Ave Mujica, Or, the ascendancy of Sakiko Togawa
still alive 命の歯車が so, still alive 回り出す
This blog entry will contain spoilers for the entirety of MyGo and Ave Mujica. You have been warned.
This one surprised the hell out of me, as I’m sure it did everyone else who was led down its path. Bang dream, for me, has always been a series that was hiding in the peripheral of my Aqours era. I was fully aware of it, and sort of understood its appeal, but compared to Aqours at the time I just felt like there was no reason for me to really investigate it’s media past going “Oh wow this Roselia song is really good dude”. The other band’s styles never really called out to me the way Roselia’s did, mostly because everything else wasn’t really what I was searching for Genre wise. A bit too many groups at once also sort of turned me off (there’s like 5+ groups or something I think. that’s too many groups. i know you don’t have to follow all of them, but when they separate the content the way they do, it seems like a lot of downtime).
Likewise, when MyGo came out and made waves, I sort of wrote it off at first. I watched the first 4 episodes around 3 times and bounced off of it due to not really being able to connect to any of the characters. I thought Sakiko was an annoying nepo baby who simply wanted to play rock star and was upset that things went the wrong way for her and had a hard time sympathizing with that. This lasted until episode 11 of Ave Mujica set my timeline ablaze on multiple websites, with whispers of a plot twist that was, frankly, a little bit crazy for mainstream anime in this day and age. Spurred on by the anger of people I found generally annoying online, I told myself that I have GOT to find out what made people this up in arms over the funny band anime. The twist was simply too funny to ignore. I had to know what the hell was going on in this world to warrant such a visceral action and such a drastic plot point. With that in mind, I told myself that I would finally get through MyGo. As a professional hater, I’m well aware if you’re going to dislike something, you’d better watch it first, otherwise you can’t be a real hater.
I thought MyGo was aggressively “Just okay”. That’s why this blog post is “Ave Mujica” and not “MyGo & Ave Mujica”. Don’t get me wrong: MyGo as a show is EXTREMELY important to fully enjoying and understanding Ave Mujica’s complex characters and their motivations for why they are the way they are. However, most of MyGo focuses on the titular band, and more specifically, the story of Tomori and her struggles with social aspects of her life and how it affects her ability to connect to others. I feel like this topic is a bit too far out of my scope, so I can’t really comment on the accuracy or the handling of what’s going on with her, but I’m happy she does get what she wants.
yeah man
However, I think the show’s constant insistence on making Haru Hikage the major plot event multiple times was a bit lackluster. It’s important for plot advancement, but it felt like there was a lot of padding around them playing it in episode 7 and how it affected Soyo and Sakiko. Throughout the rest of the show, we’re given strange glimpses into Sakiko’s life and how it was changing before our very eyes without actually telling us. The shots of her working at a call center were cryptic and mysterious, setting in the seeds for the watcher to keep her in the back of their minds while they watched the main cast of MyGo to go through their own struggles.
Of course, I know now that the writing of Sakiko during MyGo was completely intentional. She’s this enigmatic, almost villainous character to Tomori’s story: The annoying, self-centered rich girl who took away Tomori’s precious Crychic and Haru Hikage away from her, and potentially the first time she had ever felt legitimate human connection to someone else. She feels like an artificial friend for so very long, throwing away everything they had built together over some comments on social media that tore a rift through the rest of the group.
It worked on me, of course: I found Sakiko almost unbearably stupid and short-sighted for the entirety of MyGo all the way up until her confrontation with Soyo later in the season, where I gained a bit more appreciation for her character but only because she said some really cool lines that at that point didn’t really make much sense in the moment. How painful the wait must have been between the final scene in MyGo where it’s revealed that Sakiko’s father was living in squalor, reduced to a pathetic and alcoholic mess for then unknown reasons to the first episode of Ave Mujica, over a full year later.
My favorite part of Ave Mujica is that it starts at 80 miles an hour and only goes up from there. You’re immediately given context for Sakiko’s life and decisions, and how all the things that have happened to her in MyGo only made things worse for her. The weight of other people’s actions have completely flipped her life upside down, and all the while she had to keep pretending like everything was okay for her. Despite everything, she has her band. Her collection of freaks that would help her claw her way out of hell bit by bit, composed of former bandmates, an egotistical social media influencer, an idol, and a drive to tell her story her way no matter what.
Not even this goes right for her, however. The sudden unmasking feels like yet another monster in her nightmare of a life, brought on by someone she had put trust into. The line that hurt me the most through this ordeal was when she lamented about having to re-write story and songs, which was a really simple yet effective way to show us what kind of person she is. Ave Mujica is clearly her make-or-break moment, her crazy fantasy world where she was able to dictate the pace and reality of, and even that was stolen away from her by something out of her control.
Originally, this blog post was going to be just about my thoughts of Ave Mujica the show and how happy it made me to watch something so brazenly brave and nonchalant it was with it’s somewhat shocking concepts
The Mutsumi arc was excellent. Honestly one of my favorite sequences in any show ever, the pure creativity shown through bonkers story boarding and careful creative direction elevated her story in a way I wasn’t aware the staff was able to pull off quite honestly. Using the MyGo opening visuals to show Mortis taking over her entire personality was an incredible decision, giving the impression that she was finally free of her own mental suffering the same way Tomori was freed from her own, although at the cost of her existence. Further explaining this as a result of her somewhat traumatic childhood, always in the shadow of her star actress mother who thinks so lowly of her own child that she has no problem telling a near-stranger that she sees her as a “monster” who has no personality of her own; only being able to “act” as different characters instead of being her own self.
However, throughout all of this arc, a question lingered in my head: Where the hell is Uika? The mysterious frontman for Ave Mujica, and half of the in-universe duo of Sumimi, was notably absent during a large chunk of the middle of the show. Uika is probably far and beyond my favorite character in this show. We saw glances of her throughout MyGo, usually at the same stargazing show that Tomori would sometimes go to. The revelation for why she did this so often is heartbreaking, much like most of her life’s story.
It’s at this time I have to admit I was already fully aware of the twist of Uika actually being Hatsune Togawa, the illegitimate child of Sakiko’s grandfather. It was a big part of why I wanted to watch as well, such a socially unacceptable and taboo topic feels like a death sentence for popularity the modern anime watching audience, yet this popular show was willing to go there for compelling storytelling. I’m a big fan of storytelling like this, simply because there are so many stories being told out there that feel so safe and on rails. This reveal felt like being hit on the side of a head with a baseball bat in a way. What do you mean that bang dream of all shows is writing a toxic yuri incest anime? In 2025 no less? Crazy. I hate to do it because they feel like my mortal enemy, but I have to respect Bushiroad for writing off on this decision. It feels like a complete and total “We refuse to compromise on the vision of our fucked up story”, much like Sakiko’s own refusal to compromise on her vision for Ave Mujica. Poetic.
Episode 11, the episode where this detail is revealed, is nothing less than a masterpiece in my eyes. The amount of risks this show takes to complete it’s grand creative vision is honestly a bit stunning, and making an entire episode a stage play separated from the reality of the rest of the show is one of these risks. Putting complete faith in the animators and Rico Sasaki to carry the weight of having to explain the tragedy of Hatusne Togawa, I think they did an incredible job. Her story is so very tragic, and Rico Sasaki’s performance to convey said story is nothing less of a masterclass in character acting, something akin to Saori Hayami’s performance during episode 7 of InoBato
Forcing herself to take up this mantle, the reveal that it was all her fault that Sakiko’s father was in the current state he is, simply because he was the only other human being in her family that tried his best to defend her, his half sister, and her appalling treatment from his own father. He wanted nothing but for her to have the same honor and treatment that he had, and he was punished for it in a way that also punished Sakiko, destroying everything she had left after she already lost her mother. Hatsune has to deal with the reality that she truly is a curse to Sakiko, the litmus for the downfall in her life at her own selfishness goals.
When told all of this information, Sakiko simply doesn’t care. She has, in her head, overcome so much already. Why would something like “Would you kiss your aunt on the lips or is that kinda gay” stop her? She has more lofty goals at this point like becoming god, apparently. Spurred on by the rebirth of Ave Mujica from the ashes of Mortis’s inferno, what can stop her at this point? A little incest? Probably not. Uika, to her, was always there for her: a lighthouse in a sea of rejection and the death of her former life as a member of the Togawa family. The rest of her entire existence has been shrouded in rich family nepotism and politics, why let another social taboo get in the way of her happiness?
The ethereal, glowy feel of episode 12’s scenes between Sakiko and Hatsune feel like a drug-induced dream world, a world where nothing and nobody can stop them as they live their new life together, having fully confronted the reality of their decisions what “life” is to them now. A chilling like from Sakiko has her realize that this, too, will eventually end when she comments on the smell of the morning coffee inside of Hatsune’s apartment. She’s fully accepted that at this point, nothing will ever be easy for her ever again. Long detached from the nepo baby status seen at the start of MyGo, she’s gladly thrown away everything for the smallest bit of emotional and physical stability, and will seemingly do it again if she needs to. The realization that her life is doomed to be at the behest of others no matter how hard she tries, no matter how much she puts into it annoys her.
This is why she has to become God in her eyes. No longer wanting to be controlled by her family, her friends, her bandmates, or even her own conscience or morals, she must ascend to a level that is seemingly unattainable. Maybe, as God, she’ll also be able to protect others that she cares about, instead of always seemingly having to be the person who needs to be protected or saved. Her desire for control and stability in her own life is only attainable to her if she can ascend to this level of Godhood in her head, otherwise what’s the point of living?
Anyway I think I liked Ave Mujica. Also, the music is really good. Please make more.
Final rating:
