beginning of Mutsumi's character arc, in which she is consumed by her band persona, Mortis, in a literalized split-personality storyline that itself has obvious parallels to Doug Walker's relationship with the Nostalgia Critic in The Review Must Go On. What fascinates me about this moment, though, is the reaction of everyone watching. The moment Mutsumi unexpectedly collapses, Sakiko deftly weaves it into the band's narrative, concocting a story about how the song they were playing lulls the "dolls" (Ave Mujica's band members) into eternal slumber, before abruptly ending the entire concert. The other four members step off the stage, leaving only the collapsed Mutsumi in the spotlight, motionless and silent.

The audience loves it. The band explodes in popularity. It's such a memetic event that the fans become disappointed when it isn't repeated at the next concert; Nyamu suggests that they repeat it, even to the point of showing up to concerts and not playing music at all. "Ignoring the audience's expectations -- what's the point of that?"

Nobody, in or out of the band, reads Mutsumi's collapse as a cry for help.

She can't cry for help. No matter what she does. When the band announces their breakup, she screams hysterically on the stage, even as the other four members are quiet. "Mutsumi was cooking until the end," a social media post later remarks. She has a breakdown on the street, arguing with her split personality in Gollum/Smeagol fashion (complete with camera angles swapping back and forth to indicate her two selves), and though people gather around and film it, the audience's only possible interpretation of the event is that it is a promotional stunt for the band. Even Nyamu, haunted by that image of Mutsumi collapsed in the chair, isn't haunted because of the psychological toll her actions inflicted on her bandmate (and, eventually, primary yuri shipmate), but because she believes Mutsumi was acting, acting so ingeniously that it torments Nyamu she cannot achieve that same level of skill.

Mutsumi is entrapped within the narrative ambiguity of Ave Mujica. Like Doug Walker, everyone watching her is confidently confused, only able to interpret her actions within their own contextual framework.

What is the contextual framework of Ave Mujica, though? It is a Babushka doll of meaning, an anime based on a real band that contains within it contradictory proponents of artistic vision and common-denominator commercialism, that is itself contradictorily artistic -- if my struggle to interpret it is enough to suggest -- and commercial, the way its poetic symbolism about dolls and control is draped on samefaced 3D anime girl models that move stiffly and unconvincingly. But the show is willing to make those 3D models contort their faces into distinctively un-idol-like (distinctively Doug Walker-like) maniacal expressions, to throw them on the ground and scrape open their knees with blood streaming out, to have them hurl each other down the stairs in fits of rage, to pair them in incestuous yuri couplings. The story both gesticulates toward a cynical, darker take on the idol industry like Perfect Blue or Oshi no Ko, yet is part of an established idol franchise selling these characters as actual idols. Even in the narrative, the depiction of the idol industry is confused; the band seems to have no managers, no agents, nobody telling them what to do. They don't even have secretaries; bassist Umiri handles scheduling and itineraries. Men only exist in the world of BanG Dream! as fathers or grandfathers; every behind-the-scenes staffer at the concerts, in fact every concertgoer, is female.

Nyamu is not Akane Yonezawa, Ave Mujica's real life drummer. But both are industry outsiders in their first real role, compared to their four bandmates who are already established. Rich girl keyboardist Sakiko is not Kanon Takao, but Kanon Takao was winning international piano tournaments in Milan at age 10. Where is the line between fiction and reality? How real is this anime, and how fake is this band? How much is the Nostalgia Critic a character, and how much is he Doug Walker with a hat?

And isn't it within this endless array of ambiguity, of questions, of confusion, that Ave Mujica ensnares? "Give me the rest of your life," Sakiko says, but with these ARGs and multimedia comb-over-it-with-a-magnifying-glass details and crossovers with other bands, whose life is she demanding? To the incurious, the Doug Walkers, confusion is enough to dismiss out of hand. But for those who want to know more, there are an endless amount of dolls to open...

Perhaps Walker was right, all those years ago in 2008, to not gaze too deeply into the world of Pokémon. It is a franchise, after all, that has exploited the human instinct toward curiosity to become the highest-selling media property of all time.

("Ignoring the audience's expectations -- what's the point of that?" Nyamu says.)

It's 2021, and Dan Olson is confused.

He is a critic criticizing a critic. In this case, he is criticizing Doug Walker's review of The Wall. Unbelievably, this criticism has over 2 million more views than Doug Walker's The Wall video does. Over twice as many people have seen this criticism than the thing being criticized.

Olson asks:

"What is this? Why does this exist?"

He doesn't know why Doug Walker would do this. Why would he put such elaborate effort into a musical review of The Wall, something Walker barely seems to understand or care about at all, something he only seems to have watched for the first time in preparation for creating the review. Walker's lack of curiosity baffles Olson, particularly because it is balanced against the effort on display in the review itself. How can someone spend months on costumes, visuals, parody lyrics, and celebrity guests, all to call something pretentious?

What Olson doesn't realize is that there is a Doug Walker, wannabe filmmaker, involved in this production, a Doug Walker with -- for better or for worse -- an artistic vision, who is willing to go to great lengths to apply that vision.

But someone else is running the show. Someone to whom Doug Walker has given the rest of his life. He's called the Nostalgia Critic, but, as in Ave Mujica, this avatar of commercial greed is only an abstraction, isn't it? A figment of ambiguity in which all cries for help, no matter how loudly they are screamed, can be extinguished. There's someone else, unseen and unacknowledged, with real control over these dolls, the one who forces them to perform as perfect time capsules, ageless and eternal. I'm not sure what they're called for Ave Mujica, but for Doug Walker, their name can be found with a bit of searching: Mike Michaud.

"Let me show you," says that anthropomorphic mustelid, Lucy Lacemaker, as the first notes of The Trial begin. "Let me show you what happens when your dreams no longer need you."

Despite being labeled as a Bandori anime, I honestly think this is something that can be watched and enjoyed on its own along with the MyGO anime.

Now moving on to the actual review.

Although this is primarily advertised as a music-centric anime, it features psychological themes which are portrayed through its complex character backgrounds which are pretty well-written considering the rather short length of the show overall. The story is full of tragedy, which is definitely a stark contrast from the rest of the band stories in Bandori. I personally found it interesting how every member of the band had different reasons for joining which really ... adds to their depth. Another thing I found rather interesting was that a lot of the issues that were presented were never properly resolved in the story, but rather the characters decided to move past them and unite despite their differences, which is definitely another detail making this very different from other Bandori stories were problems are resolved faster.

I think the music, art and voice acting direction is absolutely perfect. I've never been the biggest fan of CGI use in anime, but found that I enjoyed its use here quite well. The music is an easy 10/10, on top of sounding absolutely amazing I also enjoy the theatrical spin they put to their performances. The live performances depicted in the show were animated beautifully and I'd definitely love to see more!


TLDR: The show is amazing, full of drama and tragedy and definitely worth a watch!

Honestly, this is a really good anime, especially compared to the rest of the BanG Dream! franchise—though I still think MyGO is a little better.

The story here is actually a direct continuation of It’s MyGO!!, so if you haven’t watched the prequel yet, you really should. If you skip it, you’ll miss almost all of the important build-up and probably won’t understand the characters at all.

Compared to other music-themed anime I’ve seen, this one definitely feels different. If you're expecting a slice-of-life music anime with minimal drama and lovey dovey character, you’re completely wrong. Even if you’ve seen MyGO, you’ll still be surprised by how ... different the vibe is here—and compared to the rest of BanG Dream! franchise. This time, the story fully focuses on Ave Mujica band and its member (obviously duh), while MyGO steps into more of a supporting role. The type of drama here is also different from what we saw in MyGO—the deeper you get into it, the more tense and intense it feels. Some of the dramas between the band members might be connected, and some might not. Plus, a few unanswered questions from MyGO finally get some answer here.

That being said, I still like the drama in MyGO!! better, just because it felt more realistic to me. Not saying the drama here is bad—it’s actually really good—it just didn’t hit me the same way.

As for the music, the opening and ending songs here are surprisingly better than the ones in MyGO. The cinematography and live animation scenes also noticeably better—they feel more polished and immersive. You can really feel what kind of band Ave Mujica is through the animation.

TL;DR
Ave Mujica is actually really good, especially if you’ve watched MyGO!! before—you gotta watch this one. The drama feels different from MyGO!! and the rest of the BanG Dream! franchise. Plus, some unanswered questions from MyGO!! finally get explained here. The opening and ending songs are surprisingly good.

Despite its ambitious themes and dramatic undertones, Ave Mujica: The Die is Cast struggles to deliver a coherent and engaging experience. While the premise holds potential, the series is weighed down by inconsistent storytelling, underdeveloped characters, and technical shortcomings that hinder its ability to resonate with viewers.

Narratively, the show lacks direction. Plot progression feels erratic, often meandering through scenes that fail to build meaningful tension or depth. While certain moments attempt to introduce intrigue, the overall structure remains fragmented, making it difficult for audiences to stay invested. Character motivations are underexplored, resulting in interactions that feel forced or lacking emotional weight.

Visually, the animation quality is ... subpar, with noticeable dips in consistency. While some stylistic choices aim to create an immersive atmosphere, the overall execution comes across as uninspired, failing to elevate the dramatic intensity the series strives for. Similarly, the soundtrack—though occasionally fitting—lacks memorability, failing to complement the narrative in a way that enhances engagement.

Ultimately, Ave Mujica: The Die is Cast is an underwhelming attempt at crafting a compelling story. While certain thematic elements could have been expanded into an engaging tale, the weak execution makes it difficult to recommend. For those seeking an intricate, thought-provoking narrative, this series unfortunately misses the mark.

Well Ave Mujica is here and compared to the prequel I’ve got to say that I appreciate how it is more straightforward, directly showing more about the main character and where she comes from instead of trying to be half mysterious as MyGO!!!!! was in its beginning. I still can’t excuse her personality and how she deals with things, but I can at least understand why and how she does the things she does.

In comparison to the previous entries I watched, the tone here is far more serious, being almost entirely focused on that mood and without mixing it with comedy as much as its ... prequel, and I actually think that the themes it was going for were very interesting. Right off the bat, Ave Mujica attempts to deal with the world of girl pop bands in Japan, and how their members have to hide a good part of their private lives, and in general how there can be different artistic visions amongst their members.

But there are also discussions between them about their different goals, whether it is more important to pursue what you want to do out of your art or what the audience wants out of you, as well as if it’s better to follow a performance in a prepared way or be spontaneous, both for the sake of spectacle, and so you can make it big quickly.

Besides that, there is the character Nyamu, who wants to become successful as quick as possible but gets perplexed at the actual talent of Mutsumi, so she wants to improve herself and ends up rejecting those opportunities. That other girl tries to keep up with her famous persona and the expectations others have about her, from her fans to the band, and is worried about doing the proper thing for her group and standing out for herself and not as someone from a famous family of artists. She gets mentally pressured to the point of developing a split personality and faking the public persona that was always expected out of her, with even full episodes of psychological immersion included.

Unfortunately, good intentions mean nothing without good execution and I can’t exactly say that there’s one in here, as events happen in rather quick succession and somewhat quirky ways to feel as serious and well explored as the writing and tone clearly intended, and as organic as needed for them to seem properly written.

The series takes off right from the ending of the previous one, and I have to say that for a band that refuses to use their connections, they sure form, get famous and get to have a big concert very fast. Unlike the toxic MyGO!!!!! though, you can see problems within this band right away, as half the members don’t have any connection and some of them disagree with the supposed leader on what to do. It could have been interesting to see how the protagonist deals with other characters being as proactive as her, instead of people that just do what she wants, and I expected her to have a character arc revolved around her realizing that she just plain sucks as a leader, and friend.

But just like with every other plot point in here, things happen very fast, with most of them getting no more than one episode or even half of one of runtime before moving to something else, so the handling of them end up being treated rather superficially and leaving a lot to be desired.

Even when something gets a more appropriate runtime dedicated to it, like that one girl having a mental breakdown, the writing of it can come off as corny and melodramatic, as serious theme exploration gets replaced with generic teenage drama and tearjerker moments. Yes, it’s a show about teen girls but that doesn’t excuse stuffing it up with themes and topics that aren’t going to be properly explored.

And for how proactive the characters seemed to be, eventually the MyGO!!!!! girls have to step in to help them with their problems and move the show forward, so the series end up being dependent of its prequel and its main group of the previous one, despite being released as their own things.

The teen drama also even replaces the music as the main focus of the series, and if you have read my other reviews about pop idols/bands shows, and even Hibike! Euphonium, you know how I dislike when that happens. I will at least admit that stuff that happens in the anime excuse the interruption of the performances and their replacement with enough downtime for the characters to deal with their personal issues, but I still found it disappointing that the teen drama took over the main point of the show completely. By comparison, MyGO!!!!! also had a lot of that, but the music was never sidelined as hard as in here.

At least in here the characters are straightforward, but somehow even more toxic than their predecessors were, and I wish their whole conflict wasn’t about generic teen drama where they yell and cry on screen to each other for classic emotional manipulation full of tearjerker moments, and simple by-the-numbers resolutions.

It’s hard to write about the rest of the characters because the vast majority of the show is about they overcoming their problems, thus doing so would result on heavy amounts of spoilers. I will at least say that Uika has yuribait moments that would make KyoAni proud, and a cheesy telenovela worthy backdrop story that’s not even shown but told. I know that I sound like a broken record, but again, they didn’t get enough focus and when they did it felt way too rushed and over the top, partially for coming up too late in the story. And Umiri is just there to be the professional one of the team and really nothing more. She is revealed to be the token funny girl, which was a surprise, but nothing of real substance behind, she is given a backstory that’s supposed to be sad but she doesn’t seem to care about it, so why would I? And her emotional breakdown later on wasn’t the least convincing.

The audio aspect in this anime ends up being disappointing because, although I prefer this band’s theatrical gothic rockpop music over the jpop made by MyGO!!!!! and the gothic jpop of Roselia, there are just a few full performances, only one up until the 10th episode in fact, and you can hear that song on the opening. Aside from that there’s the ending and I liked both but it’s a shame that there is such a shortage of songs from a music anime, especially one with such a cool aesthetic. The voice acting is still weak, even when some of the Ave Mujica members have actual experienced seiyuus behind them and there’s one song on one episode that purposely sounds like shit because the girl singing it can’t stop crying on stage and screen. The reason for that is that other characters, including the returning MyGO!!!!! cast, still sound inexperienced and not natural or not with enough nuance behind their delivery. The sound effects are there, whatever.

Same thing with the visuals, they didn’t change at all from the previous series, they are ok-ish, the CGI can look very plastic at times, but eh, it is what it is.

As a whole this was the most interesting out of the three BanG Dream entries I followed because it was the most ambitious, and I appreciate the early slight improvements over the writing and characterization compared to the previous show. Unfortunately, the execution and the pacing became a lot worse as the series went on, and ended up leaving a lot to be desired from what it could have been, ending in the same old meh result for a third time, leaving me with no real interest to follow another one.