Reviews

The most surprising thing about MyGO is how it even came to existence. If you told me the same people who did all the Sanzigen Bandori shows were doing a full drama-focused entry, I'd have avoided it based on that alone. The series does not have a good track record for its forced drama moments, and the first Roselia movie was practically a lesson on how NOT to do a drama-focused show. My main problems were that how superficial and self-congratulatory the drama is depicted in these shows, where everyone is overly nice and forward-looking, and everyone has that "corporate-friendly/marketable" personality which means no one can truly be a terrible person.

Then somehow MyGO happened. From the get go you have Anon, who may seem like a genki type like Kasumi and the like, but has her own depths and personality (you know, character flaws and all, like a real character) and personal motivation so she's not just another bland archetype. It's like this for everyone in the cast, even the most seemingly well-adjusted character has some personal issues of their own. What works is how the show handles its drama, where everything isn't solved amicably or with a cry and a hug. Even at the end of the show you do get the sense that nothing is truly completely resolved, but everyone is just gonna try to move on regardless.

Honestly the closest comparison I can think of (esp when it comes to Bushiroad shows), would be Revue Starlight. Except here, the conflict isn't immediately resolved and forgotten, but you have a character undergo a permanent change in personality, and the conflict everyone went through is still a sticking point in everyone's lives, not readily forgotten. Soyo's line at the end still lingers in my mind.

But what truly surprised me was the amount of effort went into scene composition and audio mixing. Prior to this, Bandori had some of the blandest cinematography in a show, which is fine for a CGDCT show, but really hurts it when it's trying to have a Serious Drama Moment. Morfonication tried doing some creative shots every now and then, but the serious moments fell flat because of mediocre audio mixing. This isn't the case for MyGO, where you can tell a lot of work was put into finetuning how the scenes are presented, from the subdued lighting, to the framing of scenes (eg how the angle the piano room is shot in gradually tilts as the show goes on), to how the ambient noise subtly increases in volume during awkward moments, it really makes for a masterful presentation you would not expect from BanG Dream. For instance, compare Shiro's scene in Morfonication to Anon's scene in episode 5 where they are in a similar situation, and see the difference in how both scenes are handled.

MyGO is mesmerizing. It's a show where people aren't just walking archetypes, and a show where the emotions really run raw. It's uneasy, uncomfortable, but at the same time, refreshing and grounded. At the end of the day, everyone is flawed and lost, but at least we can all be lost together.

9/10