BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! Episode 13 Discussion

Was really looking forward to this. As part of the r/anime awards jurors last year, I gave Shine Post a 9/10 and voted it #1 out of 8 final drama nominations. It was my AOTY alongside Summertime Rendering. This should've been right up my alley, as like Shine Post, it involved a number of ex-members of a music group. But in Shine Post, the ex-members returned to Tings. In Bandori MyGO, 2 of the ex-Crychic members ultimately never reconciled.

My main issue with this show is that every girl is insufferable and I couldn't root for any of them. That's obviously the selling point of the band, in that all of MyGO features flawed girls. But it doesn't seem to me that any of the girls actually grew wiser and learned from what happened. In Shine Post, each girl had their own issues, but the story unfolded in a way to allow the viewer to care and rooted for them. Even the ex-members, which appeared as the initial antagonists, ended up being fantastic characters and were ultimately redeemed.

In MyGO, the only reason why the band stuck around was that the random comic-relief character, Raana, decided to use her deus ex machina abilities in ep10 and magically get everyone together again. I absolutely hated Raana and thought she was the worst character in the show. I knew her eccentricity would eventually give the writers an out, and it did. Everyone only accepted her because she was already skilled with the guitar. It would've been more interesting if Raana was as unskilled as Anon on the guitar, because I'm pretty sure Taki would've kicked Raana out of the band. Contrast to Shine Post where the manager's ability to detect lies actually didn't magically resolve all of Tings' interpersonal issues.

The other non-Crychic girl, Anon, was set up to be the main character of the show. The writing for her fell so flat that they had to make up a fake, inconsequential flaw just so that she could have one like the rest of the cast. She apparently runs away during adversity. The writers didn't get the memo because Raana was a no-show more times than Anon. Anon's flaw didn't cripple the band at all, and was only used as a cheap trick for one scene. The flashback didn't help other than show that Anon wasn't very good at English, so she ran away from England. Really? She went to England without being good at English? What did she think was going to happen? Maybe the writers wanted to avoid a Mary Sue situation where Anon became the angel who solved everyone's issues. But giving her a fake flaw was even more insulting.

The last 20 seconds of ep13 finally revealed in an indirect way why Saki left Crychic, ultimately causing its disbandment. She is no longer upper class and is desperate to return to it. This puts much context into her actions in previous episodes, and explains why Ave Mujica was created. While I think this development was great, I don't like how it was just dropped at the end of the show just like that. Instead, for the previous 12 episodes, the viewer had been conditioned to hate the 2 Crychic quitters, Saki and Mutsumi. I also worry about how this puts season 2's writing in a corner: Bandori is a media franchise and it will never make Sakiko/Mutsumi join MyGO now that their band is established. They can't be redeemed unlike Yukine and Momiji from Shine Post, so why should I care about them? The Ave Mujica revelation could've been revealed earlier at the cost of not resolving the internal MyGO drama. With a larger overarching story, this could've been a 2-cour bonanza where both plotlines were resolved at the end of 2 cours.

Ultimately, MyGO the band has 3/5 ex-Crychic members, Anon with an inconsequential flaw, and Raana the deus ex machina. Take away Anon and Raana, and this very well could've been a great show where Saki/Mutsumi reconciled with the others and got back together again in a cathartic fashion. Instead, we're left with the shaky alliance of MyGO, where Tomori and Soyo still can't let go of Crychic, and Ave Mujica, which is even more unlikeable than MyGO and is there just to sell another video game.

4/10. This was no Shine Post, and I clearly won't hold it in the same regard as the r/anime jurors who crowned it AOTY. (I didn't participate this year as I had major grievances with the process, and have since disowned the official ranking.)