Even if you are new to BanG Dream! franchise, the next-gen spinoff It’s MyGO will likely still make the jump. The series sets itself apart from the sea of musical multimedia project anime from the start, with its rain-soaked opening moments in which we witness a fledgling group of female students disband upon some comment about how miserable the experience was for them. This is no K-ON or Bocchi the Rock!, and as it continues, It’s MyGO proves to be completely itself as well as being a very impressive fresh reboot for BanG Dream! overall.
There’s no need to compare MyGO to its predecessors in the series throughout this review, but it’s still a point worth mentioning. Not least because this new anime still comes to us courtesy of series creator Yuniko Ayana and director Koudai Kakimoto, who hired the bulk of BanG Dream! anime to date. As such, It’s MyGO’s wildly different tone and approach does not signal a franchise that brings in a number of different creators to shake things up with some entirely new vision, but rather the main story leader uses their established platform to further develop and test What They Can Do. MyGO feels more like and successful as a story instead of just a simple experiment. However, several factors marked this as an experiment as it ended, albeit an extremely successful one.
Separating the assessment of It’s MyGO from the overall BanG Dream is also a challenge. narrative, especially if you’re an old fan and familiar with it. Much of the new anime relies on Ayana revisiting concepts going back to the show’s inaugural season (remember, the non-CGI animated part?) to explore or subvert them. The life or death desire to perform in a particular band with friends reveals deeper issues for some of the characters and is probably not the healthiest approach to doing something given is an interesting hobby. But by focusing on the sheer work that needs to be done, not only to hone the performance but also to make the relationships between band members work, It’s MyGO conveys the rewards of succeeding in such ventures in a more intuitive, more noticeable way than any BanG Dream! previous anime.
This naturally requires MyGO to be a series of extremes, of thrilling peaks separated by unforgiving valleys of depression. While this may be alienating to anyone who prefers a friendlier package, it’s material that has been seen by the franchise many times before. This is easily the most ambitious of any anime from BanG Dream! The series has been that way and it mostly succeeds in its ambition to be stronger for it. The grittiness is part of that complexity, making watching the story and characters a fascinating exercise in discovering its true emotions.
We mainly understand this by following the characters and learning about their true nature and motivations. The initial point of view was that the character Anon was transferred to join a girl band on a whim, no different than Kasumi or a few other characters that were entertained throughout BanG Dream! canon. However, it’s immediately apparent that Anon’s efforts are not driven by a serious interest in playing music or the ability to truly connect with new friends while doing so, but instead stem primarily from a desire to want personal attention and validation. She entices potentially useful recruits like Tomori with genre-standard banal views about trying your best and never giving up in the face of adversity, but it’s all because Anon convinced himself of his rightful place at the center of such a story.
What Anon doesn’t realize, and what we only know briefly, is that the people she’s drawn into her orbit have experienced one of the worst possible outcomes of trying to hold on to her. Such hopes and dreams. Not only that, none of them are in a narrative position where they’ve moved on and can try again; they are still hurting. Drummer Taki has become viciously defensive towards herself and singer Tomori, whom she feels obligated to protect. Bassist Soyo has turned inward about her obsession with former bandmate Saki, becoming a manipulative schemer who sees everyone she knows as just a tool to rebuild that relationship. Even lead guitarist Rāna, who was not involved in the breakup and is considered the least developed “comedy character” of the show’s main cast, owes a debt to his wandering, feral cat status. due to the unfortunate anachronistic rhythms stemming from back-to-back events. Come to BanG Dream first! season. They are all lost girls; it’s in the name.
Despite Anon’s best efforts, the person truly standing at the center of this is Tomori. Although calling her a “protagonist” would be a bit of an exaggeration, as It’s MyGO is entirely focused on being an ensemble piece, Tomori is still the essential heart of the band, keeping its rhythm. She is such an earnest, open and honest person about herself that that essence comes through in her lyrics and the way she performs them. As a result, she’s also hard to talk about without at least acknowledging the character’s apparent coding as some degree of neurodivergence.
While I personally can’t speak to judging this over the lived experiences of people of that scope in real life, Tomori’s portrayal feels like it was created with a lot of care and attention. respect. Her collectibility speaks to the issues that drive her interactions with past and present band members, as we can see her inability to let go of anything. what. Her lyrics originate from mantras written in her massive notebook as she tries her best to come to terms with her inability to feel the same way she sees others do. It’s crude in a way that many of BanG Dream!’s other cartoon characters are. never tried to achieve. Which means that despite things like Anon’s shallow quest for the spotlight or Soyo’s manipulations, letting them allow Tomori to express her inner scream on stage still resonates like a joy.
While I admit that the more inconsequential, messy aspects of the characters may annoy some viewers, they are as much a characteristic as Tomori’s height. The way these characters clash with each other translates into melodrama of the highest order, conveying the heightened emotions that make these kinds of fictional (and many non-fictional) musical passions so powerful. . MyGO’s plot is interwoven with consideration of the player’s circumstances, including other former members of the previously disbanded band and several supporting characters. It rewards repeat episode views and opens up the world of the story to show that there’s still more to MyGO’s story.
The series’ visuals keep pace with a new narrative voice. SANZIGEN returned to animate this series, and if you’ve been following the series (and side hustles like D4DJ), you’ll know how far the studio’s CGI capabilities have come. MyGO is the next stage in that evolution. The more dramatic direction allows them to stretch their abilities beyond the upbeat aspect of the previous seasons, as the characters’ harsh, desperate body language is conveyed in all its evil glory its. The studio’s facial expression capabilities have also improved greatly, allowing for constantly changing nuances in the characters. Careful attention is paid to Soyo’s calculated expressions of aloofness as well as Taki’s unbelievable anger towards them. Tomori’s nervous body language is so much a part of her performance that it is present among the choreographed opening themes.
It so clearly defines the series that, even with its recognizable style and CGI models, you probably won’t mistake It’s MyGO for the previous BanG Dream! season in sight. Consistent with the gap between the plot’s highs and lows, bright scenes have increased saturation, while darker scenes appear as muted as certain characters’ personalities. In particular, shadows can sometimes become too dark. But the results can be striking when these contrasts collide in musical scenes.
One of the best examples of the animation team’s attention to detail is the team’s first performance in the seventh episode. The band’s performance falls flat with multiple false starts and Tomori mumbles the entire first verse only to roar triumphantly through the rest of the song. Then, in the tenth episode, the band appeared together with their new song. Tomori speaks pure poetry on stage with simple musical accompaniment. I must commend Tomori’s voice actress, Hina Yomiya, who captured the character’s exceptional range in a lovely and energetic manner. But everything else about these seasons stands out as something you wouldn’t expect from a series whose first season featured an “awkward” musical performance that was just an impromptu playing of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” .
It’s MyGO’s absolute triumph broke the mold that almost made it a victim of success. The intriguing beginning and the sledgehammer of the middle mean that the finale feels like it’s unfinished towards the end. That’s by design. The dynamics of the female cast mean it would be incredible if they were completely stable by the end of the story. That main group is teased in supporting roles throughout this season contributes to an awkward abrupt conclusion, even more than any unresolved character arcs. It’s not that it doesn’t stick to the landing; it hadn’t even landed by the time the final credits rolled.
But if the most obvious problem with BanG Dream! It’s MyGo!!!!! is that there is nothing more; it could just mean that this nasty little experiment turned out to be quite successful. Yuniko Ayana has proven her abilities as a scriptwriter for this series and what she can do in it. Kakimoto and SANZIGEN support her and the diverse cast in delivering a series that may have been overlooked by a lot of viewers this season but deserves consideration. As a fresh start and ongoing multimedia connection, the MyGO team has achieved something remarkable here, creating an anime that fulfills those obligations while still standing, screaming on stage.
