Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m happy to announce we’re diving back into the musical mayhem that is BanG Dream! Ave Mujica, as our girls continue to poke each other with sharp sticks in the hopes of either dying or making a very important point. Our last episode saw Ave Mujica reunited at last, and actually seeming to reach a healthier point of collaboration both in their personal and professional relations. Of course we can’t have that, so our post-credits stinger came through with a fresh point of conflict, potentially floating Uika and Sakiko as long-lost sisters or whatnot.
We’ll deal with that salvo of soap opera silliness when we get to it, but for now, I have to admit I’m impressed with how well episode ten brought these character journeys together. It has at times been difficult to see why any of these characters would want to collaborate on anything, but that performance saw them all reaching towards a collective goal for their own coherent reasons – Sakiko to repair the damage she’s done, Mortis and Mutsumi-chan to declare their collective right to exist, Umiri to embrace sincere dedication to her craft and group, Nyamu to transcend her superficial divahood by chasing Mutsumi’s ascent, and Uika to stay by Sakiko’s side, whatever it takes. That resounding, defiant chorus of “still alive,” relevant to each of them in their own ways, binding them to the declaration of resilience that Ave Mujica has always been.
Everyone except Uika is in a far healthier place than they were several episodes ago, so I suppose it’s only right that it falls to her to burn everything down. Let’s see what torment awaits as we return to Ave Mujica!
Episode 11
Our episode title is “Te ustus emem,” referring to a profoundly passionate love. Continuing our story with Uika, as we dive into her intense, one-sided love for Sakiko
We open with Uika singing Greensleeves alone on an impossibly vast stage. Of course, this is Ave Mujica, so no personal story can exist without its extravagant ornamentation
“What I am about to show you is the play of her with all her secrets, the story of Hatsune Misumi.” Uika opens with the reveal of her real name and promise to tell you the whole story, but given we’re being informed from the start that this is Uika’s narration of her life, I’m still primed to expect a lot of fact-massaging and editorializing
That framing echoes Ave Mujica’s conflicts more generally; all of them are frequently at each other’s throats for ruining their individual stories, rather than attempting to actually write a collective story. A band predicated on its members’ refusal to emotionally commit themselves is destined for ruin, and Nyamu, Umiri, and Mutsumi all wished for precisely that. Even Sakiko’s commitment was a sort of running away, a theatrical rejection of her grandfather’s plans for her
Ah, she’s actually the daughter of Sakiko’s grandfather. After his wife died, he conceived Uika with the caretaker of the family villa
But he himself was an adopted son of the Togawa empire, meaning Uika carries no Togawa blood. Uika’s mother chose to raise her on the island, making sense of how we always previously saw Uika as a sort of fairytale figure hanging around the Togawa estate
Lots of exposition to get through, so I appreciate them embracing the artifice of making this an on-stage monologue complete with silk-screen projections complimenting Uika’s story
Uika crouches down on the stage, her posture and the harbor projected behind recreating a scene that must have defined her childhood, of forever looking beyond the island that was for her essentially Rapunzel’s tower
Eventually her mother gave birth to her half-sister Uika, the bright and cheerful counterpart to the gloomy Hatsune, who dreams of becoming a Tokyo idol
“My father’s kindness only made me feel like more of an outsider within the family.” She was treated as a sad dependent, not a true Togawa
“The name of the girl I was absolutely forbidden to meet was Togawa Sakiko.” I don’t know what sort of psychic rays or pheromones Sakiko emits to have this effect on people, but Uika seems to have it worst of all
Though Hatsune was forbidden from meeting Sakiko, Uika happily declares that she met her two days ago, and learned all about Tokyo from her
Uika’s stories of Sakiko throughout the summer only inflamed Hatsune’s desire to meet this mysterious girl
“You must never go to that villa.” Uika’s tale is constantly framed in the language of fairy tale mythology, positioning her as the captive princess in the tower, who must waste her days without ever dreaming of enjoying the sunlight of court life. Within this framing, connecting with Sakiko has become the embodiment of rebellion, the proof that she has thoughts and feelings and agency of her own. Little wonder she became so obsessive, given she was taught to frame Sakiko as the embodiment of everything she could never have
“Uika, what should we play today?” Deliberately conflating what Hatsune witnessed and only imagined, the role of Uika that she would soon claim for herself. You might say that two split identity twists within one band is perhaps a bit much for thirteen episodes, but Ave Mujica has always been committed to going the extra melodramatic mile
If Sakiko is the key that unlocks Hatsune’s happier persona Uika, I can also see why she’d be so desperate to stay close to her
“Uika, you’re such a mysterious girl. You’re usually bright like the sun, but today, you’re gentle like the moon.” The first in what is apparently a trend of girls who love Sakiko so much they disassociate in her presence
Still, I can see why this moment would be important to Uika, who’s always felt like an unwanted child. The destined one, the trueborn Togawa, actually sees her as an inspiration
“You turned me, a pitiful being, into a human!” The crucial distinction between Uika, Mutsumi, and Tomori is that while Sakiko changed all of their lives, Uika and Mutsumi decided that was a result of Sakiko being basically magic, while Tomori was able to make the further realization that what Sakiko represented was a loving community. Thus Tomori was able to find what Sakiko gave her anew in MyGO, while Uika and Mutsumi are stuck rambling in circles, certain that only Sakiko can make them whole
Thus Hatsune adopted Uika’s dream of becoming an idol, because that’s what Sakiko expected from her
Then Hatsune’s foster father dies, prompting an argument between her and Uika. You definitely need a taste for soap opera make-conflict with no meaningful grounding to enjoy Ave Mujica, but even then, this episode is pushing into a new realm of weightless melodrama. It’s fun, but it’s not a story about human beings like MyGO was
“Saki-chan is a stage prop for your tragedy.” A cutting line from Uika, implying Hatsune only cares about Sakiko because Sakiko’s existence flatters her tragic self-importance
I was frankly sorta worried about Uika’s character for reasons this episode is unfortunately realizing; with her whole deal reserved as a twist for the last act, all of this feels clumsily integrated, just sort of an abrupt injection of additional drama. I tend to caution against using a characters’ fundamental motivation as a late-story twist; it might be “dramatic” in a sort of superficially surprising sense, but it means the audience can’t meaningfully relate to that character at any point before the twist, and afterwards likely has little time to develop a genuine connection with them. But that too is basically Ave Mujica all over; it’s far more interested in shocking surprises than character studies
Uika journeyed to Tokyo, got scouted, and teamed up with Mana, all in the hope of being noticed by Sakiko
“I didn’t understand why I didn’t have to answer more questions. I didn’t understand why I didn’t have to go back to the island.” The same reason Sakiko’s been able to get away with everything – the Togawa patriarch feels too guilty about all of this to really steer either of them
Meeting Sakiko’s father at her debut, she mentions how grateful she is that her own father allowed her to perform. But to Sakiko’s father, this only emphasizes the tragedy of how Uika’s father has treated her, keeping her at arm’s length from the actual Togawa estate. Thus he challenges his own adopted father for Uika’s sake
“You don’t understand the terrifying power of the Togawa group. If you care about Sakiko, keep your mouth shut.” Mentally imagining Anon doing that “To-ga-wa group” jingle through all of this
“Saki-chan’s father lost everything because of me.” Well yeah, I can see how that might weigh on a person. Of course, Uika isn’t truly responsible; it was Sakiko’s mother’s death that destabilized her father, Uika’s fate was just an incidental argument along the way. But from Uika’s perspective, basically everything that went wrong in all the lives around her was caused by her failing to stay within the prescribed borderlines of her assigned life
This also explains the guilt she felt later on, seeing herself as essentially taking advantage of the destruction she caused in order to bind Sakiko closer to herself
We cut back to the present, with the president at last laying down the law to Sakiko – no more Hatsune, no more school, you’re going to Switzerland. We are putting this entire insane era behind us
Thus the tale of Hatsune and Uika ends with her seemingly ready to just walk into the sea
And Done
Goddamnit Uika! We’ve barely enough time to deal with Mutsumi’s baggage alone, and now you’re telling us you’ve also got a dual identity, or at least a partition robust enough to maintain a dual Sakiko/non-Sakiko life? I would say this is the episode where Ave Mujica jumped the shark, but really, the show has been flying gracefully above a procession of sharks for most of its running time. In truth, my biggest issue with this episode was that it simply wasn’t particularly fun; we’re well past the point of treating our heroines as keen psychological portraits, so rather than gesturing towards such solemnity, the show is at its best when it’s simply bashing its unwell icons against each other, and seeing what sort of noises they make. Fortunately, while this episode was clumsy and kinda dry, it was at the very least quite efficient – we have basically the entirety of Uika’s life story now established, leaving us hopefully just enough time to see her firebomb Togawa headquarters. Onward to the next atrocity!
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