#mujiposting

anyway. I've been mulling over what a post-muji anime HatsuSaki dynamic could possibly even look like and the thing I found myself coming back to over and over was just. as much as I love the romantic and unhealthy elements of HatsuSaki & loveeeee exploring that dynamic in a fandom space, I really hope sequel-onwards AveMuji - if the intent is for them to have positive arcs - lets them move into a space where they can properly accept each other just as family, without any romance or romantic baggage.

because like. AveMuji's usage of incest is v much in line with its status as a gothic horror story, incest as a symbol of rot, decay, and the way abuse festers inside of families, especially under the depravity of the ruling class. and both Hatsune and Sakiko are tangled up in that rot in different ways - they're victims and perpetrators at the same time, but primarily they're still victims. that's why it matters so much that Hatsune's feelings for Sakiko are specifically framed as romantic/incestuous - it speaks to both how unsafe and warped Saki's entire relationship to the idea of family is (or perhaps how horrendously Sakiko is treated by & within her family) and also to how Hatsune's desperation for belonging pushes her toward something equally unsafe.

(& on that note, I do think it's super fascinating that part of the envy she expresses as a child is not just towards Uika for being friends w/Sakiko but also towards Saki herself - she's almost like a mirror image of Hatsune, living the life of a daughter of the Togawa family that Hatsune is explicitly denied - I do rly think you could read a lot of Hatsune's initial curiosity about Sakiko, and why it spirals into fixation, as emergent from a desire not just to be with her but to be her. but that's a tangent I'll save for another day lol.)

the point is: if incest is standing in for the corruption inside their shared understanding of "family" then the only positive narrative direction left for them is to actually try to reconcile that. for Hatsune, that means accepting that Saki doesn't and can't love her the way she wants her to, and learning to widen her world beyond Sakiko so she can find other people to anchor herself to.

at its core the foundation of her fixation on Sakiko comes from something really simple: she just wanted a family member who she knew cared about her. and I think it's really telling that what pushes her to break down and run away in search of Saki isn't some big romantic impulse, but her dad's death - and Uika lashing out at her about him not being her "real" dad. she gets rejected so utterly and completely that she goes looking for “family” elsewhere. and yet when she actually goes to Tokyo and tentatively, desperately tries to test the waters of belonging to the Togawa family, it ends up completely destroying Sakiko's life.

oh that was fast

anyway. With the upfront disclaimer that I'm an UiSaki shipper, the reason I don't think it'll be canon is the same reason I knew AquRuby wasn't going be canon in OnK. Which is that, despite what a lot of not-JP weebs seem to think, incest is not that much less of a taboo in Japan than it is outside of it. There are differing cultural standards as to what counts as incest but it's still a no-no. Otaku media such as anime, eroge, etc feature it as much as they do because it is subculture art aiming specifically at a niche of the audience who is already into that shit or is at least ambivalent towards it.

This means that pretty much anything that seeks to be reasonably mainstream and accessible is probably not going to throw its whole ass behind an incest ship. Even to the extent that we get UiSaki in canon, it's very carefully still on the side of just barely plausibly deniable even though anyone with eyes can see what's up. And like........... let's be real if Bandori was going to finally canonize anything it'd be something normal and inoffensive like KasuAri, not my beloved incest puppygirl.

Also, if you'll permit me to get pretentious about it, I don't think UiSaki endgame works from a thematic perspective unless the intent is for them to have a bad/tragic ending. I've posted about this before but to ramble about it again, Ave Mujica is a modern day gothic horror story and within the context of gothic horror, incest is symbolic of the rot that exists at the core of the ruling class, a sort of end point of the collapse of morality and ethics both born from and necessitated by the hoarding of power and wealth that creates a ruling class to begin with. In the modern day setting of Ave Mujica, the Togawas - both as a family and a financial/business institution - are obviously the rotting aristocracy in question and their sins are the impetus for the distortion at the root of Hatsune and Sakiko's relationship. Hatsune's fixation on her is even explicitly stated to have been rooted in their familial connection, a desperate bid to find the unconditional and uncomplicated love that she was denied by her family in the one person who made her feel seen and validated.

But of course, even that is built on a 'sin' - Hatsune's theft of her sister's name and dream and her subsequent deception of Sakiko. Her love for Sakiko, pure as it might be in its own way, was born of rot and it was watered with lies and codependency. As such, I think the only real "good" route for Hatsune and Sakiko is to uproot themselves from the rot entirely. A romance between them would be continuing the cycle of dysfunction the Togawas have spawned.

for the longest time I assumed she was a college student just bc of how she presents and carries herself but apparently she's a first year student at a performing arts high school?? which would make her around the same age as the rest of the avemujis, which makes sense. she definitely comes off to me like someone who wants to be an adult Right Now and is generally pushing to try and make herself grow up as fast as she can so that aspect of her presentation is pretty fun.

IT'S SO HARD TO PICK...... I feel like every now and then a Mujica song I've heard a hundred times will come up on shuffle unexpectedly and i'll be like hold on this is fire??? and it'll dethrone whatever my current fave is LMAO. But right now...

Black Birthday was my first true love Mujica song but rn I especially adore the 0th live version of it - idk what it is but it just feels so much more intense and heavy than the studio ver, especially the guitar and Doloris' vocals. It's so good!!!

I also adore Mas?uerade Rhapsody Re?uest and KiLLKiSS just on account of being bangers and Musica Caelestis is sooooo beautiful... and ofc I would not be able to call myself a yandere sickos guy or an UiSaki enjoyer if I didn't also love Imprisoned XII <3