to make way for a new Bang Dream!
― Could you tell us how BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! and Ave Mujica - The Die is Cast came to be?
Kakimoto: So we were tasked to create a plan for BanG Dream!'s two new bands. Our first step was to decide on their creative direction. These two made up a set — MyGO!!!!! is punk, while Ave Mujica is metal. Then we started working on MyGO!!!!!'s finer details.
― Why punk and metal for their respective music genres?
Kakimoto: I've always been a fan of punk, and something about how the scene's bands and songs give the impression of underdogs trying to scream their voice out there through whichever means possible is just irresistible for me. That's why MyGO!!!!! performs music while wearing the egos they can't hide on their sleeve, even though it's hard for them to reconcile with their raw selves. Meanwhile, metal is a genre focused on technical proficiency, and once you jump into the rabbithole there's no going back. Ave Mujica is a foil to MyGO — a band that exposes their true selves through music — with personas that mask imperfection, in their own world of idealized beauty.
― The cast of It's MyGO!!!!! showed off sides of themselves that are very human, or rather, sides that could be very hateable.
Kakimoto: BanG Dream! has always had stories between girls that get a little tense due to their personal differences, but there was never really a conscious attempt to depict the ugly darkness of such characters, per se. But this time, since the story centers on a band with a style that opts to "scream, even if it's uncouth", I decided we go in a new direction by doing away with the rules these stories used to go by.
― How did you go about creating the characters?
Kakimoto: There was a lot of brainstorming on what the girls chose to show and hide about themselves, how they ended up with those parts, their more intrinsic personalities, and their surroundings in the past and present. As a result of this style of character construction, the cast ended up becoming more and more unstable (laughs).
― Impulsive and emotional characters are what's hot these days. Everyone was like that when they were young, I feel like. Whether or not they let it explode is something else, though.
Kakimoto: I get them. One assumes how they think is how other people think as well, and when they realize that's not the case, they begin to have friction with others without even realizing it. MyGO!!!!!'s Soyo Nagasaki is refined and learned to read the room, but not everyone is like that. I won't say Soyo being such a doormat was good either, since she ended up burying her true feelings in an effort to survive and protect her place in the world.
― One big reason why these characters explode is CRYCHIC. It was made up of MyGO!!!!!'s Tomori Takamatsu, Soyo Nagasaki, Taki Shiina, and Ave Mujica's Sakiko Togawa and Mutsumi Wakaba. It's MyGO!!!!! started with CRYCHIC's beginning and end.
Kakimoto: Until now, one of BanG Dream's foundations was the certainty to "be in a band, together forever". Here, though, I wanted there to be a band whose continued existence was put into question. After it broke up, the ones involved endeavor not to lose their new homes, but the scar of CRYCHIC makes them fear another disappearance. I wanted to show how these girls will look and act when faced with this reality.
― It's MyGO!!!!! ends with Tomori and Soyo vowing to never forget CRYCHIC, and yet to face the current band seriously, to be in it for their whole lives. Just when I thought MyGO!!!!! was going to have a bright future ahead of them, I was shocked to witness Sakiko orchestrating Ave Mujica and its vividly violent debut at the end of EP12.
Kakimoto: About that. We decided on Ave Mujica's debut in the finale relatively late into the showmaking process. We already settled on a runtime of 13 episodes, but as we continued developing the story, it changed as the characters themselves changed, so the initial story resolved itself a bit faster than that. I talked with the writers to see what we could do with the final episodes, and since Sakiko was already pulling the strings in the background anyway, it was decided that Ave Mujica will bring forth the finale and next season.
― The finale revealed to us the supposedly wealthy Sakiko working part-time and going home to a house full of empty beer cans. Speaking crassly, she goes: "I'm back... Shitty old man." Finally, a peek into what's happened to her.
Kakimoto: We did decide on showing a bit of Sakiko's familial situation in the finale, thankfully. If the story ended without even a hint of the truth, the reasons for Sakiko's departure would be too elusive, and I was worried she'd just end up looking like a little jerk.
― Was EP7 of It's MyGO!!!!! the impetus for Sakiko forming Ave Mujica?