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Even if everyone tries to forget, I, the goddess of Oblivion, will never forget. Until the moment when the world reaches its end.

Music anime are often about dreams. A shared goal of girls trying to make it big, or goofing around and having fun, or trying to achieve something in life. But what if their goal wasn’t so noble? Hell, what if their goal wasn’t even common, and they were all trying to do different things, the band being just a means to an end without there being any meaningful bonds between the members? Worse still, a band that could turn out to be a prison for its members. The girls clinging desperately to it, as it becomes their only salvation. Being unable to see any other paths, as they spiral further in its abyss.

This season follows Sakiko Togawa’s new band Ave Mujica. After her dad is thrown out of the Togawa group, Saki chooses to stay with him instead of her grandfather, which forces her to leave Crychic due to having her hands full trying to financially support her alcoholic dad, the emotional turmoil of having lost her mom before this incident, constantly having to go to the police station to bring her dad back home as he was causing trouble in public while being drunk, and the mental instability to deal with it all. She was at a point where she felt as if she had lost everything. Which leads her to create the new band as a coping mechanism for what she was going through.

Sakiko was a character I really hated in It’s MyGO. Not much was known about her, and her behavior just came off as bitchy for how she seemingly abandoned her band without caring about anyone else’s feelings. Even when her backstory was revealed in the opening episode of this season, I still wasn’t convinced, thinking that it doesn’t excuse what she did to the crychic members. But as the season went on, I realized that I was needlessly harsh on her. Her backstory wasn’t supposed to be an excuse for her actions. She’s a thoroughly flawed individual. She isn’t able to take the right decisions in life, lashes out at others without consideration, fails to understand what her friends are going through, and tries to forget about everything when something goes wrong in her life even though it’s clearly not going to fix anything, contrarily making it worse instead.

Tomori refers to Ave Mujica as “A cry from a Saki-chan I don’t know”. Crychic had been a time in Sakiko’s life where she was able to be her warm and bright self. The girl who truly believed that they will play music with a shared destiny. But her current success is a front, and Tomori recognizes that. She’s deeply hurt on the inside and this is something that the music reflects. What the story does with her is great. All the problems in her as an individual are addressed. The things she does wrongly come back to haunt her with their own consequences. She tries her best to be a leader everyone can rely on despite it all. Her growth throughout the series is seriously well done. I had never thought I would come to love her this much considering all the shit I gave her in the previous season, but it happened.

Mutsumi was the other stand out character of the season. She’s probably one of the most nuanced explorations of dissociative identity disorder I have seen in anime. Born to celebrity parents, she was constantly under pressure to make it big on her own. She was basically in the public eye ever since she was born and likely never got to have a normal childhood. Even worse, her parents don’t seem to care much about her, particularly her mom who sees her daughter as a business rival and thinks of her as monster because of her “natural talent” since she was a child. When in actuality, this was her DID that manifested to protect her from a hostile environment. And it’s literally her mom’s fault that she has to suffer like this so fuck you Minami.

Mutsumi wanted to have something she could call her own, something that would make people see her as an individual and not just the daughter of a famous actress and a famous comedian. So she picks up the guitar and gradually became skilled at it. But the problem was that she could only perform it on a technical level, and wasn’t able to “make her guitar sing”, referring to her inability to express herself through her guitar. Mutsumi had always had trouble with self-expression in general. She isn’t able to convey what she wants to say properly.

Mortis came out to be the front personality after Mutsumi had reached a breaking point. She has a strong desire to protect Mutsumi and is better at handling social situations. But after witnessing so much shit back to back throughout the events of the previous season and currently with Ave Mujica, especially with Sakiko taking her for granted and not caring about her emotional state, she goes into a state of deep sleep and is unable to resurface. This is also a major turning point for Sakiko’s arc. Mortis is unable to play the guitar, which naturally causes trouble for the band. When Sakiko tries to talk about this, Mortis confronts her for all the harm she caused and tells her that it’s her fault that Mutsumi is unable to come back. It’s a direct consequence of Sakiko’s actions, and her first big realization about the despair she had been bringing upon Mutsumi, dragging her down with herself. The band decides to break up since Mortis was unable to play the guitar at that time, much to her dismay.

Soyo was another character I eased up on with this season. Akin to Sakiko, I used to hate her as well. But when Mortis shut herself into her room for a prolonged amount of time, unable to get Mutsumi to wake up so she could play the guitar, it was Soyo who actually went to check on her and stay beside her for days. Not Sakiko, not Minami (duh), not anyone else from Ave Mujica or MyGO, but Soyo was the one who cared. Not only that, she stepped in to save her from her public breakdown, asking the bystanders to not click photos and comforting Mutsumi/Mortis. She also drags Sakiko back with her to talk to Mutsumi. Mortis drives her away though, with an enactment of one of Minami’s movie scenes, as if she’s become a doll who can only act. It was here that the sheer weight of it all crashed on Sakiko, where she realizes that forgetting about everything, pretending it never happened is just selfish. Abandoning her childhood friend after what she put her through is inhumane. After all, it was Sakiko who asked Mutsumi and the other girls to give the rest of their lives to her. She breaks down in tears, feeling guilty about Mutsumi’s suffering, saying that she isn’t human at all.

This made me see Soyo in a new light. She wasn’t just a toxic manipulative bitch, she actually had the capacity to be compassionate. Mutsumi wasn’t just a pawn for her Crychic revival plan, she genuinely cares about her. It adds a new layer to her initially unlikeable character, portraying her as a complicated person who can do both hurtful and helpful things for others, and not just one way or another. Her arc also gets a really nice payoff when Crychic decides to perform one last time. First to Tomori’s new version of “Ningen ni Naritai Uta” (Wanting To Become Human Song) that she wrote with Sakiko in mind, based off what she said earlier in the episode. And then ending off with Haruhikage, that feels especially satisfying to hear Sakiko herself play considering what happened in It’s myGO. Despite all the shit Soyo caused, she ultimately wasn’t able to bring Crychic back. The one who wanted most for it to return understood that it can never come back, it just wouldn’t be the same. Everyone has changed since then, including Soyo herself.

Nyamu is an interesting one. She catches your attention right from the opening episode where she takes off everyone’s masks unexpectedly early and reveals their identities, an event that drastically affects the story. She has big ambitions, but after seeing Mutsumi’s natural talent in acting, she becomes anxious about her own skill and fears that she can’t really amount to much as long as people like Mutsumi are still there in the industry. She is drawn to Mutsumi’s prowess, but at the same time she hates Mutsumi for what she represents in her mind. She is also the one who calls out Sakiko’s hypocrisy: She had asked Soyo before if she could take responsibility for another person’s life, but Sakiko herself was not doing so by not reforming Ave Mujica, despite having asked everyone to give her the rest of their lives.

Umiri was established to be a girl who plays in 30 bands simultaneously, which really makes you wonder what the heck’s going on in her life. There used to be a time when she was in only one band, but all of them ditched her right on the day of their first performance, which left her traumatized. To avoid having to go through something as painful as that again, she starts joining several bands afterwards. Her struggle felt pretty realistic with how she reacts to things that trigger her abandonment issues, such as the disbandment of Ave Mujica and trying to reform it, or Taki telling her that she’s unreliable, something she ended up severely ruminating on. This culminated in a twist where she leaves all of her bands just so she can prove her loyalty to Ave Mujica, although it ironically renders her as unreliable to literally every other band. Definitely something I wanna see from the next season is how Disruption and Umiri’s other bands were affected by this decision, cause we moved past this plot point pretty quickly in the last few episodes.

Uika wasn’t too special at first, other than the novelty of being one of Sakiko’s childhood friends and also being in another idol group. She was mainly an observer and lacked much of a self-identity. This turns out to be purposeful as it’s revealed that she’s actually Sakiko’s aunt and her real name is Hatsune, born as an illegitimate child of Sadaharu and cast aside from the Togawa family. Sakiko, was who actually the friend of Hatsune’s sister Uika, felt like the only real connection she has to anyone, as she just felt like a stranger in her foster family. So she starts impersonating Uika as she was forbidden to not interact with Sakiko on her own, forming an unhealthy obsession with her niece, being the only person who seemed to understand Hatsune. As she goes on to become and idol in her single-minded pursuit of Sakiko, she meets Kiyotsugu and tells her everything, who then talks to Sadaharu about letting her be a proper part of the family. This event is what leads to him being thrown out of the Togawa family, and ultimately the start of Sakiko’s suffering.

This recontextualizes a lot of what we had thought about her. It gives Imprisoned XII a whole new meaning, where it’s now a cry from a mentally ill girl, and not the sadness of someone afraid of losing their friend. In general, it feels fitting for her to be the lead vocalist of the band. Eventually, Sakiko has to learn about this information, coming in an episode that exemplifies her growth through the anime. Instead of running away again, or yelling at her for being the cause of this mess, or throwing her out of the band and never talking to her again, she decides to forgive her. She accepts her for who she is and moves forward. Interestingly enough, this is the one time where trying to forget what happened was actually a good thing for Sakiko. It could be said that she now recognizes what things need to be faced head-on and what things are better off forgotten.

Tomori had always tried to be there for Sakiko, even after how badly she was affected by Crychic’s breakup. Sakiko had changed her life for the better, and now she doesn’t want to let go of Sakiko’s hand as well. In episode 12, Sakiko finally apologizes for disregarding Tomori’s attempts to look out for her. It was really nice to see that she still cares about Tomori and had the resolve to reconcile with her. She then promises to take full responsibility for Ave Mujica, as the one who asked for their lives. She vows to become someone who takes control of the band’s fate instead of being swept away by it.

Ave Mujica is one of the most compelling psychological dramas to have come out in recent years. This season kind of perfected the myGO formula while bringing its own twists to it, resulting in an experience unlike anything I had seen in music anime before. It's unpredictable and unique, not to mention the stylish direction and great music. It even made me reconsider my feelings on myGO. It’s probably not as bad as I thought before.