Well folks, it’s finally happened. Just a year and change after the conclusion of the fantastic BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, we have arrived at the long-awaited/dreaded debut of Ave Mujica, the gothica-drenched followup to the adventures of Tomori and friends. While Tomori took the breakup of her beloved band CRYCHIC as an opportunity for personal growth, and ultimately drew together four fellow “lost girls” into the symbol of persistence that is MyGO, Sakiko has apparently spent the interim dedicating herself to becoming as mentally unwell as possible, and has now resurfaced in a lace mask and corpse paint on a stage that looks suspiciously like a sacrificial altar. You guys here for a good time? Ready to party? Too bad, wrong fucking band. We’re here to have a bad time.
So yes, I am pretty darn excited. With both director Kodai Kakimoto and series composer Yuniko Ayana returning from MyGO, I have every expectation that Ave Mujica will maintain its predecessor’s playful elegance of cinematography and richness of character drama, offering a new tangle of expectations, allegiances, and one-sided grudges to furnish its melodramatic performances. And given the maximalist aesthetic of Ave Mujica itself, I’m confident that constancy of execution will extend as well to MyGO’s just-barely-tongue-in-cheek tone, allowing us in the audience to fully sympathize with its characters while still finding humor in their self-important histrionics. Is the night of Sakiko’s liberation at hand? Let’s find the fuck out.