Bang Dream! Ave Mujica
I remember perfectly when BanG Dream! first burst into the market as a mobile rhythm game. Given my natural fondness for that kind of game, I downloaded it right away. I played it enthusiastically, hooked by its addictive mechanics and the ever-expanding musical universe: each band had its own story, style, and emotional background. It was precisely that abundance that eventually overwhelmed me. Over time, the amount of content grew significantly (including new bands, more storylines, and crossover events), leading me to uninstall it. It wasn't a loss of interest but rather an uncontrollable addiction. At that time, Ave Mujica wasn’t part of the game’s story, and my involvement with the franchise was limited to playing the game and watching its anime adaptation centered on the original main band.
That’s why, when a friend recommended me a “musical anime with that tragic-angsty vibe you like,” I never imagined it was BanG Dream. I didn’t even recognize any of the girls. The members of Ave Mujica were entirely new to me, and the evident physical and emotional change they had undergone since their days in their former band, CRYCHIC, instantly piqued my interest. I continued to watch, curious about what had happened to them. And to my surprise, the anime didn’t just answer that question with brutal honesty; it gave me a devastatingly beautiful experience. Because yes, my friend knows me well: BanG Dream: Ave Mujica is one of those animes I enjoyed suffering through.
The story follows Ave Mujica, a band born from the collapse of CRYCHIC. At first glance, you might think it's the classic story of musical redemption, but it quickly reveals itself to be built on emotional wreckage and unresolved traumas. The group’s leader, Sakiko Togawa, carries a past weighed down by pain, expectations, and an idealism that borders on obsession. Her artistic vision, while powerful, becomes the breaking point that fractures the band members even further, generating tension, rivalries, and an increasingly heavy emotional atmosphere.
On the surface, BanG Dream: Ave Mujica might seem like a cautionary tale about poor communication, social pressure, and the dangers of idealizing relationships. But in reality, it delivers a raw, visceral exploration of escapism. It speaks to how people (especially young people) can fall into self-destructive spirals trying to fill voids they can’t even name. There’s no need to talk about drugs or gambling; here, the addiction is emotional. The addiction lies in the desire for recognition, significance, and a sense of belonging. Each member of Ave Mujica carries an emotional wound they attempt to heal through their involvement in the band, often leading to painful and counterproductive outcomes.
One of the anime’s greatest strengths is how it portrays loneliness. None of the girls truly connects with the others. They all talk, but few truly listen. They stay together out of loyalty, habit, inertia… not because there's an emotional bond strong enough to sustain them. In this sense, the metaphor of the “dolls” gains full symbolic weight: beautiful on the outside, but fragile, empty, and manipulable. The anime's emotional climax unfolds through a series of small cracks that deepen and eventually form a chasm. And the most heartbreaking part is that BanG Dream: Ave Mujica doesn’t offer easy redemption. There’s no “happy ending” in the traditional sense. The band stays together, yes, but for all the wrong reasons. They do it because, outside of the group, they feel insignificant. Returning to the real world would require them to confront the pain they have been evading.
In that sense, the true "monster" of the anime isn’t a physical antagonist. It’s not a person or an external figure. It's that existential void, that emotional lack each one drags along like a shadow. The scariest part is that it's a monster you can not escape. The girls try to confront it, mask it, and disguise it, but they never defeat it. This is because, at their core, the monster they face is none other than themselves. Their insecurities, fears, and repressed desires are all part of the monster within them. Each character projects their pain onto the others, unable to see themselves without the distorted reflection the others return to them. Time and again, the anime plays with the idea of illusion. Scenes that appear to be emotional resolutions ultimately reveal that they were merely fantasies, wishes, or subconscious lies. In other instances, you anticipate a moment of healing, only to encounter a harsh, unforgiving reality. Just like Sakiko and her band, we’re denied the escape of the “happy ending” and are forced to look at the painful truth for what it is: Sakiko and Ave Mujica will keep walking their dark path.
Each character is a world we follow through all their turbulence. Umiri wants to matter in a band. She doesn’t want to be considered “unreliable” like she was in her first group, so she joined 30 bands as a safety net. For Umiri, Ave Mujica is the only band where she feels she finally matters; she feels she has found a second home that truly values her. So she spends the final episodes desperately trying to rebuild the band, even though she hasn’t resolved her issues.
At first, I perceived Nyamu as an extreme attention-seeker, but as the show progressed, I came to understand that she shares many similarities with today's youth. As a social media influencer, Nyamu is caught in the web of fame and recognition. She eventually stops putting in the effort to achieve a goal and instead begins to live in a world of instant gratification. Her attitude is basically “I want success and I want it now; I don’t care how low I have to sink to get it,” and honestly, with so many young people today doing virtually anything for clicks (even putting themselves or others at risk of serious injury), I realized Nyamu’s personality reflects many real-world internet personas. For some, online attention is something they can’t live without. On top of that, her goal of becoming an actress is overshadowed by her perceived inferiority to Mutsumi and her mother, making her question why she can’t be “naturally talented” at acting.
Uika (or should I say, Hatsune) has a void only filled by being close to Sakiko. I suppose it’s because she grew up isolated on an island, far from family (or anyone, really), and Sakiko was the only person she ever felt she could connect with, the only one she could talk to and play with. This situation leads to an unhealthy obsession with Sakiko, to the point she almost lashes out at Mutsumi for “stealing” her away.
Mutsumi is easily the biggest victim among the five. To quote Eminem’s “The Monster,” Mutsumi wanted attention for her music but also wanted to be left alone in public. Clearly, she cannot reconcile her status as a celebrity's daughter with the pressure to perform against her will. After CRYCHIC broke up, her mission shifted from “show my music to the world” to “protect Sakiko from self-destruction.” But that didn’t work, and it broke her, eventually leading her to become Mortis. The severity of her identity disorder escalated to an unrecoverable level, with the hope that the upcoming sequel will provide a resolution. All Mutsumi ever wanted was to be in a band with Sakiko, see her happy, and break away from her identity as an actress through guitar. But when you’re the child of a celebrity, the world simply doesn’t let you breathe.
Finally, Sakiko wants to be a successful band artist who earned everything with her own hands. She wants to make money so she can finally take care of her father. She doesn’t want to be a “failure.” She’s trying to prove to the world (and to herself) that she’s more than a “spoiled rich kid” and that she can achieve her dream of building a successful band. So she goes to enormous lengths to maintain Ave Mujica's unity, including harshly reprimanding Mutsumi, her childhood friend, to uphold her professional image. The hardest part is that each girl wants happiness, but every choice takes them further from it. Are they to blame, or are they victims of a world that never truly listened to them? That ambiguity is what makes this anime feel so human— so devastatingly real.
If there's one element that elevates this series from a character-driven tragedy to a full-fledged sensory experience, it's the music. Unlike previous iterations of BanG Dream! that leaned more into upbeat pop-rock or inspirational anthems, Ave Mujica embraces a darker, more avant-garde sonic identity. The soundtrack doesn’t merely accompany the narrative—it bleeds into it. Each song is a reflection of the band’s fractured psyche, a window into their inner turmoil, and a haunting echo of everything left unsaid between them. Even the background score and insert songs maintain this darkly lush atmosphere. Composer elements flirt with the baroque, the romantic, and the melancholic, rarely giving the listener a moment to breathe. Silence, when it appears, is heavy. Pregnant. The experience is often more overwhelming than the music itself. That contrast, that oscillation between sonic saturation and void, reinforces the show's theme of emotional repression and eventual rupture.
One of the most remarkable aspects of the band's music is its incorporation of classical and gothic elements. Pianos battle with distorted guitars, waltz rhythms are transformed into punk structures, and haunting vocal harmonies float like ghosts above each chorus. It's a genre mashup that feels purposefully unstable, constantly threatening to collapse in on itself. There is a conceptual continuity throughout: no song is ever merely a song. Each one represents a confession, a scream, or a prayer.
Standout tracks like "Unmei no Requiem" and "Eclipse Spiral" don't just tell you how the characters feel; they make you experience it too. The lyrics are beautiful, frequently obscure, with lines that indicate a deep yearning for connection and existential dread or a self-destructive impulse that the characters can't quite name. It's less about narrative clarity and more about emotional resonance. The show's use of music as narrative punctuation is also worth noting. Songs are not just inserted into episodes; they punctuate them. They arrive at moments of tension or release, like sudden storms. Occasionally, they even contradict the scene visually playing out, forcing the viewer to confront the dissonance between what’s happening externally and what’s festering inside. It’s a brilliant technique that adds layers of depth to already complex sequences.
Another notable aspect is how the band members' personalities subtly shape the music itself. You can hear Sakiko’s perfectionism in the precise arrangements, Nyamu’s chaos in the explosive bridge sections, Umiri’s desperate longing in the vocal harmonies, Hatsune’s obsessive devotion in the looping refrains, and Mutsumi’s pain in the subdued, aching verses. This careful calibration gives each track a haunting intimacy. It’s not just music by Ave Mujica; it’s music of Ave Mujica. It feels born from their souls.
BanG Dream: Ave Mujica isn’t just a darker, edgier girl-band anime about personal problems. It’s a realistic portrayal of modern life and the challenges we face in trying to find “purpose.” Ave Mujica invites us to examine our behaviors and habits and determine what is or isn’t considered a problem. Maybe the most important message it offers is this: when our emotions and thoughts don’t align with the physical world, everything begins to fall apart. We realize, through the harrowing unfolding of events, that Sakiko and the girls’ quick fixes and aspirations are just an escape, an attempt to fill a need that remains unmet. Maybe that need is companionship, a connection to the world outside. But the only way to truly overcome these inner problems (the thing Sakiko and Ave Mujica ultimately fail to do) is to figure out what we’re really running from. To realize that what we truly, truly lack isn’t a quick fix, but the ability to connect.
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https://pinnedupink.com/blogs/random-thoughts-because-mondays-suck
https://pinnedupink.com/blogs/on-screen
https://pinnedupink.com/blogs/flashbacks
