Anime: Bang Dream! Ave Mujica

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.