Chatty AF 230: Ave Mujica Retrospective (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

TONY: It’s crazy!

CY: It’s wild! It’s wild!

TONY: Like, I don’t know about you. If the bandleader I was ever working with, right… Like, if I was ever like… I don’t know, I’m a DJ and saxophonist. But say if the leader of my saxophone quartet was like, “I’m asking for your life,” I’d be like, “Fuck, no. Bye! No way!”

CY: [crosstalk] Like, this is just a hobby! This is just a hobby!

TONY: Yeah. I just want something to do on Thursday evening, you know, and, like…

CY: Yeah, like, are you the devil?

[Introductory musical theme]

TONY: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. I’m here with Cy and Chiaki!

CY: Hello! I am your editor, Cy-muchi, and I’m here to talk about the hottest new thing. That’s right: girls having trauma! [Imitates a triumphant air horn tune] I’m— [Laughs] I’m also an editor.

TONY: We always have time for that. We always have time for that, Cy.

CY: [crosstalk] We do. I’m also an editor here at Anime Feminist, as well as a bookseller in my day-to-day life.

CHIAKI: [deadpan] Wow, trauma.

CY: [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: Yeah. No, I’m full of that. too. Hi! This is Chiaki Mitama, one of the editors for AniFem, also a VTuber, also a consultant for various tabletop RPGs, also exhausted. You can find me on all my socials @terrible.moe, which is also my Carrd. Go look for it. Have fun. Let’s talk about… childhood trauma!

CY: I just have to interject. I always forget to say my socials and, like, I’m just gonna keep leaving it that way. If I say where I’m at, I just do; if I don’t… [Hums the “I dunno” tune] I guess don’t find me! [Chuckles]

TONY: My gender is “I would prefer not to be perceived.” Okay, so—

CY: [crosstalk] Yeah, I mean, my gender is “Location off.” [Chuckles]

TONY: [Chuckles] Alright, so, my name is Tony. I am a contributing editor at Anime Feminist. I am also a musician and DJ. You can find me at my new handle on social media, which is kuu (that’s K-U-U) dash hime (H-I-M-E) [@kuu-hime], or, on some platforms, it’s underscore H-I-M-E [@kuu_hime] because not all places allow you to do dashes. I am on Bluesky and SoundCloud as that.

And we are here to talk today about Ave Mujica! So, this is a show that we’ve definitely gotten a lot of people wanting us to talk about, but also, regardless of that, it is also one that we wanted to talk about. So, does somebody want to kind of explain what it is and why it’s worth talking about? You know, as one of many in a kind of trend of girls’ band anime, why is this the one that we chose to talk about?

CY: Yeah, so I would love to. So, Ave Mujica… Am I pronouncing that right? Mujica? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Ave Mujica—

CHIAKI: I mean, you can say “mujika” or “musica” [pronounced like “music”].

CY: That is true. So, Ave Mujica is a part of the larger BanG Dream! or Bandori! media franchise owned by Bushiroad. It’s a huge, sprawling franchise. It’s got rhythm games, live concerts, actual physical media, VTubers, including the Ave Mujica girls (they do have live 2D models), and rhythm games, and they are exclusively all-female bands. I think there’s about ten groups, and it started with Poppin’Party, grew to Roselia, Afterglow, Pastel＊Palettes, Hello World! [sic], RAISE A SUILEN, Morfonica, MyGO!!!!! and now Ave Mujica and Mugendai Mewtype.

TONY: Jesus Christ.

CY: [crosstalk] Yes! It is—

CHIAKI: They’re all like different genres, right?

CY: They are very distinctly different genres. I mean, I would say that if you wanted to compare it to idols, Poppin’Party is the closest this has gotten to idol music. And even then, I think that’s kind of disingenuous because they are bands. And to me, as Anime Feminist’s idol lover, idols are groups, not bands. And there’s a lot of reasons why that distinction is important. But yeah, Ave Mujica is a huge franchise. We kind of build up from like 2017 with the game and stuff. I mean, it starts in 2015, it builds up, it’s been here for 10 years. Where we’re at now is kind of the post-COVID era, which is the introduction of MyGO. Which, MyGO debuted in 2022 and Ave Mujica debuts in 2023 with later anime adaptations that we get post-pandemic. And right now, where we’re sitting is in the Ave Mujica era, where there will be a sequel for both MyGO and Ave Mujica. I believe it’s coming out in 2026. And so, I mean, it’s a pretty sprawling franchise. And that’s kind of a quick rundown of it. [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: Yeah, and especially with the anime that we’re discussing today, this is something that was created at the same time as MyGO, if I understand correctly, with the same director and writer, directed by Kodai Kakimoto and written by Yuniko Ayana, right, from Sanzigen.

CY: Yeah, and something I should add is, like… so, when MyGO and Ave Mujica debut in 2022 and 2023, their characters were named but their voice actresses were kept anonymous. So, there was all this mystery around “who are these women who are going to be performing as these characters?” because, kind of like Love Live, there is the character version, but there is the actual performance by that voice actress and singer as that character. People will know that from the recent meme from the AiScReam song of, like, “Mugi-chan!” “Hai!” “Nani ga suki?” I’m not gonna sing it all, but you get what I mean if you’ve been on the internet recently. But so, MyGO had their faces obscured and Ave Mujica was wearing masks and cloaks, which fits them perfectly. And then they get a big reveal. Yeah, they get a reveal.

So, there was kind of all this mystery around it, which was kind of a bigger buildup. It kind of feels nice because, you know, during COVID, you have a group debut, but, you know, a lot of that gets impacted because of COVID-19, so MyGO and Ave Mujica kind of feel like this big celebration, which brings us to wanting to talk about this because while it is celebratory, there is a distinction, I think, between Ave Mujica the group and Ave Mujica the anime, because the anime is very self-contained in the sense of the story it’s telling; the group are real-life people that don’t have those specific experiences.

CHIAKI: I was gonna say, do the people playing those characters also have as much trauma as the girls do in this? I mean, that would be a little wild!

CY: They just went out and picked some Japanese women and they said, “Hey! [Chuckles haughtily] Is your family fucked up? You want to play guitar?” [Chuckles] No, um…

CHIAKI: And that’s the reason why I’m not in that group.

TONY: [crosstalk] Isn’t that how idol groups are made anyways? You know…

CY: Absolutely. [Chuckles] And so, I mean, we have some pretty famous talent playing these girls. I would say the most notable—well, okay, the most notable for me—is Kanon Takao, who stars as Chisa in Idoly Pride, which is one of my favorite idol shows. But you have very skilled women playing these characters, who have also had a history of voice acting as well.

TONY: I also want to call attention to the fact that BanG Dream is particularly interesting because it was written by Yuniko Ayana. And for those people who don’t know, Yuniko Ayana is probably best known before this… her best-known work before doing BanG Dream in terms of original anime was Flip Flappers, which—

CY: [intrigued] Mm!

TONY: Yes. Have you seen it, Cy?

CY: No, but that explains so much! [Chuckles] That explains so much!

TONY: Oh, yeah. So, she was famously the person who wrote the first half of Flip Flappers, and she kind of created the whole story concept and how the arcs would go, so even after she left the show halfway through the production, you can pretty much assume that the basic beats of the story were probably what she had in mind. And her work in Flip Flappers is, I think, notable for its intensity of its psychology of the characters and its interest in the tropes of Class S and critiquing the tropes of Class S, looking at the experiences of girls who are in unstable family structures and trying to deal with the stigma of that… So, a lot of the themes that would later be explored in Ave Mujica and MyGO are also seen in Flip Flappers. And, I think similarly to Flip Flappers, she is pulling—dragging, if you will—the girls’ band anime into, like, explicit yuri, right? Not just Class S— Maybe Class S, kind of, but very… This is not just, you know, “And they were roommates.” Like, these girls are in love with each other, right? Often in pretty unhealthy ways.

CY: Oh, yeah!

TONY: And she’s dragging the genre, kicking and screaming, into that, which is fascinating, also, because it’s not like she didn’t write the first BanG Dream thing, but… I don’t know if either of y’all have seen it, but my impression is it’s not nearly as off the wall and psychologically intense as these two seasons.

CY: I think it’s important to contextualize that original BanG Dream was inspired by the success of Love Live! So, while— And like I said, I personally think that Poppin’Party is kind of following those steps, technically Pastel＊Palettes is an idol group, but overall it’s following in those footsteps of Love Live. And, like, I love Love Live. And it also works for a reason. It’s very successful for a reason. But while BanG Dream is a girl band series, like, yeah, you can see that DNA, so for it to end up here where we have this, uh… Oh, if Freud were alive, he would love Ave Mujica. He would be all over it, because it is this deeper… I do think “off the walls” is a good way to put it, but off the walls in a realistic way.

CHIAKI: Yeah. What I find really interesting… and shows like these are traditionally meant to sell the music and game or property associated with it, right? And given that BanG Dream is all about the music, what I found really funny with MyGO and Ave Mujica is just the fact that, like, they don’t really play much music! [Chuckles] Even with MyGO, they didn’t even have, really, a concert until, like, what, Episode 6 or 7? And then, for the most part, Ave Mujica also… Like, they start out as a band and they do perform, but for much of the series, they aren’t performing as a band, per se. They are all up in their heads, unable to actually perform. So, I find that really interesting in terms of just how they decided to write the show and sell the show, given what its DNA is.

CY: Well, and it changed that DNA, and this is going to kind of take us into… I know we’re getting ahead in our notes, but when it comes to an idol show versus a girl band show, it changes that DNA pretty dramatically, because I feel like for an idol show, you know you’re gonna get music, you’re probably gonna get a sample of a group in the first episode. Especially with boy anime, they love to give us that taste. But you’re gonna get that sample, and then you’re gonna see them consistently going through songs, whether that’s editing and dancing and building it up. Whereas here, with a girl band, it kinda feels jarring if you’re coming from that because other than the opening and ending, we really don’t get… We get one full performance. And it’s fantastic, and it sustained me. But we really— We get tidbits and we get samples of music being used as a vehicle for trauma and recovery and also for the natural kind of… I hate the term “slip,” but slip that comes with the path to healing, like that meandering kind of chutes-and-laddering that happens. But yeah, we really don’t get… [Chuckles] If you told me there was no music other than the opening and ending, I would still be hooked, but yeah, you’re not here for the music, because it is… It’s part of the show, but the performance of it all is such a minimal part to what is actually happening.

TONY: Yeah, well, and I think what’s interesting is even the moments that are in the show, the focus is much more on what the music means to the characters, necessarily, than “Oh, wow, what awesome music!” It’s like what do— I think this is especially true in MyGO, maybe a little bit less true in Ave Mujica, but I think in MyGO in particular, given that Tomori wrote the lyrics for all these songs and often the songs are a representation of kind of where she’s at and her empathetic understanding of where the other girls in the group are at, right… and they really establish… And one of the things I love about the songs is that they… I think they fill a similar function, a bit, to the letters in Violet Evergarden, in the sense of establishing this character who is often… People often read Tomori as autistic, which I would agree, yes, definitely is. Like, Yuniko Ayana could not have written a more autistic character if she literally put Tomori… like had her wear a sign every single day that just said “I am autistic” on it.

CY: [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: I mean, I called it, Episode 1 of MyGO, so [Chuckles] it’s there.

CY: I do want to pause because we are throwing around a lot of names, and I think we should give some names so everybody knows, if you’re listening, who we’re talking about and which is AveMu and which is MyGO.

TONY: Yeah, yeah, so MyGO… we’re talking a little bit more about MyGO for the moment before we get more into Ave Mujica, to kind of table-set. So, MyGO, Tomori is the frontwoman who sings and writes the songs. Then we have Anon, who’s a guitar player, albeit poorly for much of the show, Soyo, who also plays… Do I remember, right? Soyo either plays—

CHIAKI: [crosstalk] Bass.

TONY: Bass, yes. Soyo plays bass and she’s a messy, messy girl… in a messy, messy world. And then we have Taki, who is a drummer, who is hopelessly in love with Tomori but will not [Chuckles] admit it!

CY: And then we got Rāna. You can’t forget my girl, Rāna.

TONY: And then Rāna. Oh, yes, the stray cat.

CHIAKI: The only actually good girl in MyGO.

CY: She is incredibly good! Protect her.

TONY: [Laughs] You just say that because she’s a cat and you’re biased.

CHIAKI: Yeah. But also, I’m correct.

[Chuckling]

TONY: I didn’t say you’re not correct. Sometimes biased people are correct, okay.

CY: That’s funny. And then with AveMu, you have Sakito [sic]… So, I should say, all the AveMu girls also go by their stage names, and they’re so dramatic. It’s so good.

TONY: Oh, my God, they’re so dramatic.

CY: But you’ve got Sakito, who…

TONY: Sakiko, Sakiko.

CY: Sorry, Sakiko, who does keyboard. You’ve got Mutsumi, who is kind of something of a guitar prodigy, but more on that later. [Chuckles] You’ve got Umiri, who is… What does Umiri do? Because I just feel like I constantly forget that she exists.

CHIAKI: She’s the bass.

TONY: [crosstalk] She plays… drum…? Bass? Oh. [Laughs]

CY: Yeah, because drums belongs to my girl, Nyamu.

TONY: That’s true, yes, yes, yes.

CY: And then you have Uika, who is one of the best girls. Like, just bragging on her for a moment.

TONY: I cannot wait to talk about Uika, because she has probably my favorite moment in the whole show.

CY: And she’s their vocalist.

TONY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, what I was saying about Tomori is just that I think that the songs in MyGO kind of fill the same function as in Violet Evergarden, where they kind of establish Tomori as a deeply empathetic character who is trying her best to understand other people’s feelings and use them to communicate not just what she’s feeling but also what she perceives the people around her as feeling and kind of give voice to it in a public way and break down barriers a bit through the music. And, I don’t know, I really like that.

And so, the music in BanG… the music in MyGO, at the very least, more serves the function of the storytelling rather than the storytelling serving the function of the music.

CY: Yeah, absolutely agree.

TONY: This is not a show that’s just an excuse for glorified music videos.

CY: Mm-hm, mm-hm, mm-hm. Yeah, because, like we said, we really don’t get a lot of… Like, if you are going to Ave Mujica rubbing your hands like that “black man hiding behind the tree” meme like, “Yeah, I’m gonna get some music,” hold your horses, partner. You’re gonna get more than music. You’re gonna get… BetterHelp, a.k.a. therapy! Because, I mean, a lot of it is around… it is so much less about music and more about making music and the kind of innate emotionality, because music has, I think, at least an innate kind of emotionality. That’s why, like in idol music, there’s an innate humanity in creating music because you can very pragmatically create music but that is a form of emotionality. And here, we see how that emotionality makes it really hard to create music or to create music that’s a little too personal or a little too close to home.

CHIAKI: I personally treat the two shows as sort of a “two sides of the same coin” kind of thing, where they are processing… You know, I see it more as a processing of trauma rather than a creative process story, because both bands are kind of rooted in the disastrous breakup that various members of their respective bands had previously, and that transfers into what they’re doing now in either MyGO or Ave Mujica.

CY: Right. And it’s that kind of art-making and creating as a processing of the bigger things, because none of these… Only one of these girls has a good relationship with her mother/parent.

[Chuckling]

CHIAKI: Shoutout to the Mother’s Day skeet from the official Ave Mujica account. [Laughs]

CY: And it’s just Nyamu! It’s just Nyamu. It’s the funniest thing.

TONY: Yeah. Like, aren’t her parents like super supportive of her?

CHIAKI: Oh, yeah, no, she has an actually good family life!

CY: And her mom’s like this beautiful plus-sized super kind mom who’s like, “I’ll make your favorite food when you come home!” and everyone else’s parents suck. Or are dead.

CHIAKI: Or are completely ambivalent.

CY: Yeah, the three anime parent genders. [Chuckles] You know, either you get success and your parents are dead, or you have parents and you’re not successful. It’s one of the two. And so, yeah, Nyamu is the only one that… her creativity stems from a different… It stems very much from jealousy initially. And, you know, within this kind of closed circle of an anime, it’s really wonderful and it’s kind of neat, but of course we do know, outside of this, it would not be realistic to put a group together like this. [Chuckles] It would be so bad!

TONY: I think one thing that’s interesting to me is the question of what is the purpose of art-making in these shows, right? Because I think that for Sakiko, for the chief songwriters in the show, Sakiko and Tomori, art-making fills very, very different functions for them. With Tomori, it’s much more about trying to articulate feelings that she really struggles to articulate any other way and trying to communicate things that she’s noticed, that she cannot communicate otherwise, and, as I said, breaking down barriers and trying to reach and show the care that she has for people through art. And through the creation of art, even the process of forming the band as an act of love and care for the people around her, right? Yeah, she—

CY: Whereas for Saki— Oh. Yeah, no, keep going, keep going.

TONY: Yeah, no, like, what have you noticed as Sakiko’s purpose for making art?

CY: Sakiko’s is fully centered around not… around forced memory suppression, right? She is running. And, I mean, she’s running from the pain of Crychic, another group in this series. They play once, and then it’s done. And it’s done because, as we learn, Sakiko’s father has done an immense amount of fraud, to the tune of like 16.8 billion yen, which, a lot— Which, what was he doing? [Chuckles] Sir! That’s so much money. But it affects her through this parentification of, like, her dad just collapses and she feels like she has to take responsibility. So, Crychic falls apart because she is taking on all these jobs. She’s a junior high school student. And in Japan, you know, you can get a job as a junior high school student; you’re just not gonna get a lot of them. So, she’s going through that. But Ave— There’s a line that she says at some point of, like, “I asked you…” It basically amounts to she asked them for their lives and she’s holding that destiny in her hands, and that’s why they reunite.

TONY: It’s crazy!

CY: It’s wild! It’s wild!

TONY: Like, I don’t know about you. If the bandleader I was ever working with, right… Like, if I was ever like… I don’t know, I’m a DJ and saxophonist. But say if the leader of my saxophone quartet was like, “I’m asking for your life,” I’d be like, “Fuck, no. Bye! No way!”

CY: [crosstalk] Like, this is just a hobby! This is just a hobby!

TONY: Yeah. I just want something to do on Thursday evening, you know, and, like…

CY: Yeah, like, are you the devil? Am I signing something over to you? And meanwhile, this group of five girls just very queerly decide to interlink their destinies. Which, like, understand it. When I was once a girl, I had very deeply intense queer friendships with my female friends. So, get it.

TONY: [Laughs]

CY: But she’s using that as leverage to just brute-force her way through grief and healing instead of dealing with the fact of, like, her father abandoned her. Her father… You know, alcoholism and substance abuse disorders are absolutely mental illness, and there is a level of empathy that needs to be had because we are all situations and everything proximity-wise away from us having to deal with similar issues, right? Unless you are… Even if you’re rich. The rich aren’t happy. But her dad kind of abandons her to this situation, so she’s using it to grieve. But the problem is the pressure she’s putting on everybody to also bear up and do that healing on Uika, on Mutsumi—and Nyamu is just kind of, like, chill, she’s just doing her own thing, but she’s even affected—on all these girls to do this healing for her. It’s not real, and it creates this kind of artifice and this barrier between Ave Mujica the music group that’s going viral and Ave Mujica the group of five girls that are kind of fire-forged by this situation but are falling apart beneath it all.

CHIAKI: The worst thing about it is, like, you know, I know people like Sakiko, right? And when you’re in that kind of relationship with that person, who you firmly believe in… You know, I can see why some of the girls went with her on this proposal, being hopelessly in love but also just believing in her as a creator. And signing that pact irreversibly destroys you and everyone around you.

CY: Yeah, it makes sense.

TONY: But the thing is she’s also visionary, right, and has an astonishing degree of creativity, production design knowledge, that is just very, very, very far beyond her years.

CY: Oh, yeah, if I went to this—

TONY: But it comes from a— Yeah.

CY: If I went to this live? Oh, my God, I would lose my shit if I saw something like this as a teenager! It’s so cool! But also… But also.

CHIAKI: Yeah, like, here’s the thing. And this is a case for a lot of people in the cast, but if you can control everything and make everything exactly how you envisioned it and created a piece of work that is exactly your vision and it’s beautiful and it’s wonderful, that is what Ave Mujica was trying to accomplish. The thing is, and I think you said it as well, you can’t just expect everyone else to be lockstep without being told what their actual expectations are beyond just, you know, “Give me your life.”

CY: Exactly.

TONY: Yeah, and I think that the kind of heightened… The combination of extreme artifice within these performances and these constructed things, and then the extreme kind of expectations and drama, is what makes Ave Mujica pretty uniquely camp in a sense, right? It’s even more camp than MyGO. And MyGO’s pretty camp, and that’s part of what I like about it. So, I mean, we can talk a little bit about camp, because I think that camp might give us a kind of route into talking about some of the more dramatic things in the show. Should I kind of explain the concept of camp? Or would someone else like to?

CY: I feel like you would have a great explanation of it, so lay it down.

TONY: Yeah, so, camp is a very loosely defined but deeply intricate and complex… what’s called a sensibility. And so, it’s not quite an aesthetic, because there’s many different things that have very different aesthetics that are all camp, right? Like, people have described Death Note as camp, people have described RuPaul’s Drag Race as camp. I’m kind of rehashing my essay here, but… you know. But the point is that what defines camp is a sense of gaudiness and over-the-top kind of ostentation, an ornament, like that in Ave Mujica, right, that’s also combined with a really profound sincerity that seems out of step with the ridiculousness of the ostentation. Right? That is the key thing that makes camp a little strange, is that somebody’s doing something so ridiculous, so bizarre, so utterly crazy, but then they seem like they really frickin’ mean it, right? There’s no, like, ironic winks in there. And the thing is, something like, say, RuPaul’s Drag Race, what makes that camp, for example, is that they are… even if it is purposefully comedic, it is still saying, “We still believe that what we’re doing is beautiful,” right? Even if there’s an irony and a kind of joking parody of femininity that’s happening in RuPaul’s Drag Race, it’s both parody and it is also “We are actually feminine and we are actually beautiful” at the same time, if that makes sense. To this extreme degree, right?

And so, that’s how I would describe camp, and I think that Ave Mujica, especially, really hits that through all these different kind of melodramatic happenings that occur in it, through the kind of extreme artifice of its writing. I think one of the most iconic examples of camp in Ave Mujica is the episode that is so pretentious it just takes place in Uika’s head, as if she’s delivering a monologue to the audience on a stage. Right?

CY: Yes! Yes!

TONY: It is so… And the combination of that episode being both the most pretentious and ostentatious way of presenting that story, right, with the utter bananas, ridiculous soap-opera antics that are happening with it.

CY: Oh, my God. Telenovelas, eat your heart out! It’s so dramatic!

TONY: Right. That is what makes that camp. Right? Should we talk about Uika, or do we want to talk about Mutsumi first, do you think? Because I think that both of them are pretty great examples of the kind of melodramatic camp of Ave Mujica.

CY: I think Uika first, because I think Mutsumi represents a very different side to camp but also kind of brings in the mental health part, for sure, because with Uika… I mean, Uika’s not okay. l Let’s start off there. She’s not okay. She’s got some toxic yuri going on. Only, this time—

TONY: She’s got yuri derangement syndrome!

CY: Oh, my God. She is— You know, having watched Utena very, very recently, Uika is ready to climb a bunch of stairs while dramatic music plays in the background with the rose on her chest. This girl is so…

CHIAKI: She would thrive in that environment.

CY: Oh, my God.

TONY: Oh, she would! [Laughs]

CY: Yeah! Yes.

CHIAKI: Can you imagine a Uika car? I’m thinking, like, a Supra? She’d be a Supra.

TONY: You thought you were the only one who could turn into a car? Me too.

[Laughter]

CY: Because Uika has the melodrama but also she’s got real-life drama, because she is in love with… a relative. [Chuckles] Her motherfucking niece! Her motherfucking niece! [Cackles]

CHIAKI: [Grunts] Beautiful.

TONY: [crosstalk] It’s fucking crazy.

CY: I’m sitting here elbow-deep into a bag of white cheddar Smartfood popcorn, and that happened, and I lost it! Had to get the inhaler, y’all, because I breathed in a kernel wrong. It’s her fucking niece, Sakiko! Ha! And it’s great. It’s great because this probably wouldn’t have happened if all these adults hadn’t created the stage for that melodrama and hadn’t created the stage for that mental toxicity to take place, where if they had just been like, “Uika, you get to be part of the family,” because it’s not her fault she was born! It takes two to tango and do the horizontal hokey-pokey! Okay? Like, you slept with somebody, Unc! Okay, but, you know, Grandfather out there hoeing around. And, like, if maybe they had just inducted her into the family or at the very least been like “Yeah, you can play with Sakiko,” this probably wouldn’t have happened. But because they didn’t, we have one of 2025’s masterpieces! At what cost? [Chuckles] At what cost?

TONY: Yeah, Chiaki, did you have any thoughts about Uika?

CHIAKI: I did have just one thought about Uika in terms of her pronunciation of love per se at the very end to Sakiko, saying that she… it’s a “suki.” I know a lot of folks will probably yell at me for this, but I don’t feel that it’s a pronunciation of love per se. I feel it’s a little bit more of a friendship love, like a very deep and caring appreciation of another person, rather than a romantic love.

CY: Okay!

CHIAKI: Yeah. Because I feel like if it was really going— And don’t get me wrong. It does feel extremely romantic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was romantic. But I just feel like the fact that the writing said “suki” rather than “aishiteru” just… I’m still hung up on that, because I feel like in that instance, you had to go with “ai,” if it was like a romantic, deeply sapphic romance. And instead they went with “suki,” which is like “I like you.”

CY: Well, and there’s space for that, too, because Uika knows that this is the sitch. Sakiko has no idea. So, there is space for that reading, and I think that’s valid.

TONY: Yeah, I think it’s interesting because “suki” is used in a lot of different contexts, is my impression. And so, in certain instances— It has a very long history. There’s a very long history of people screaming and yelling and crying and throwing up about the use of the word “suki” in yuri and BL, or even, for that matter, in Evangelion, if I remember right, unless… I forget. Was that “aishiteru,” or was that “suki”? But so, it’s definitely an interesting kind of question how you interpret that.

What is definitely clear is that Uika is a mess. And I think one thing that is notable is I believe there is… if I remember right, there was a confirmation from Yuniko Ayana that there was a change in the script at the last minute that they did to allegedly make it make more sense but actually made it make less sense, so that Uika’s connection to Sakiko’s father’s downfall was much more clear before they changed the script. I believe that that was confirmed in an interview or on a Twitter post from Yuniko Ayana and that it was changed by the director. Did y’all hear about that?

CY: No.

CHIAKI: I believe it was an interview with the director. Yeah, because…

TONY: [crosstalk] Ah, yes! It was an interview with the director, yes.

CHIAKI: … Ayana’s been pretty radio silent on social media.

TONY: I think she’s been radio silent because, from what I can tell, she’s been kicked out of the project. She said she’s not working on it anymore.

CHIAKI: I thought she was.

TONY: I don’t think she’s working on the sequel season.

CHIAKI: Oh, okay. Wow.

TONY: Yeah, it’s very sad. So… And we’ll talk about that.

CY: A single tear just rolled down my cheek at that. [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: Oh, no.

CY: Like, no! No! [Sighs]

TONY: I’m pretty upset about it, yeah, because I’m a huge Yuniko Ayana. I genuinely think that— The first six episodes of Flip Flappers, I think, are some of the best yuri ever written. So… Yeah. Should we… Sorry. Thinking about Uika. I do have to say my favorite scene in the entire show is the scene where Uika fantasizes about throwing Mutsumi down the stairs.

CY: That took me aback because I didn’t realize it was a fantasy!

CHIAKI: [Laughs]

CY: I was like [Gasps].

TONY: Right? [Chuckles]

CY: Which is the intent, right?

CHIAKI: So normal.

CY: In that moment, I mean, she just yeet, yote, yotened Mutsumi down that flight of stairs!

TONY: Right? It’s crazy!

CY: It’s wild, and Mutsumi, kinda Slinky-like, falls down, busting every bone. And then you realize it’s all in her head and Uika had impulse control. Kids, that’s what an intrusive thought is. That’s what an actual intrusive thought is. An intrusive thought isn’t “I want to dye my hair.” An intrusive thought is “I’m gonna push my bandmate down these stairs.” [Laughs] It’s wild!

TONY: And it just comes out of nowhere, too, is the crazy thing.

CHIAKI: And also, it’s telegraphed, right? Well, I mean, it’s kinda telegraphed in the sense that throughout the entire series people are falling down stairs left and right! Like, they’re worse than Mitch McConnell.

[Laughter]

CHIAKI: And suddenly you see Uika just push with Mutsumi down, it’s like “Aw, fuck! Another person fell down stairs,” and then you’re like, “Oh, wait. This time it was not real.”

CY: It had all the table-setting of, like, the world’s saddest WorldStar video of this girl just losing her shit. And Mutsumi’s a deeply sympathetic character. But there is also the reality of, like, Uika is dealing with her own stuff, and in that moment, I understand cognitively why she had that moment of, like, “I’ma do it.” And she thankfully doesn’t, but it is wild. [Chuckles] It is so out of pocket!

TONY: Well, it’s honestly also interesting because it’s so outside the universe of what you would expect from these kind of pretty girl band shows, right? Like, they are showing… But it also doesn’t feel dehumanizing to the girls. It’s not “girls be fighting,” you know? Like “Girls be shopping, girls be fighting,” you know.

CY: It’s very realistic.

CHIAKI: They be hurt.

TONY: Sorry, sorry, Chiaki? What did you say?

CHIAKI: They are hurt. They be hurtin’.

TONY: Yeah. And I think that that’s what makes it so interesting, is that it’s really… This is a show that’s not afraid to have characters who are complicated and unlikable! Deeply unlikable!

[Chuckling]

TONY: You know? Centering an entire season around Anon, just as a side note, is an insane proposition, given that Anon is just so bananas and delulu. She is like—

CY: Delulu is trululu for Anon.

TONY: Yes, she’s so delulu! Like, I don’t know if either of y’all have watched Drag Race this season, but Anon is like the band girl version of Joella. Okay, the people at home will get it maybe.

CY: I’ve never seen Drag Race.

CHIAKI: I try to avoid Drag Race. [Chuckles]

TONY: Aw. Yeah, but for me, you have to understand: it’s gay homework!

CHIAKI: I get it, I get it.

CY: [crosstalk] Oh, I get it, I get it. I get it. I do like Plastique Tiara.

TONY: Oh, I don’t even know who that is. It’s okay. [Chuckles]

CY: I think she’s a Drag Race contestant. Ways you can tell Cy has not watched a lot of TV!

[Chuckling]

TONY: But the point is that the choice to center these deeply unlikable characters and center the whole season around them, like Sakiko and Anon, right (like, Sakiko is horrendously unlikable), is a choice. Do we want to talk a little bit about Mutsumi?

CY: I mean, we have to, because Mutsumi is really… I mean, she is at the core of the manifestation of a lot of the trauma, because you have, shockingly, Nyamu, who is pretty normal. Well, let me change that: who’s pretty stable. Nyamu has all of the body language and the look of someone who would not be doing well, but she is the most stable. And then you have, on the opposite side, Mutsumi, who is the child of two celebrities, a comedian and an actress mom. And you have this child who, we horrifically find out, is bearing up under the weight of a mother who hates her, who is afraid of her because she’s like, “I know if my child ever gets out from under my thumb, she’s gonna out-act me and completely outdo me, and then I’ll be over.” And it’s this kind of tale as old as time of maternal jealousy and…

TONY: Of pulling out the ladder from underneath you, right?

CY: Yeah! She is yanking that rug. And this child needs help because you have— And I will fully say, right now, I am someone who is still learning about pluralism, so when we get to that, I will fully sit back and listen. But you have this child who has pluralism, and I kind of read Mutsumi as also being autistic. Like, shoutout to the autistics who have a public meltdown. I cried in the cheese aisle the other day. You know? But you have this child who’s deeply traumatized, who is trying to pick up on all these social cues and behaviors so that she can act the right way, be the right way, and it all comes falling down. Yeah, it all comes falling down when she… and correct me if I’m wrong if splitting is not the correct term. But she has these two… I’ll say aspects. She has these two aspects to herself, of Mutsumi and Mortis. And Mortis is kind of the stage persona. But Mortis is much more of what people expect, which is a happy girl, a cheerful girl, except for the fact that Mortis can’t do the things that Mutsumi does, a.k.a. play guitar. Mortis is kind of that facsimile, that protective shell.

TONY: Well, I think that’s also part of what the series is kind of critiquing, is the idea that Mortis is just a facsimile. It’s a complicated thing, right? Because so much of what the series is trying to get at is the idea of the false personality versus the real personality as being a false dichotomy, right?

CHIAKI: Yeah. So… Yeah, go ahead, go ahead.

TONY: No, no, no, go ahead. That’s all I had to say.

CHIAKI: Okay. Yeah, I mean, as a plural person myself and also literally going through this entire series going, “Oh, that’s me, for real, for real…”

TONY: [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: Like, let me put it out there. The second we found out that Mutsumi is plural, we marathoned the entirety of MyGO in one day, plus four episodes of Ave Muji, and then caught up the next day to, like, Episode 7.

TONY: Whoa.

[Chuckling]

TONY: You really shotgunned that. Like, wow.

CY: [crosstalk] I love that. I love that.

CHIAKI: And this is like, also, when we found out Ferris from Re:Zero, the gender-ambiguous catboy, is in that show. We also shotgunned the entire series up to Ferris the moment we found out Ferris is in that show. Like, this is our brain worms.

CY: I love y’all so much. [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: [Chuckles] And I think the one interesting thing… And going back to the immense pressure Mutsumi was going through and having to constantly compartmentalize and essentially not fuck up in every different scenario, right, whether it’s to appease parents or the public or as a band member or what, or even going to school and being the prim and proper daughter of two celebrities, it is constantly trying to code-switch for yourself. And I think that led to a measure of trauma. And for a lot of plural folks, there’s a thing called, you know, endogenic— There’s a whole thing about plural folks being endogenic or traumagenic, which is all about whether your different personalities are developed from trauma or not. And in Mutsumi’s case, it sounds very much like a traumagenic personality.

And I think what’s really interesting, especially for this show, is that Mutsumi didn’t become plural because Nyamu ripped off the mask and made her have a breakdown in the middle of the stage. She was plural way beforehand, and her whole thing is she grew up having all these different personalities that took over in having her act as the person that should be in this situation, in each different situation. And her whole thing was: all of those different personalities had disappeared because Mutsumi, in a sense, was actually probably healing a bit from learning how to play guitar. You know? It was so much that she was able to find her footing and find some kind of stability in her life that a lot of other voices, a lot of the other personalities, didn’t have to come out anymore. They fell silent.

And the thing about Mortis is, yeah, Mortis is the caregiver for Mutsumi. So, when Mutsumi finds something that she can’t handle, Mortis is there to step in and help out. Pretty common. And we’re like this, too. Honestly, I’m probably a traumagenic personality myself. Like, I got generated back in middle school or something or other? Yeah, and always was the caregiver to the system. And what I really find interesting and really solid about the writing in this show… and I’m just gonna keep going…

TONY: Yeah, please!

CY: [crosstalk] Yeah, please.

CHIAKI: This why I am so sold with Mutsumi, is just that she’s dealing with her own death. And that is some shit that seems so melodramatic and wild. But for me, that… You know, everyone watching this show was like, “What the fuck is going on? What the hell? How is this happening?” And I’m just sitting there, watching Mutsumi have an existential crisis because Mortis is no longer able to care for the girl that she was trying to care for all her life and the meaning of her existence— Like, I’m just sitting there going like, “Ha! That happened to me.” [Chuckles]

CY: Yeah, it’s interesting to hear you say that, because I… when we got to that part, I sobbed. I’ll full-on say I sobbed, because while, in the person I know as me, I don’t believe I am plural, I also know what it is to have lived most of my life, really until very recently, having pretty much zero understanding of who I actually was, and it was only through the care of other people and through a lot of very intense therapy that I’ve kind of come to understand what the personality is that is Cy Catwell. But I cried! And I have this background thought in my head of, like, I wonder what people online, who do not live or experience life this way, think of this moment. Are they going to think it’s just melodramatic? Because we have a scene with Mutsumi where she and Mortis are arguing. And it’s very public, and people in the show think it’s like an AveMu stunt, and they think it’s a publicity stunt. And the cruelty is it’s not; she is having a really public private moment.

CHIAKI: She’s having a dissociative episode, yeah.

CY: And it’s just treated online… Like, they trend on BanG Dream in-world Twitter, and it’s so sad, not because of the moment she’s experiencing but because people think it’s a joke. They think it’s heralding a return for AveMu, and what it is is it’s a really hurt person, and it’s two hurt people, it’s two hurt entities, two hurt identities that are really going through it publicly in what should have been a comforting, private moment of pain and grief and the fact that everyone kinda… The fact that there’s probably a real-world reaction that was probably similar, of, like, “What is AveMu doing this week? It’s wacky and weird! It’s melodramatic!” when, like, no, this is just a really deeply hurtful situation. It’s just really upsetting. And I cried, because I was like, “That’s gotta hurt!”

TONY: Yeah, I think the way I relate to this, to Mutsumi, is that… And I talked a little bit about Mutsumi in the essay that I wrote about Ave Mujica, which is now up. But there’s a sense that— As an autistic person, right? Like, I was put, of course, through applied behavior analysis and all of that and blah-blah-blah, and that actually didn’t really do anything to meaningfully change my personality or to meaningfully actually teach me any social skills, right? But growing up, for example, I was extremely hyperfixated on contemporary classical music, to a point that it alienated literally every single person around me because they’re like, “Why the fuck do I have to hear about this? I do not care about this.” Because they didn’t! And why should they? I mean, it’s great, I love it, but also it is wildly inaccessible for most people and incredibly pretentious and, honestly, sometimes unpleasant—but that’s kind of what I love about it. 

And so, when I got to about my third year in college, I really, really had a change in the way that I interact with people to be much more gregarious and much more flexible in terms of the way that I talk to them and the way that I develop relationships. And I noticed that I was giving people… I had previously hated eye contact, but I noticed myself actually giving a lot of eye contact, and I noticed myself just showing interest in things, growing up, that I had actually been very condescendingly against, you know, things like pop culture, like pop music and all that sort of stuff. And I love pop music now. And so, this is almost like this entirely different side of me that showed up, partially in response to, like, “This is the only way I’m actually gonna be able to make friends,” right? Because there’s no— The sort of spaces where one can actually— There are people who love contemporary classical music, there are people who love the things that I loved growing up, but I didn’t have access to them as somebody who was not going to, say, Yale, right? Because this is the language of the upper class, right? It is the language of trust fund babies and, you know, et cetera. I’m not a trust fund baby; I just happen to have the same tastes. It’s embarrassing.

CY: [Chuckles]

TONY: It’s so embarrassing. But the thing that I’ve kind of been reflecting on for a long time, especially recently I’ve noticed, is that it’s almost like I had to become an entirely different person to find spaces in which I could feel truly loved, right?

CY: Yes! Exactly, yeah.

TONY: Simply because I… And is that part of me fake? No! I genuinely love techno music, right? And I love pop music. I love being able to give people eye contact and see how they’re feeling. I view it less as like a magical “I want to connect with you” thing and much more as a “I want to read your facial expression and see how you’re feeling,” right? But I’m not… But there’s still that part of me that almost withered away and died for a very long time, where I just was not listening to any contemporary classical music, I wasn’t reading… I used to be obsessed with reading. I wasn’t reading at all for a long time. And then slowly, I’ve been kind of re-exploring what would it mean to kind of bring that part of myself back and recognize that, in doing so, I don’t have to let go of the things that I’ve now gained and things that I have accumulated, almost (you might look at it that way), or view them as fake or a fake personality, right? It can be something that I can value, like, hey, here was this incredibly resilient part of me in situations where I purposefully worked to learn the language of other people and to learn about their interests and to realize that there’s so much value in them, right, that I didn’t see before. You know?

CY: Oh, here come the tears! [Chuckles]

CHIAKI: Aw.

TONY: Yeah.

CHIAKI: Just to kind of finish out that thought from the more interior thoughts of being plural, it’s really just the more you acknowledge and say something is real, the more plural identity becomes stronger for you. And the fact that if you are speaking to that version of you that is different and acknowledging them as real and separate from who you personally think they are, that’s how the identity kind of splits off or becomes its own thing. It’s all about acknowledging and appreciating who you are, as yourself, I think. And sometimes it’s a lot more of a abrupt and traumatic acknowledgement, but I feel like that’s how a lot of systems get nurtured or grow. And in terms of… at least with Ave Mujica, with Mutsumi, it’s that acknowledgement and accepting that other hand for Mortis that really lets her come out and become her own character, that moment. And I think, you know, that’s… that’s real. You know? That’s how we acknowledge— It’s being acknowledged that really makes somebody a complete person.

CY: Yeah. Well, my heart feels so full right now.

TONY: It’s unfortunate that we now have to talk about the messiest girl of them all, which is Sakiko.

CHIAKI: [Laughs]

TONY: Because Sakiko, I feel like, of all the girls has, I think, one of the most dissatisfying arcs!

CY: Okay!

CHIAKI: [Sighs] Yeah…

TONY: Like, I didn’t know about y’all, but she… uh… oh, God. She… Mm, I don’t like the way that she treats people at all. Holy shit, I hate it.

CY: Can I offer a defense of Sakiko?

TONY: Okay, in defense of Sakiko, go ahead, yes.

CY: I actually really like Sakiko’s arc because I think it is the start of the Western five stages of grief. Because we’ve seen her grieve… you know, we’ve seen her kind of do all five aspects, but I think this is the cycle of her actually breaking free to— I mean, because you never finish grief. The thing is you just get bigger around it, but she is starting that path to move on from being stuck within, like, the first three steps of that cycle, to actually experience it fully and continue experiencing the cycle. And, you know, when you think about her, she’s an incredibly privileged young lady. She lives in such a big house. She has a whole— Like, my whole apartment is her bedroom. Which is wild. But I think what I really, really, actually like is I like her arc for it being imperfect, because I think in another show, Sakiko would have been given a neat and tidy arc because she is such an influential character across MyGO and AveMu, and here, she’s a really messy human being, and it reveals how much of a child she actually is, because I think we often forget, because teenagers are on the cusp of adulthood, that they are full-fledged children. Like, that brain is still cooking. That brain is still roasting like a Costco rotisserie.

TONY: She’s like, what, 15?

CY: Yeah, she is a child. And she’s gone through this extreme trauma where she kind of had to shut that part of herself down because… I mean, we see her dad’s apartment. It is filled with off-brand Asahi beer cans. And he’s created this life where she has basically forcibly put herself in a kind of mental prison of her own making. Like, she is up all day, burning the midnight oil, burning both ends of the candle. And this is the first time where she actually can move through that grief. And it’s really messy. She is not nice. She is incredibly selfish. It is to the detriment of others. She does eventually realize it, but it’s still kind of in that self-serving way; it’s that trying to fix everything. And I actually really like that because that is a lot of times how grief just is. That is a lot of…

You know, I will certainly say for me, when I went through the past two years of really severe depression and when my depression got to its worst, I was not always a nice person. I didn’t have that capacity, because grieving and being depressed takes a lot. Kind of like how pain changes us to a different form of our personality because pain takes away our ability to express those more neutral, caring emotions, my depression made me very mean at times. It made me a bitter person. And I am thankfully on the other side. I am who I think I actually am, which is just like a big ol’ softboy.

But, you know, I really empathize with Sakiko, because, yeah, she’s super self-serving; she’s also a child. She’s a child who’s had to go through a lot. We don’t really know what happens to her mom, but presumably dead. I mean, Nyamu is the only one with a good mom that’s alive. And so, her dad… who knows when she is going to get the call that her dad is dead? Like, he can’t get through his own… I mean, and admittedly, he did the fraud, a very white-collar crime, you know. And he didn’t go to jail, which, wow. And she lives with this grandfather who’s like this emotional wall. And so, I think it makes sense that her arc is dissatisfying because it’s only just begun. We have not seen it come full circle. And I hope that’s what the sequel will actually do, is bring us through that kind of circular cycle to see her grow into a better person. That is my defense. The defense rests.

TONY: Hm. I can see that, yeah.

CHIAKI: Yeah, I just want to say, in terms of Sakiko being a teenager… you know, when you think about it, that’s the most teenage thing that you could possibly do, to act like an adult and think of yourself like “I have gone through so much shit, and I am so much smarter for it, and I know exactly what needs to be done,” and realize… and then, hindsight 20/20, us in our 30s, looking back at Sakiko and going, “Girl, you are 15, 16. You do not know shit.” [Chuckles]

CY: She needs an adult. That’s what she needs. She needs an adult. Like, “119, can I get an adult for this kid desu ka?” Like, she’s not doing okay! She’s not! Every adult in her life basically has let her down in some way or other, including her grandfather. Her grandfather kind of puts her on this really pretty perch in this fancy mansion.

CHIAKI: [crosstalk] Oh, especially her grandfather!

TONY: Oh, yeah, he’s horrible.

CY: Yeah, is it any wonder that she leaves the plane, skins up them knees, skins up them knees bad, hurts them little feetsies, and goes to an island? Like, it’s not a shock. So, yeah, that’s my defense of Sakiko, because I think what her deal is is, like, she’s a kid. And as an adult who has all these memories of being a kid and being worried about bills… And my love of calculators really came from being a teenager who liked to crunch numbers to see how much I couldn’t eat or what I could do to help my mom save money. You know, I didn’t know shit at 15! I knew I was severely depressed. I knew I felt really at odds with the world, and through trauma-centered therapy, I have answers to that, but at 32 I’m well aware that I don’t know everything, but at 15, I thought I had it under control because if I could mimic the adults around me, I would be safe, like that was the secret special formula. And now as an adult, I’m like, oh, I didn’t know anything. I didn’t.

TONY: Yeah. And I think the thing is, right, she does make a real effort towards the end to be a better person, I think. You can really see that. Admittedly, she’s kind of forced— It’s really fascinating how she’s forced to, by… I believe it’s Soyo, right?

CY: Mm-hm

TONY: I found that really compelling to watch Soyo use her drama bitch powers for good, because I think that what Soyo wants is… what Soyo had to do is to confront the darkness within herself, right? That’s a lot of her arc in MyGO, right, is to confront, like, “I actually do have all these really negative and painful things that I think about myself and about the people around me” and that “I am operating a lot from a place of resentment. And now, how do I move forward from that but also not deny that within myself?” And I found it really fascinating that she then is also the one to kind of force Sakiko to be like, “Look! These are the consequences of your actions! This is how what you’re doing is affecting the people who you allegedly care about. And I’m not going to let you look away from that, because that is fucked,” you know?

CY: Yeah, and it kinda goes back to Ave Mujica’s whole thing as these dolls brought to life under the moonlight. You can control that narrative, but you cannot control the narrative and actions of your real-life bandmates. And Sakiko’s whole arc is about her allowing that control to go, kind of by force. She doesn’t really get a choice. It’s either do that or you’re gonna lose all your friends. And maybe Uika will really push someone down some stairs, because you’re gonna—

TONY: [Chuckles]

CY: You know? But for real, though! And so, yeah, that’s my defense, is this is just the start, and I really hope— Because we do know we’re gonna get a sequel that’s gonna be about MyGO and AveMu. That has been confirmed. I hope that in that we see her actually start to heal and see what life can be when she’s working with others instead of being like, “Give me your lives!” Like, girl. You’re 15, babe!

TONY: Yeah, and there’s still the pretense towards the end that she’s still kind of that head honcho who can say shit like that. But I think the subtext there is that she’s saying that but everyone can leave if they want to. There’s nothing that’s holding them back from leaving if they want to. They are choosing to be there, right?

CY: Right.

CHIAKI: I mean, you can’t just stop being a chuuni kid, okay?

TONY: [Laughs]

CHIAKI: If it’s in your DNA and you’re gonna be extra, that’s what you’re just gonna be, but the best you can do is learn to manage your expectations that your peons are going to disappoint you one day.

CY: Is that why I’m like this as an adult? Not time for Cy’s self-aware thoughts. [Chuckles] Can’t take the chuuni out of the adult. It’s here forever.

CHIAKI: You’re gonna love anime forever. I’m sorry.

CY: I mean, I still Naruto-run around my apartment, so, like…

[Chuckling]

CY: You know, gotta go fast.

CHIAKI: That’s Sonic.

CY: I know! I know. That was the joke, Chiaki.

TONY: Okay, so I want to ask y’all: do we have any hopes for what we want to see in the sequel, since it is going to be a sequel?

CHIAKI: Destroy the Togawa Group.

CY: [Laughs]

TONY: Okay, say more about this.

CHIAKI: [crosstalk] Dismantle it.

CY: [Laughs] That’s… Yeah.

TONY: Do we want a courtroom drama about the Togawa Group getting dismantled?

CY: No, I don’t want a courtroom drama. I just want to find out that it happened.

CHIAKI: Yeah, I want them financially ruined because they invest in… You know what? Yeah, they should invest in another second or third band that’s cooler, that’s headlined by Uika, real Uika, and then all the girls team up.

TONY: [crosstalk] Real Uika!

CHIAKI: Real Uika, yeah. And then destroy it.

CY: Yeah!

CHIAKI: Get them destroyed.

CY: Yeah!

CHIAKI: Yeah. Yeah.

TONY: Some real band-on-band crimes happening, I hope.

CHIAKI: [Chuckles]

CY: BanG Dream? More like Bang Scream! Ha-ha! I would like to see, actually, some more music numbers, because AveMu has a cool sound. They’re like goth J-metal. They’re giving a little like Babymetal. And I want some more of that. Please! Show me more music video. I hungy for it.

TONY: Yeah, those sound like amazing hopes for the sequel. I just want more toxic yuri. That’s all I want.

CY: Yes!

CHIAKI: Fair.

TONY: [crosstalk] That’s all I ever want. I would love that. So, the last thing I wanted to do is just kind of ask: from this franchise, what were your favorite musical moments? Like, what were the moments…? I don’t know if y’all have ever seen Culturistas, but they always ask, like, you know, what was the moment in your life where you saw some culture and you said, “Culture is for me”?

[Chuckling]

TONY: But this is like: what was the moment you saw the show and you’re like, “This show is for me?”

CY: I’m gonna be real. When we see that little Crychic reunion and Tomori is singing her little autistic heart out, and I’m on the couch once again elbow-deep in that white cheddar Smartfood popcorn, because I got the big bag, and I’m just weeping as I’m shoving popcorn into my mouth because it’s so good, that really hit me because I was like, “We’ll never get Crychic back,” and it’s okay for things to end. Endings are natural. Endings aren’t a failure. A conclusion is just a natural thing that happens. But I don’t know, that felt special because it was helping Mutsumi. And Mutsumi has to go through some pretty toxic trauma around wanting to get the band back together and avoiding the actual internal conflict, that kind of interior thought process. But I don’t know, it was just so sweet! Oh, it was so sweet!

CHIAKI: Cosigned.

TONY: For me I think it was probably the moment where… it was actually in MyGO, where Tomori is doing her solo shows and then everyone slowly gets back onto the stage with her and they do this incredible performance that is… You know, whether they could actually improvise that is like, mm, I don’t know about that. But in terms of the emotional hit of it, the panning to all the members’ faces as they’re crying… it’s so beautiful. I love it. I think for me, generally, the musical numbers in MyGO hit harder for me just because I connect so much with Tomori’s lyric-writing. I love the way that Tomori writes lyrics. Obviously, Tomori is not the actual songwriter, but you get what I mean. So, I’m hoping we get some more Tomori songs in the sequel.

CY: Absolutely.

CHIAKI: Yeah. I mean, there is no pretension in her words. It’s just raw feeling. And that’s so— And that’s also why the Crychic concert’s also so solid, right? It’s all Tomori.

CY: And it feels like a teenage girl writing a song. I think that’s what moved me, was it felt like a teenage girl writing a song. It didn’t feel like when, you know… and I think especially in the current pop industry, where it’s a group of men writing a song, this felt like a teenage girl who probably got itchy eyes and had to put eye drops in because she was writing these lyrics late at night, a teenage girl who maybe had to go down to the fridge and get a snack because she was up burning the midnight oil writing these lyrics, and then she probably flopped into bed and felt really satisfied about what she was gonna do and knew that it was the right thing in our heart. I like that. I like that emotionality. That’s why I like idols, but that’s especially why I like girl bands, is I like that feeling of, yeah, I can see that process. I can imagine what it feels like, yeah.

TONY: Yeah. On that note, I think we are going to close out! This has been Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. If you like what you heard, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Really like what you heard, you should definitely go to Anime Feminist and read our articles. But you can also join our Patreon! For $5 a month, you can join our Discord server, where you can chat with other feminist-minded anime viewers. The staff members are very active participants on the Discord, too, so we enjoy the community as much as y’all do, and that is honestly awesome, and I hope that it speaks to just how great of a space it is.

CHIAKI: Come yell at me.

TONY: Yes, you can yell at both me and Chiaki for whatever reasons you want to.

CY: You can even yell at me. Maybe I’ll actually go on Discord. [Chuckles]

TONY: Just @ Cy over and over and over again, until they relent and start actually going on.

CY: Please do. I want to engage more. I’m just shy.

TONY: You can find links to all of our socials at linktr.ee/animefeminist, and that’ll have links to our Patreon, Bluesky, and various other places that you can find us. And with that, death to the Togawa Group.

CHIAKI: Death to the Togawa Group.