ms tabula rasa

The new headmate not knowing how to drum or compose, not being head over heels for Tomori, or not having an inferiority complex… She'd be totally unrecognisable. It'd also be really really cute. Imagine Taki's flustered face as she finds out what embarrassing or humiliating things her other self has been up to! What if she even confesses to Tomori? Being cucked by Anon is hilarious, but being cucked by her own headmate is gut-bustingly good. Ultimately, having MyGO (and Umiri) at her back means she'll eventually adjust to it.

Chihaya Anon

Anon is a girl desperate for acknowlegement and genuine friendship. She thought she needed popularity for those, but Tomori taught her she didn't. Despite having learned her lesson, she's still full of herself in a really charming and cute way! In fact she's so cute that whenever I think about her I kinda just start thinking like her and writing like her? It's sorta weird but cool at the same time… I just love Anon! Some say she's annoying but they can all die in a fire 🩷

Anyway, plurality. I think it'd be funny if Anon keeps introjecting herself because she's just that self-absorbed. On a more serious note, a grouchy or shy version of Anon would add some complexity to her relationships with her band members, especially Taki and Soyo. I think sometimes it can be hard to open up to someone who's rarely outwardly grumpy, so grumpy Anon could help. At least, that's how I feel.

I also want to touch on the "spreading my spores" meme. My pocket of the internet contains a lot of plural transfem anime fans. That means these people are more likely than the average person to: create headmates, have very low self-esteem, and watch AveMyGO. This makes them very susceptible to ANON-19, aka Anon spores. Symptoms include: higher self-esteem, the desire to dye one's hair pink, and being really cute and sweet. There is no cure.

Takamatsu Tomori

Tomori is a wonderful girl who can't or doesn't want to mask her autistic traits. She deserves the world. She's had it drilled into her that her interests and feelings are strange, even creepy. Nobody in her class wanted to be friends with her except Anon, and she only wanted her because she was the only one not already in a band.

Tomori is eventually able to express herself through song, and ends up attracting lifelong friends. So… what if she became plural? Well, everyone would notice her lyrics are very different from usual. As a result of feeling even less human, the lyrics would be sadder and less encouraging. She also might feel rage at all the unfairness she's tolerated until now. It might become an emo band and that's awesome. I really really want to see that in season 3.

Kaname Raana

Raana is Raana. She knows exactly who she is and what she likes and I don't think that will ever change. Play guitar, eat matcha, kiss interesting women. Girl's got her whole life figured out and she's not even in high school yet.

Jokes aside, Raana's movie-exclusive backstory shows that Raana is autistic like Tomori but also uncompromising. If she can't play at SPACE, RiNG, or somewhere else that feels at home, she refuses to play at all.

Raana is also very cat-like, with a sensitive tongue and a sixth sense that clues her in to Mortis' existence (my Watsonian explanation is that Raana spends a lot of time around cats and is therefore an expert at noticing small changes in body language, even if she can't interpret them. She probably saw Mutsumi performing in CRYCHIC at some point and so she could spot some differences between her and Mortis).

I headcanon Raana as a therian, someone identifying as more animal than human (yes I know humans are animals, you know what I mean). That's somewhat related to plurality I think, and frequently co-occurs with it, as a lot of headmates don't see themselves in their physical body. Raana's simple outlook on life allowed her to look past all the band drama and see Mortis as just another girl, and so they became fast friends. I don't know if Raana is plural, but I know she'd be very popular with anyone who is.

Nagasaki Soyo

Soyo is hard to write about. I think it's because the traits of hers I relate to are things I don't like thinking about. Soyo would really benefit from being able to detach herself from her role of "the mum friend" or in more serious terms her parentification, and plurality is one way to go about that. She'd also really benefit from age regression. It's too hard for me to write anything more about her.

Wakaba Mutsumi

Mutsumi very clearly has DID so let's skip over most of the analysis or I'll be writing this for weeks (I know that DID is a diagnosis Mutsumi almost certainly hasn't received but here I'm treating it as a shorthand for the list of symptoms itself).

Mutsumi, or more specifically the one Mortis calls "Mutsumi-chan", is a girl who fell in love with guitar. After picking up this one (1) personality trait, all her other headmates more or less went dormant, save for Mortis, who acted as her protector.

Like Tomori, Mutsumi has great trouble expressing herself, but unlike Tomori, Mutsumi was exploited by her family, the press, and yes, Sakiko too. Under extreme pressure, she eventually let Mortis take over for her, and Mortis rightfully gives the middle finger to Sakiko and her band of try-hards for failing to notice Mutsumi's discomfort.

For Mutsumi, plurality was the only way to survive under all those expectations, and having someone around to communicate for her is a huge plus too. That said, it's still a coping mechanism and I hope she doesn't have to lean on Mortis too much in the future.

Mortis

Mortis is a super interesting character. She declares herself Mutsumi's protector and does an excellent job, but after a certain point, what Mutsumi wants, what Mortis thinks Mutsumi wants, and what Mortis wants all fall out of alignment. It's a truly humanising depiction of DID. It's common for someone to start out firmly attached to some system role or idea of who they should or need to be, only to later realise that having your own wants, needs, hopes, fears, hobbies/tastes, and relationships is… kind of wonderful actually.

Honestly, I don't think Mortis will make it to the end of season 3, if only because Mutsumi no longer having DID could be used as evidence of her character growth. I can only hope they merge/integrate instead at the very least. Ahhh… I should savour this short time while their fate is still up in the air… Well, post-anime stories do exist already but I've been avoiding them.

On a personal note, I once had two headmates, one very scared and one her protector. Exactly like Mutsumi and Mortis. They're gone now. So, I'll probably be inconsolable during season 3 ahaha…

Yuutenji Nyamu

Nyamu has grown on me a lot. I initially despised her for ruining Sakiko's plans but after watching everyone else also ruin Sakiko's plans I forgave her and realised she's actually kinda #awesome.

Nyamu is a popular beauty influencer going by "Nyamuchi" which I suppose counts as a mask in the same way being an idol does. She wears a disguise to avoid unwanted attention, but with the white wide-brimmed hat and large shades she may as well be screaming, "I'm an undercover celebrity!" and that's super funny to me.

Nyamu became obsessed with Mutsumi's "acting" (mental breakdown on stage) and then with Mortis' "acting" (she's been performing her entire life as a matter of survival). That obsession turned into a messy confession and she got rejected immediately ("I wish you'd said that to Mutsumi-chan instead").

Nyamu's obsession with plural girls would make for a great ironic twist of becoming plural herself. Only problem is… there's really no sauce here. Nyamu's never too conflicted about anything, nor is she under enough stress to make it likely to happen. She's pretty honest and takes things in stride, despite complaining about them the entire time. She already contrasts Sakiko and Mortis really well, so a contrasting person in her head would be kind of redundant.

Yahata Umiri

Umiri once had friends who abandoned her for being too controlling of their band, and she carries that trauma with her even to this day. She joined thirty bands to avoid being abandoned again, only to later realise this made her unreliable and unable to care for individual bands and their members. Upon realising her mistake, she quit every band and fought for Ave Mujica's reformation with everything she had.

Yeah, she's a really cute mess. Is she plural? She doesn't really get a lot of focus, so it's hard to say. Maybe she has an ASMR-style voice in her head calling her trustworthy over and over. If not, I volunteer.

Misumi Uika

Uika, also known as Hatsune, is a girl with far too many tangled thoughts in her head. Does she have an inner council of Hatsunes debating the best way to stay in Sakiko's good books? Absolutely. Are some of them puppies? Of course. Does she have a Sakiko introject? I… don't want to think about that.

Jokes aside, Hatsune has so much inner conflict, intrusive thoughts, and obfuscated/repressed personality traits that I simply cannot accept the idea that she has a unified sense of self. She wants to meticulously craft and tune the perfect personality for Sakiko and leave everything else behind.

That said, Sakiko calls her Hatsune when they're alone together. Hatsune becomes Uika, but Sakiko wants Hatsune. And I don't think Uika knows how to be Hatsune again… Also she's TMA and if you disagree I'll push you down the stairs.

Togawa Sakiko

Sakiko is a girl whose life is turned upside down in an instant. She's a workaholic under immense stress comparable only to Mutsumi's. I'm sure there are plenty of times she'd rather have someone else take over for her. She plays "Oblivionis" and her solution to every problem is to run away and try to forget.

All those things make it more likely she'd form new headmates. But unlike Taki, I don't think her workload would permit a graceful adjustment to plurality. So many people rely on her for so many different things, so she better keep her new headmates in line or the small kingdom she's built for Ave Mujica will all come crashing down again.

Final Remarks

Wow, what a dour note to end on! Let me try to think of something nice…

The stories of It's MyGO!!!!! and Ave Mujica explore feelings of inhumanity in a melodramatic but ultimately kindhearted way. Taki feels subhuman due to her inferiority complex, Soyo also does due to her parentification, Anon found herself surrounded and suffocated by blatant racism, Tomori and Raana are clearly autistic (so are most of AveMyGO but these two were probably treated the most poorly), Mutsumi and Mortis were exploited as young children, Umiri is still trying to redeem herself for a blunder made years ago (#justTMAthings), Hatsune is Hatsune and Sakiko is Sakiko.

They all feel inhuman but nevertheless they still manage to find connection and hope through their bands. Some I know are plural, some I think are plural, and most would benefit from being plural.