You Should Watch Ave Mujica (+2024 year-in-review)
Hi everyone. So, this is gonna be a short ish video right here, but I’ve come to make an important announcement. I need to tell you that YOU ARE MISSING THE FIRST GREAT ANIME OF THIS YET BURGEONING HELL AGE, AND IT IS ABOUT GIRLS IN HELL!
You might think you have enough of girls in hell right now, but here in these troubled times, we need some ANIME GIRLS’ HELL to balance out the real life girls’ hell. So, here we go. Anime. Hell.
That anime is none other than Bang Dream: Ave Mujica. Or, Ave Mujica: The Die is Cast, as Bushiroad rebranded it in the English language world in what looked to be a too-little too-late effort to get more people to actually watch it without thinking you need to engage with the entire Bang Dream multimedia franchise to understand it. Not sure if that’s working out, but hey, someone tried, I guess.
Anyway, check this out.
not sure if I already mentioned this but I cannot stress enough that when I was watching the episode yesterday and this happened I literally screamed
— joyce(s) (@joycestick.moe) February 7, 2025 at 4:46 PM
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Okay, so if you don’t know anything about Bang Dream, you’re probably wondering what the fuck is happening here. The short version is that, uh, a fairly straightforward idol band girls gacha ad anime drama all of a sudden birthed one of the best teen melodramas of the century, which in turn gave way to a glorious Madoka Magica-level mindfuck (yes, IT IS THAT GOOD) of an anime about an extremely mentally ill girls’ rock band that is completely fucking derailed when one of the girls is revealed as a Disassociative Identity Disorder-having plural system and then her headmate unwittingly ruins everything.
You NEED to watch this anime. Ideally, you should watch MyGO before watching Ave Mujica, but you need not watch anything in the entire Bang Dream franchise other than that. It is absolutely fucking worth the investment. It also, I should add, as the host of a plural system (though probably not a DID one) the best depiction of plurality in any remotely mainstream-adjacent media I have ever seen in my life.
It beautifully employs the visual grammar of past psychological horror works about DID like Fight Club, Split, and Subahibi, but applies it to a story where instead of like, being a serial killer or starting a cult, the shit-stirring headmate is just, like, trying to fix her host’s normal social life and protect her from further trauma— and making terrible mistakes in the process. Like, this is still a music girls anime drama about girls trying to start and keep a band together, but the heightened tone and style elevates it to absolutely transcendental levels— especially for a series that started as what basically amounted to a carbon copy of Love Live.
Swallow your preconceptions about idols, CG anime, media mix tie-ins, whatever. You don’t need to watch Bang Dream seasons 1 through 3. You don’t need to play the mobile game. With half this season done, Ave Mujica is shaping up to be an all-timer in the pantheon of classic anime teen dramas like Hibike Euphonium, Bloom Into You, and Monogatari, and it’s in a class of its own alongside its contemporaries like Girls Band Cry, Revue Starlight, Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night, and indeed, its own direct narrative predecessor.
The only caveat is that the current official English subtitles are really very quite bad, but thankfully, a fansub effort is underway, but even if you’re reticent to TORRENTING IN MINECRAFT, it’s well worth the time, even with the awful translation. It boggles the mind that Bushiroad International seems to not know how the hell to market this thing. They didn’t even bother to subtitle the damn MyGO recap movies and put them in North American cinemas for a week or whatever! That would’ve been the perfect marketing strategy, but oh no, I guess that would’ve cost some money!
Anyway. Ave Mujica. Watch it. Watch MyGO, then watch Ave Mujica, in exactly that order. YOUR QUEEN DECREES IT!
Alright, with that out of the way, I’m gonna briefly tell you all about some of the stuff I watched, read, and played last year, which you all should consider giving a look if any of it sounds up your alley. I saw a lot of movies last year, read a bit of manga, played games and stuff, and quite a few of these things were really quite good. Here we go.
I Saw the TV Glow is the queer horror movie none of us were prepared for, but we all needed. Tragically poetic that the “you should start HRT” movie came the year before the US seemingly looked over at the UK making that very hard and said, “hold my beer,” but thanks to that, I can’t as yet conceive of an era in which this movie’s ultimate message is more important. If you feel seen by this movie, know that you will either bury yourself alive or die. Seize your life for yourself by whatever means you find available, whatever means you deem necessary, and don’t count on a “good” politician giving you permission in four years. And of course, as played out as the movie's most famous phrase might be at this point, it's still true. There is still time.
Drive Away Dolls is a rousing romp about two lesbians going on a road trip while getting accidentally embroiled in a wild criminal political conspiracy surrounding the most unmonetizable MacGuffins in the history of cinema. Margaret Qualley plays the most lesbian of all time in this. I’ve watched this twice with two different beloved girls, and I can confirm safely that this is the perfect watch with your girlfriend movie. Or if you don’t have a girlfriend, watch it if watching lesbians be silly sounds like fun to you. Or if “a movie vaguely like Bound, but more comedic”, sounds good to you. Any of those itches, I can promise it scratches.
Speaking of Margaret Qualley, The Substance stars her as another one of the most women ever, a biological de-aged clone of an entertainer past her prime, played equally sharply by Demi Moore. Absurd, unpredictable, freely anachronistic, and brutally graphic while simultaneously also wonderfully hilarious, The Substance will play to you as either comedy, tragedy, or torture, depending on what kind of person you are. Qualley puts on her best slasher face as her character ruthlessly tears through her alter ego’s life. Avoid this one if you’re super gore sensitive, but otherwise, really good.
Love Lies Bleeding. Lesbians and violence. Jacked lesbians doing ridiculous violence. Also pretty awesome; also a pretty good girlfriend date movie. I don't have much more to say than that. It rules.
Late Night with the Devil is a cheerfully unserious satire of television’s pursuit of sensation in ignorance of safety or decency, and a greatly entertaining comedically macabre ghost story about a talk show host pursuing glory and ratings as his hubris and ambition brings it all to ruin. Absolutely wild.
Memoir of a Snail is probably the best animated movie to come out last year, being a beautifully animated stop-motion opus about the unpredictable hilarity and tragedy of life and the value to be found in loss.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is, after Bill and Ted Face the Music, the second of any legacy sequel to really properly justify its existence. Might be the best movie Tim Burton’s made in years. Also, Winona Ryder is in it! I guess Willem Dafoe is also in it, and he's great, but I was mostly there for Winona Ryder. It’s a fun movie, and also she’s really mentally ill in this one.
Look Back. I’ve been party to many debates as to whether the manga or anime was better, and I think they’re both pretty good. Yes, I know I need to read Chainsaw Man and Fujimoto’s other stuff. Leave me alone!
Gushing Over Magical Girls is possibly impossible to talk about in any depth on YouTube, but with a pretty great first season and a second on the horizon, based on a really stellar source manga, absolutely worth watching or reading if you’re not the type to recoil at the idea of teenage lesbians, uh, being teenage lesbians.
Also on the topic of teenage lesbians, Kiyoko Iwami’s been really killing it with My Girlfriend’s Not Here Today, aka Kyoukano, which is, of course, THE REAL TOXIC YURI. A highly entertaining, soapy, sexy, and deliciously vicious drama about the most unhealthy queer love triangle ever. Yeah, so, basically, it’s about a girl cheating on her girlfriend with another girl who’s really eager to stir shit in the mix. They’re all really compelling and deeply flawed characters, and, oh my god, Fuuko. Fuuko is another Most Girl on this list. I could tell you about Fuuko all day, but, just believe me, she’s amazing. She’s a horrible person, but also I love her. Kyoukano’s been running and getting scanlated since like 2021, but got officially licensed by Seven Seas this year, and for my money, I think the official translation is pretty damn good. If the bookstores or libraries near you are of the requisite base-level of based needed to carry this, go grab it. It’s so worth it.
Girls Band Cry is one of the other best anime of last year, not that I watched that much anime last year, admittedly. With stellar scripting by veteran writer Jukki Hanada, here tapping into the same excellent instincts that made Yorimoi a sensation back in 2017, and some really great 3DCG animation that makes me excited for the future of that particular medium as it has so far manifested in anime, this is an easy recommendation. It also might be an obvious one. Less obvious:
Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night, or, Yorukura, as many shorten its Japanese title to, is a really great TV anime debut by the contrastingly freshman writer Yuki Yaku. Has plenty of yuri garden watering, and also a divorced MILF who happens to be an idol! When asked if yorukura was yuri, Yaku allegedly said, “I don’t know.” My response is, “I don’t care.” It’s yuri to me. Despite a somewhat clumsy landing, pretty easy Yes on this also, if you liked Girls Band Cry, MyGO, or anything with good girls in it generally. For a first crack at writing a TV anime, this is an amazing debut.
2024 was, according to Sega’s marketing department, the year of Shadow the Hedgehog, and I’m of no mind to disagree. Shadow Generations was a pretty damn good game to me, though I am a very overeager Shadow the Hedgehog 2005 defender, so I may be biased in this regard. Most seem to agree with me, though, so there! Shadow’s debut in the Sonic film universe with Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was also pretty damn great, with Keanu Reeves and Sonic film series director (and past Shadow '05 cutscene animator) Jeff Fowler John Wickling this version of the character to life. Sonic 3, with a deft adaptational hand, effectively synthesizes and remixes its inspirations into an interpretation that freshly reinvigorates Shadow's character in current year while also proudly serving as perhaps the definitive introduction for the uninitiated. Not a perfect movie or anything, but then again, I have as of this writing watched it four times, so. Yeah. There’s probably a bigger essay on this upcoming sometime, so, watch this space.
And lastly… saving this for last so people don’t click off too early, naturally… Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim. Or at least, the demo.
If you’ve been closely following our social feeds recently, you probably have a good guess at why I’m recommending this. And, yeah, you’re right. Still, hear me out a second.
This is an upcoming horror adventure visual novel ish game where the player character gets shrunk down and kidnapped by a highly temperamental giantess, the titular Saeko who you may or may not be able to date, and left in charge of several other small people who have wound up in the same circumstance. Saeko herself is only interested in the shrunken people as either pets or food, and if they annoy her, she just squishes them. So, yeah, that’s a hook.
If you’ve read any other material of this category, you’ve probably seen this premise utilized primarily to titillate people with this particular fetish. It is actually a quite common scenario. However, here it’s used not just for the horny, but also for horror. It presents the giantess element in a pretty mainstream-palatable manner, and it excels in every other respect, including story, music, and artstyle.
If you have the fetish, it’s hot. If you don’t, it’s either terrifying or, possibly, just very funny. I suggested the demo of Saeko to my friend Mirai, who played it on Twitch while I watched and commented, and while she was not super into the fetish aspect of the game, she did very much appreciate that horror element.
The full game is set for release this year, and, I’m pretty excited to see what the developers are cooking with it. The only caveat I might have is, if you’re really not into the whole otokonoko trope of Japanese media, you might want to skip this one. I think its take on that trope is intriguing and am interested to see how it handles that element in the finished game, but y’know, it's a thing.
And that’s that! Year in review list, plus, watch Ave Mujica. Let’s survive 2025 together, folks. Audrey of the joystick system, signing off!