lol this rough draft of my reactions to Ave Mujica got too long and unwieldy and I got busy moving cross-country, so I’m just posting it to get it out my drafts.
Ave Mujica: the Die is Cast was entertaining, and emotional, but I don’t think I can say it was good, especially not the way It’s MyGO!!!!! was.
-lol fuckin crunchyroll subs not properly translating on-screen text, in such a show where on-screen text is vital to understanding the story. Just lmao. And terrible like, typesetting of subtitles so it’s completely incoherent when there is translated on screen text at the same time as dialogue. Or there are two sets of audio dialogue, like, say… the band playing a song while thinking to themselves, in a show about girls being in a band. Closed captioning is like 50 years old at this point; these are solved problems.
-I enjoyed the gradual realization that Ave Mujica’s ~thing~ wasn’t some corporate choice on Sakiko’s part as it kinda seemed in It’s MyGO!!!!!—she’s just in her chuunibyou phase.
I mean… yeah I remember being 14 and thinking I was hecka deep for knowing about the metaphor of a theater mask for social interactions (this was before ‘masking’ became as widely known on the internet, hush). And, also being a rich girl, feeling stifled and ‘dolllike’ at having to perform Manners and Etiquette in front of others in social situations instead of feeling like I can comfortably be myself.
Seeing Sakiko just flying by the seat of her pants after looking like some kind of mysterious mastermind in It’s MyGO!!!!! was a pleasant surprise.
- it feels like, maybe 3-4 episodes too short for the story it seemed to be trying to tell. As a story of ‘broken people find each other and become a found family,’ it needed more time to either develop camaraderie between the girls or show how everyone was too mistrustful to develop camaraderie and that’s why, in their folly, they first fell apart.
Very related, Nyamu (and Umiri) feeling critically undeveloped. At least Nyamu got the hint of “oh she has a big family she’s trying to Make It Big and Provide For out in the country” as her motivation and reason for selfishly fucking up the band for more exposure. But Umiri’s sudden “oh actually I super care about this one band out of 30 I moonlight for (no you don’t get to see my character development of it)” is uh… a little too understated for my liking. It seems to just be a “she saw CRYCHIC’s reunion and developed the concept of jealousy, having had learned to never get attached as a studio/support musician do you get it you thought she was just all professional but it turns out that that keeps her from developing relationships with the people she works with, she’s actually lonely!!!1” cliche. Not saying that’s a bad cliche, and it’s a good lesson for her to learn, but like Nyamu’s hint before it, it relies on my knowledge of cultural tropes to appreciate or even understand.
and like Mutsumi becoming more social over a day. Honestly the way it’s presented it’s like Mutsumi literally switched personalities overnight, which really should have concerned the girls besides Saki because… I mean that’s really fucking weird, I know characters in this universe are super incurious about but come on?
-Japan’s history of treating mental illness not well / extremely apprehensive of “Mutsumi has DID!”
Woof. So. Mutsumi. First two episodes were great. The looming dread and her stress mounting… excellent horror.
Mutsumi hates being recognized and Perceived as the daughter of two famous people. Nothing in her life has ever been ‘hers,’ not even herself; everything from any of her actions to her looks are mere reflections of her parents, and she herself is more an accessory for Minami-Chan the famous actress and Wakaba the famous comedian than a real person and child in her own right. Mutsumi grew up feeling unable to express herself, and naturally if you don't practice socializing, you lose the skill, assuming she even learned it to begin with. Even among her first friends other than Saki in CRYCHIC, Mutsumi felt unable or unwilling to express herself, have her "guitar sing" as well. (That barrier she felt prevented her from being able to enjoy the band as the others did, leading to her "I've not had fun even once being part of this band" bombshell.)
She was the last to join Ave Mujica. Knowing that Saki wanted to go Pro and debut ASAP (to... pay the bills?), it makes sense that she would be reluctant to ask Mutsumi to do this for her. But she was surprised how quickly Mutsumi agreed. She surely felt pressured to. She knew Saki was falling apart and needed her, and she couldn't do anything for the death of Saki's mother, or the disowning of her father, or Saki having to support two people.
The masks were a safeguard and insurance. Would let Mutsumi ease somewhat into being a famous musician, a pool ring to keep her afloat in the deep end, and being anonymous also meant less pressure and it's easier to start over should things fail. Of course, Nyamu ruins all that almost immediately.
And... then Mutsumi has to cover Uiko’s part of promoting because she’s busy with sumimi. Saki says it was requested ‘by the client,’ but she went along with it, even though she should have known Mutsumi couldn’t do it effectively. Failing to deal with her own problems, however, Saki was in no position to be able to think or care for others’.
Mutsumi's “It won’t last long” in the interview could have been referring to herself, that she won’t last long, although her assessment that the band won’t last long was obviously true, because Nyamu’s actions fucked up the plan and the discord it created did portend doom.
“Haven’t you been on TV since you were a kid? Shouldn’t you be used to interviews by now?”--Interesting line. Either Nyamu knows nothing about Mutsumi, or Mutsumi’s selective mutism is much more recent. It’s really unclear to me how famous Mutsumi is, actually. I don’t follow celebrity culture, but my impression of “kids of celebrities” that I know of have been from those kids leveraging their parents’ fame to try something or like, them posting on social media openly. Not trying to hide it as Mutsumi does. But the characters act as if Mutsumi is super famous herself, for being the kid of Wakaba and Minami, not just that she is the kid of Wakaba and Minami.
Regardless, Mutsumi steps into the dark studio, unable to sleep, and spends the night and subsequent day clutching at her guitar. Her lifeline. What makes her Her. Barely makes it to the Live in time to get dressed and go out on stage. And Saki's hurried revision of the script to reflect Nyamu's de-masking almost seemed tailor-made about Mutsumi:
Amoris: “This isn’t the real me!” Mortis and Doloris: “The moonlight will surely make me shine” / “Right, the moon, it surely will—” Timoris: “how unfortunate. the moon heals no one”. Oblivionis: “Not only that, it will press closer and closer / Once broken, you’ll have to live with this face forever.”
... Nyamu to express her horror, the weight of the roles Mutsumi has to and has had played, of the beautiful doll-like daughter of the famous comedian and actress, unable to just be herself. “Maybe I can express myself and flourish in Ave Mujica,” she may think to herself—but Umiri, the voice of band experience, knows better, and shoots that down. And Saki tells her the weight of expectations from being part of Ave Mujica will also bear down upon her. That Mutsumi is to be trapped, nailed into place even more than she already was as Their Daughter. As Mutsumi says, looking out at the audience of countless Mutsumi-roles, “There’s no escape now.”
I’m extremely leery of pop culture (especially Japanese pop cultural) depictions of neurodiversity, especially when it seems like a conscious decision to depict A Disorder, as opposed to the confluence of personality/behavioral traits summing up into recognizable criteria after the fact (yeah no, looking at you, Hina, and Sayo, and Yukina—and Kokoro, Tae, and…). But I cried during It’s MyGO!!!!!’s episode 3 before I even knew it. Tomori is excellent autistic representation. It just feels like a definite speedrun to go from autistic to DID.
I’m not knowledgeable enough about DID to feel comfortable assessing its portrayal.
-possible cultural mismatch / lol it literally is all Saki’s fault for not confiding in her friends that she was having trouble at home. What… unnecessary pride? Fear of judgment? I mean, it’s a believable mistake for a child to make, especially about family trouble, but… maybe I’m missing the Japanese cultural context to understand why at no point did Saki trust anybody but the shrinking violet wallpaper friend who attended the funeral and somehow learned Saki’s dad got disowned and everything. (How did Mutsumi learn all that, anyway?) my cultural context is preteens complain about their parents all the time to each other, so I can kinda chalk it up to different culture and Sakiko being believably a dumb kid. But…
-why did nobody know about the 1.68 billion yen fraud scandal? It was in the news that Soyo was apparently able to pull up a year+ later… Tsukinomori students didn’t talk about it at all? Not after Sakiko stopped coming to school? Why didn’t she google Sakiko before then??
-If Soyo just stood in front of the apartment door in the ~bad part of town~ and only heard a male voice ask if Sakiko was back, there’s no way she would’ve properly learned “sakiko’s dad became a NEET alcoholic.” Right? Honestly, given that these girls don’t know each other’s addresses I don’t think anyone ever met Sakiko’s dad. Soyo should totally think that male voice was like Saki-Chan’s pimp or something.
—why is Raana able to tell at a glance of this person she’s never seen before has a split personality and one of them is ‘sleeping.’ Magical Negro Stray Cat??
—why did Mutsumi-chan change from being the doll to being a person inside the mirror? That was an interesting and sudden-seeming change.
-acting vs. ‘another personality’… I appreciate the ambiguity/plausible deniability. I was thinking it before Minami-Chan brought it up—that Mutsumi doesn’t realize she’s acting—but her “that child’s a monster” and Nyamu’s correct reaction to a mother casually admitting hating being around her own child [who she feels is only acting her emotions instead of genuinely feeling them] helped snap me out of it. I also like that Nyamu had the reaction she did, as someone with a good familial bond should be horrified at that. Even if she still thinks Mutsumi has only been acting, which seems to still be the case.
-I’m not sure why Soyo laughed hysterically at Tomori’s revised lyrics? She said it was a compliment that “Tomori you’re amazing” but…
—Mutsumi was the only one who didn’t cry during the CRYCHIC reunion, or speak during Haru Hikage… :(. But I liked that the other characters properly appreciated Tomori’s tears. Soyo and Taki only knew her to cry once before, in episode 10 of MyGO!!!!!, but honestly I had forgotten about that (it’s been a while since I saw It’s MyGO!!!!! orz) so I was like ‘gasp and Tomori’s crying! Holy crap!’ while watching episode 7 as I had somehow remembered Tomori criticizing herself for not being able to cry [at farewells] like others in It’s MyGO!!!!!. I also really liked how much Tomori sucked during the first song—her levels were all off. It kinda felt like… an admission: “okay, we know high school girls can’t actually sound studio-perfect the first time they play a song.” … I want all the non-professional songs in this franchise to sound like that.
—the reunion was really nicely done; an emotional capstone to the ‘CRYCHIC haunting the present’ arc. Being older than the characters nowadays… in some ways I’m sure such emotional beats hit harder for Adults like myself than the target audience. I’ve started to think that resilience and/or emotional maturity at least, in part, come from experiencing a multitude of disappointing, painful moments. The toddler melting down on the floor because their parents said no to buying the candy they wanted is melting down because to them, right then, that is the worst thing ever happening to them. But… we age.
The CRYCHIC girls will come to realize a nuance to their realization of ‘it wasn’t actually special, it and we were ordinary and we elevated it in our memories; even if we came back together we’re different people now, so it wouldn’t be the same; what we had is dead and gone.’ Being solidly in my mid-30s, I can say that actually, CRYCHIC was actually special. It was special and unique and glorious because it was them, and because they chose to make that time in their lives special.
(I love the Hana-Chan and Rei Reunion story in Bandori for the same reason, and it hurts so incredibly much for the same reason, as Rei crushes her dream and salts its earth… or, at least, try to :9 in her heart. Doesn’t hurt that Nakana Ina Kanai is one of the prettiest songs.)
—and then we go from that to “I’m secretly your aunt and our meeting was forbidden so I took the place of my sister (who wasn’t forbidden from interacting with you) when she was sick once and I because I was obsessed with you I ran away from home and took her name and dream when I felt like my world ended and I’ve been impersonating her since. Look, btw I’m sorry it’s my fault your dad did a fraud, it was because he found out about me (and presumably gave me the money he took from your family’s company?)”…
-Nyamu dissing Saki’s daily wear, when Saki met her at the hotel. Said Saki’s clothes weren’t well-made. “If you’re a rich girl, wear better clothes. People will look down on you otherwise.” Wearing something “inappropriate for the occasion” made Nyamu doubt Saki
