Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today it is with a heavy heart that I announce we have reached the finale of BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!, and will soon be asked to leave the venue and shuffle our way home. It’s been a poignant, frequently transcendent, and ever-engaging journey with the lost girls, and I’m sad to see our time together drawing to a close. But at least we’ve still got the memories: Anon’s delightfully mercenary recruitment of Tomori, that devastating elaboration of Tomori’s life story, the desperate machinations of our girl Soyo, and the thunderous performances that first rent and then reunited our stars, aligning them in their collective need for a little warmth and understanding, a place that might make a pillbug like Tomori reach for the sun.
It’s been profoundly rewarding watching this crew grow into an ever-frictious but nonetheless supportive whole, and I’d frankly be perfectly content if this episode was just a full-length encore performance for MyGO!!!!! But of course, our story possesses one last lingering question: what the fuck is going on with Sakiko, and why is she assembling a cabal of musical supervillains. Her initial formation of CRYCHIC seemed almost as Tomori-focused as our dear Taki’s motives, and it’s clear that seeing Tomori move on and find a new community hit her like a punch in the gut. Will we at last learn why she was moved to disband her own precious community, and what she hopes will emerge from the ashes? Let’s get to it!
Episode 13
“The Only One I Can Trust Is Myself.” Presumably this episode title is our first one from Sakiko’s perspective. After the dissolution of CRYCHIC, it seems the lesson she internalized was to always keep others at a distance. Her conversation with Nyamu was certainly all business, though her meeting with Uika seemed to imply that some personal bonds can still be valued
We first come upon Sakiko… working in a call center? Love that she maintains her gothic frills even at her day job
Nonetheless, this scene provides an immediate indication that she’s not nearly as wealthy as she might seem. Perhaps CRYCHIC’s end was precipitated by some terrible turn of her family’s fortunes? That doesn’t necessarily explain why she’d cut Tomori and the others off, but if her pride couldn’t allow her to compromise on band commitments in order to spare more time to support the family, I could see why she’d think quitting is the only option
Mutsumi agrees to join the band immediately, saying that Sakiko “looks like (she’s) about to break apart”
“You may keep your concern. The weak me has already died.” Sakiko is so much. And jeez, Mutsumi never has an easy time of it – she’s always trying to reconcile and forgive, but both Sakiko and Soyo are so proud and self-absorbed that they only ever throw her sympathy back in her face
The question has to be asked, if Sakiko has abandoned the longing for community that first united her and Tomori, what is she actually getting out of this new group? It seems as painful and labored as everything else in her current life
Meanwhile, Raana looms over five matcha parfaits. Really capturing that “cat staring approvingly at blinis” energy
Oh my god, Anon has to literally hold her back as she paws at them. If my grandma owned a club, could I also shamble through life as a feral creature
Anon attempts to evoke leadership by offering a retrospective on their performance, only for her bandmates to boo and jeer her off the stage. They’re a wonderful group
“If we keep layering moment on moment like that, it will become a lifetime.” Rather than a literal lifetime, Tomori seems to be implying a lifetime’s worth of memories – a lifetime’s share of emotional enrichment, enough warm moments shared to populate your thoughts all life long
“Are you really planning to play in a band until you die?” I appreciate that now, with Soyo no longer coddling Tomori for the sake of recreating CRYCHIC, she’s perfectly willing to ask the same cynical, pragmatic questions that Anon once voiced. Anon and Soyo are much alike now that Soyo’s being honest, a fact that presumably makes Soyo all the more annoyed
“Well then, everyone will need to make sure they stay healthy.” Soyo is done arguing with her. Another welcome gesture towards how personal growth is piecemeal, and the reality that we rarely undergo total transformations of our attitudes and affectations. Soyo still finds Tomori difficult to talk to – even though she’s now willing to challenge Tomori’s more nonsensical statements, she still swiftly reaches a point where she’d rather just stop talking than argue with her
“Anon-chan has already posted pictures.” Of course Anon would immediately parlay their unity and success into social media clout. The more encouraging point is that Soyo is immediately checking out her page, and even seems to approve of Anon’s antics
Soyo isolates Tomori by offering to walk her home, and confesses that she always found Tomori’s lyrics too raw to feel comfortable with them
Soyo at last confesses to her desire to be accepted, and the artifice she embraced in that pursuit
“If I started to think about it, it made me feel like I was dying, so I tried not to think.” Goddamn, Soyo. At last voicing why Tomori has made her so uncomfortable all along – Tomori has always pursued honest expression of the uncharitable, lonely emotions that Soyo attempted to deny within herself. Tomori is always real in a way that Soyo couldn’t imagine for herself; Soyo is a master of social niceties, but Tomori has no faculty for such things, and instead cuts right through to the sincere desires that Soyo is unwilling to face
And this is such a human response for Soyo, too. Is it possible to reconcile a desire for honest connection with a tendency to lie in order to gather others close to you? Perhaps not, but she still needed that connection, and thus chose to deceive herself in order to grasp what happiness she could find within the lie
Soyo’s acknowledgment that she’ll never forget CRYCHIC resonates with Tomori as well, immediately inspiring her to write a new song
At school, Sakiko is melodramatically banging away at the piano as usual. Tomori attempts to connect directly by offering her the new lyrics, her lingering feelings of fondness for CRYCHIC, but Sakiko brushes her aside
Love Anon just sighing as Sakiko storms past. Her immunity to Sakiko’s bullshit is like a superpower in this world
Anon may not care about Sakiko, but she cares a great deal about Tomori at this point. Seeing Tomori is upset, she showers her in well-chosen shows of affection, taking her to the penguin exhibit and gifting her fresh animal bandaids
“I’m about to say something cool, so just listen.” Anon is so good. What a wonderful cast this show has offered us
And Anon announces her commitment to the lifetime band. You’ve snagged the undying loyalty of another one, Tomori
Uika runs into the pair of them as they’re heading home. Anon recognizes her from Sumimi, and is of course always eager to ingratiate herself to a celebrity
“But she knew your name.” “I don’t think… I ever told her.” It’s fine Tomori, you’re just destined to gather countless women who are helplessly enamored with you. It’s normal for Tomoris
And at last we begin to see posters for Sakiko’s debut, the group known as “Ave Mujica”
“If we expose our true faces, the world of Ave Mujica will come crashing down.” The existence of MyGO appears to have driven Sakiko completely insane
Nyamu is “Amoris,” and Sakiko is of course “Oblivionis.” Well, some people go to therapy, others construct high-concept musical projects and declare war on the future
Nyamu definitely sticks out within this otherwise straight-laced group
“Feelings of impatience or regret… leave them all here. Once you’re on stage, the only thing you can believe in… is yourself.” Jeez, so Sakiko truly created the anti-MyGO. While the girls of MyGO happily admit to their uncertainty and insecurity, and find strength in joining together to sincerely express their emotions, Sakiko’s new group is all about concealing your true feelings and turning inward, relying only on your own abilities. This is definitely up there among the most unhealthy responses to a breakup
“In the end, we’re all just badgers in the same hole”
Oh my god. It’s not just a musical performance, it’s a whole damn theatrical experience, complete with a play-within-a-play masquerade. Sakiko, what have you done
Nyamu states that this place “is where dolls that have been discarded by humans have gathered.” An interesting phrasing, one that echoes Tomori’s earlier regrets that she “failed to become human.” It seems that Sakiko was consumed by the same fear, and actually felt that Tomori would be the one to validate her humanity
“Under the light of this moon, we take on a fleeting moment of life within us.” Another reversal of MyGO’s philosophy: MyGO find their humanity on stage and carry that onward into their normal lives, whereas Ave Mujica (or really, Sakiko particularly) seem to have accepted that they’ll only ever be human on the stage
Love that you can actually tell this is a Sakiko-composed song, as the guitar melodies are all extensions of the piano line. And of course, she prefers a theatrical style with lots of melodic breakdowns and shifts in tempo, in clear contrast with Taki’s “barreling ahead” alt-rock compositions
The presentation styles are equally oppositional – even MyGO’s “matching costumes” were really just variations on their normal clothes, while their teary-eyed performances left no emotion uncovered. In contrast, Ave Mujica’s actual musicians are entirely lost in the fanfare of their theatrical performance, with their costumes and video projections forming a wall between artist and audience
They’re also consistently trading off lead parts. For MyGO, everything works in service of Tomori’s lyrics – here, they’re essentially trading off being the star, embodying Sakiko’s statement that they can “only believe in themselves”
Sakiko immediately changes out of her costume after the performance, and leaves alone. Really committed to only being Oblivionis on stage
And the stinger at last provides a dash of context for Sakiko’s transformation, as we learn her father has become an entirely dependent alcoholic
And Done
Goddamn, Sakiko! After flitting around the edges of this narrative like some kind of malevolent banshee, CRYCHIC’s former leader has at last commenced her attack on the girls of MyGO. This episode’s second half felt like another show entirely, embracing Sakiko’s fantastical coping methods as she engineered a band that is entirely an on-stage outlet, with no messy personal strings attached. I’m sure we’ll learn more about Sakiko’s whole deal in the coming season, but for now I’m just happy we received a warm sendoff for the group we’ve spent all this time with. Anon recreating Tomori’s prior gesture of support was a fine signifier of how close the two have grown, but I was even more pleased to see Soyo admitting how she feared Tomori’s sincerity, but is now willing to stand beside her. All of MyGO’s members needed some form of earnest community, some group who would accept their strange, occasional antisocial selves. Though there’s been some obvious friction in gathering five such lost girls together, the acceptance they’ve found is something rare and precious, something that may well last them a lifetime. Journey on, MyGO!!!!!
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