#soyo talks

[sheets-of-your-own]

the spreadsheet really doesn't lie and it's outing me lol

I was looking at the graphs, and I noticed that the top romantic ship was merthur, at 75 fics. the second ship is at 44

"Oh" i thought to myself, innocently, "the number must be padded by a lot of oneshots, that's too big of a jump to be actually correct. My Merlin phase wasn't that bad"

So I did the obvious thing, and added the ship wordcount to the graph, so that the count can't be padded with oneshots and it actually shows that time read.

...

Okay so maybe it was that bad lol

[magicalgirlypop]

i love you girls who are introduced as the kind mentor figure who keeps their groups together but on the inside are terribly lonely and even a little selfish so they put up a facade so that people would like them.

[cnidariandreams]

re:taki im really curious about tomori's view of taki... they live near each other and go home from practice together but tomori walks away from taki several times, especially when taki is trying (but failing) to make tomori feel better. does tomori see taki's big shows of defending her as just that, big shows? because it doesnt seem like tomori takes any of her words to heart. does she remember when taki got up in arms when saki left? did tomori notice that taki only latched on to her after their first live, and remembers her ability to be cruel even to tomori herself? but taki also had other moments of guiding tomori, like at karaoke? maybe she's just not reaching tomori in a way that really helps??

we know taki has a complex about her sister but id love to see more of how it bleeds into her and tomori's dynamic :^3 her struggles as mygo composer are already <33

[anyujins]

seeing soyo got really attached to crychic is so 😭😭

"the emptiness is being filled. filled with something warm"

crychic was the first thing she had in her entire life that purely her own choice. she wasnt doing out of "societal expectation" that she put on herself. crychic was the first thing she had that didnt make her feel lonely. the first time she actually felt happiness without pretending. it makes so much sense why someone like her would get really attached to crychic, that leads to her actions in the mygo anime. not everyone get her and thinks shes doing too much but i dont think so, and i do get her. also its so cute that she took crychic members picture without them knowing fhjsfjsdhfhdssd this sounds like smtg that anon would do to mygo lmfao. soyo taking pictures of crychic members and looking at them before she sleeps. she is soooo attached to them good god

[twistedsocials]

wipes sweat off of brows

If you want context for the first tweet, I have a hc that some characters are like founding fathers and DonMick is the equivalent to the Hamilton fandom shipping founding fathers. Second, guess who taught Riddle (either Cater or Lilia)/silly. Third is bc I’m spreading the “Adeuce=first year florid” agenda,and fhe fifth one is bc I need more Baul and Idia interactions they’d be a funny duo trust me aniplex.

The Floyd post is about Soyo plus I hc Floyd to have bpd and I’ve noticed ppl talk about Soyo’s bpd-coding (I believe that’s what it is). Also I hc Idia as an enstarrie and PJSK fan so imagine how he feels rn with the new collab.

Also the Malleus and Leona interaction is NOT LeoMal!!/srs

[Daily Click Reminder!]

[Lmk if anything is ooc!]

[starlitsister]

Ah this really brings me back to when it was airing and everyone was also discussing how horrible of a person Soyo was. And she absolutely is ofc she manipulated a bunch of people with the intent of kicking 2 of them to the curb. But I think the forgiveness or at least understanding from people makes sense with it being revealed that the girl who's clinging to the imagined past also had that past be the one fun period in her life after her parents divorce. "I let that good thing slip away and now I'm miserable so I can't let this good thing slip away again at all costs" which is obviously a pretty childish way of thinking about it, but hey she's 15.

Also I think the paralel with Tomori helps, they went about it in extremely different ways with Soyo's being a manipulative mess but Tomori having suffered the pain of Crychic's breakup is totally unwilling to let go of MyGO in any capacity and while pretty much any other group would just dissipate the band or get a new bassist (like Taki tried.) Tomori insists on those 5 because of her hangups with Crychic mirror Soyo's insistence on how it has to be the 5 from Crychic. Obviously she doesn't have the trying to revive the idealized past aspect but she sure as hell did insist on those members specifically even after the band was already broken up for a couple weeks.

Also side note but I thought Tomori was considered the protag? Sure we get Ano-vision for eps 1 and 2 but Tomori has center billing on all promo material and is mostly the PoV for the rest of the show.

And I do think Anon does get a bit more after ep 5, specifically when she gets pulled back into the band and goes to try and pull Soyo back, because I sure as hell don't think ep 5 Anon who'd ran away from basic criticisms not an hour earlier would be able to go do that to the girl who'd manipulated and planned to throw her away, even with the Tomori aquarium talk experience. So there's still some growth shown there on her ability to face these kinds of things it's just Soyo centered like a lot of the last half.

And that's probably also part of why AnSy is such a popular ship, it's the final part of Anon's growth we see, while also being the start of dragging Soyo kicking and screaming back into the band. Until Anon literally drags her back on stage and does that gay hair thing. It's also them both being the only 2 in MyGO who can mask for shit and consequently being the two who use masking as a weapon that manages to hurt everyone involved including themselves which is why the convo in Soyo's place where they both finally are genuine with eachother about how they fucking suck fueled the ship so hard, they've just got neat paralels and people like toxic yuri.

There's three things I have to explain about my experience with bandori mygo

I was immediately fascinated by chihaya anon. She's very stupid and annoying and it was hilarious feeling myself flip from wanting to kill her for that reason to wanting to protect her for the same reason in real time. Episode five was a revelation so it's unfortunate that nothing more about her was revealed or changed past that point in the show

I was immediately suspicious of nagasaki soyo. Her goal from the start is a retreat into an imaginary past, her interactions with anon coming off as almost blatantly manipulative after seeing anon clumsily attempt similar things in the first episode. I despised her, in time, as the show no doubt intended, but I couldn't forgive her in the end when I never liked her to begin with. I think I just have too much hate in my heart already to cope with these characters that are designed to piss you off only to draw back the curtain to reveal how sympathetic they are. I feel like charlie brown trying to kick the football but the football is soyo's head

I was immediately enthused by takatsuki tomori. She's so adorable and sincere and caring, her experience is depicted so lovingly through POV scenes, her lyrics resonant with her personal struggles, her efforts to keep reaching out to others even when she was alone a testament to her heart. It really makes me wonder why she wasn't the protagonist when she was the literal and emotional center of both bands in the story

The show asks this question of whether the band is new or just an attempt to replace an old one and I find myself terribly uninterested in it. Sakiko quitting didn't end the first band any more than anon starting created a new one because tomori is still there. Anon begins peripheral to ancient friend group drama and only manages to penetrate somewhat via tomori, the only character actually trying to tear walls down rather than put them up

Tomori and anon do so much for each other in episode five which makes it stand out all the more that soyo does nothing for anyone and the only thing anyone really does for her is dragging her forcibly back into the band

All this to say I was truly and genuinely waiting for the part in the second half of the show that would justify all the ansy shipping I've seen and it just genuinely never came

[our-lady-of-haymakers]

Back when MyGO was airing, it was really interesting to think about the dynamic between Tomori and Anon wrt the question of whom the show's protagonist was, because while you certainly don't need to be restricted to just one, the unique relationship between MyGO and Ave Mujica definitely invites the viewer to think about the parallels that exist between the bands and the role that each character plays within their system (shut up Mortis, we'll talk about you later). The initial impulse was to see Tomori and Sakiko as the centers of their respective groups, given their shared preoccupation with a lost idyllic past and their contrasting ways of dealing with it, i.e. Tomori's confessional spectacle versus Sakiko's sublimating masquerade.

However, Ave Mujica proper introduces a really interesting new perspective wherein Tomori's innocence (with its dual implications of hope and naivete) are better reflected in her fellow vocalist Uika, and therefore Sakiko's parallel becomes Anon, a view particularly supported by Anon empathizing with Sakiko's desire to erase everything. Much like how Anon productively influences Soyo by helping yet another traumatized rich girl with parent issues obsessed with a long-gone time of bliss move toward the future, you could argue that Anon's ability to embrace imperfection and expose herself despite her natural impulse to conceal the scars of the past reveals a lesson that Sakiko may learn herself down the line- better to play the fool and put on a hundred silly faces as Anon does than to try to create a perfect mask that eternally preserves the shape of the visage that it is attempting to cover. The more Sakiko attempts to embody purity and grandeur, the greater the stains she has been concealing accumulate. Anon, by contrast, knows that the mud has a kindness of its own, that lies are beautiful not because they replace the truth, but because they become articles of faith, and turn into games that set us free.

Or, to put it in simpler terms:

Oblivionis: "I wish to erase everything" (Vague, defeatist, unfocused and impossible, pathetic even as it reaches toward the grandiose)

Anon: "I wish to erase the United Kingdom" (Clear, productive, goal-oriented, both eminently achievable and morally righteous)

[sheets-of-your-own]

When you're trying to do amateur data analysis for class, but Mortified is so big that it screws with your data

(I should note, that my project isn't actually about this graph- this means nothing lol)

It's also due at midnight, I've been working on it for today only, and I'm spending time posting on tumblr......

[aseriesofunfortunatejan]

Umiri's tragic backstory

So Umiri introduces her story in a silly way. (Because she's very silly.) She drops a "I have a painful backstory I can't get through without drinking", with language I assume stereotypical enough for Nyamu to immediately point out the obvious: she wasn't drinking alcohol. The way she introduces it prompts Nyamu to go "okay, fine, that's what's happening now".

I really enjoy their dynamic, in a way similar to Umiri's dynamic with Taki: there's an air of detachment accompanied by straightforward respect. There's the comfort of being a little rough on that person without being worried they'll take it the wrong way. It's an opportunity for Umiri to be a little Silly without having to involve herself more than she wants to.

So, about that. I do want to pay attention to it and speak about Umiri's genuine negative feelings: because I'm not about to let a fake IDGAFer trick me! Reference silly situations and omit the details all you want, Umiri; this is affecting your daily life.

We can only operate with the assumption that she's telling the entire truth (that she's aware of): the visuals indicate that in the past, Umiri was burned by missing a social cue hardcore. I can feel this scene course through my insides; the one passionate little girl throwing herself into a group project 100%, completely missing that her friends are on an entirely different page, and about to dip on her.

This sucks ass. I know "oh, she's just autistic" seems comforting enough compared to what the likes of Sakiko or Mutsumi have going on, but all memes aside - such symptoms and experiences, whether or not Umiri is intended to be autistic, are extremely painful and isolating.

This is BanG Dream!, so we're talking about a character to whom music and her instrument are very important. The visual of Umiri standing alone on stage, even though she was already alone in the changing room, tells a story in and of itself: of her going anyway. Why? Did she hope they might still come? Did she want to hang on to the "dream" audition? Regardless, there's one other thing young girls aren't known to enjoy: humiliation. Standing alone on stage in front of an audience of adults who are definitely piecing the story together, crying from her hurt feelings... that's a humiliating experience.

I'm reminded of the humbled Soyo watching herself on stage, abandoned by her bandmates one by one, if just in her imagination.

"I was interfering too much, with good intentions. I never thought that would annoy people." That description, to me, represents someone who has thought about it over and over. Who has put the finger on exactly what happened, who can describe it no problem, and yet... it still hurts, else it wouldn't keep coming up.

Additionally, this is someone who is choosing her words carefully. She is very specific about the way she is portraying herself and her feelings. It's very different to the self-loathing Sakiko: I had good intentions. I am calm about this. I am self-aware.

This is a way of protecting herself. You can't hurt me if my shields are up; if I'm already aware of exactly what happened in my painful past and of every way you could make fun of me for the way I'm talking to you right now. She says it herself as well: she guarded herself from experiencing this again by joining multiple bands instead of putting all her eggs in one basket.

She does bring up to DISRUPTION that she's looking for a safeguard to avoid "bothering" her parents. DISRUPTION allowed her to keep that despite Ave Mujica's disbanding. I don't think we have any information indicating whether this was already a driving force when she was younger (which could have informed her interest in being scouted), or if it's a separate issue.

What's evident is that Umiri over-corrected. She identified her taking leadership as the problem, and began to avoid it at all costs. Call her backstory silly all you want, but this impacts her daily and social life! By avoiding it completely, she fell in the opposite category of unreliable person, and thus failed at uniting another band.

...She's learning her lesson: don't avoid taking the lead. You need to be trusted. The problem is... she might be... over-correcting again.

I think we should bite her. As for Doloris... she doesn't appear to believe Umiri has her shit together either.

Speaking of this silly idiot's parents... I have talked, in the past, of my issue with BanG Dream! repeatedly spouting some Dieting Bullshit. I'd also brought up the lack of mention of the social implications of being stupid rich, which has since been tackled with Sakiko... therefore, is it possible that Ave Mujica is trying to tackle dieting and/or eating disorders?

The products here appear to be referencing a genuine brand named CalorieMate (I hope the linked post is trying to be funny, for their sake). Of course, the dialogue alone indicates that Umiri refuses to feed herself normally.

This is surprising, since Umiri had initially been established as that girl who gulped down a ton of macarons at once. She's also always drinking something from the vending machine, which isn't a constant for her classmates. The overeating and diet food are definitely implying a disordered relationship with food. (I also think it's noteworthy that she ate at 12:00 on the dot. Either she was hungry and waiting for the right time to be "allowed" to eat or she forced herself to eat in order to stay on a specific schedule.)

While looking for that brand, I did have to open Twitter, and found this good point:

I don't think Umiri's problems are all that light-hearted. As I mentioned above, I think the implied social isolation is gut-wrenching. It might be my C-PTSD talking, but trauma can look all sorts of ways, and it can ruin your daily life. On top of that, although we have very little information about it so far, an eating disorder is nothing to sneer at: it is a genuine mental struggle that also impacts the body (greatly) and can endanger the person's life.

This is a girl who's all over the place. Did you see the sheer amount of luxury items she bought? She's definitely not eating anything else this month. Regardless her backstory, this is not a healthy place to be in.

Umiri's crashout made me sweat. It could turn out that Umiri's experience isn't a big T trauma that changed everything, but a lot of little t trauma that she was mistakenly left to try and fix on her own; and still, she would fit the bill as an Ave Mujica girlie who Needs Help At The Moment.

To conclude - I don't know when Nyamu became an Umiri hater, but I stan.

She was not being half as scary there as she ended up becoming after their conversation.

Just kidding. There's something else I wanted to say. Here's a PS: why is it that Taki and Tomori are allowed to be bossy about their bands and with their bandmates, and still be seen, appreciated, and earn what they want? Why did it fail so bad when Umiri did it - although she too had good intentions? "Fuck that noise, I want my band to succeed too!" and "if that worked on Sakiko and Mutsumi, then it should work when I try it too, right?"

[pompeiileveldisaster]

mutsumi is definitely not okay

hey i'm back with another analysis. let's do this a weekly thing after each episode where I hyperfocus on a specific aspect of it.

Today's focus is on mutsumi and the fact that she did not catch a single break. From the start, the worst thing happened to her: her mask is broken, she cannot hide anymore. The identity of mortis is gone, all that's left is comedian Wakaba and Minami Mori's daughter. We clearly see the panic and anxiety slowly building up from this point on.

second comes soyo's anger. We start off the scene with the withered cucumber plant. The cucumber plant that mutsumi is proud of as her own work. It is important to note that soyo had been helping her tend to the plants. In episode 12 of MyGO, soyo giving back the cucumber can be interpreted as her rejecting any form of friendship with mutsu. The withered plant this episode can also symbolise two things: soyo and mutsumi's relationship souring even further and/or mutsumi's destroyed mental state.

third comes nyamu's frustration. she immediately notices that a lot of the online attention is placed on other members more than herself. she probably doesn't intend to actively hurt mutsumi, but her words keep reminding the poor cucumber that once again she is in the spotlight again. Once again, she is in photoshoots, taking interviews and staring at the cameras. A life she had known since childhood and wished to stay away from.

fourth comes her mother. we finally meet her and her personality is a far cry from mutsumi's. from her interactions with the band, it is shown that she wants to be accepted by her daughter's peers. "Cool Mom" personality. She makes them an elaborate dinner, offers a business opportunity to nyamu, makes them watch her own movie and invites the band to use the room as "no one is actually using it". But that isn't true as we see the torn and used chair that mutsumi has been using. There are two possibilities: either minami is aware that mutsumi is using the room but doesn't give it any importance or she is unaware of it. At best, it is obliviousness, at worst it is negligence. also, mutsumi calls her own mother by her first name. as her own character screamed in the movie, it is likely that minami mori is a negligent mother.

fifth comes sakiko's panic. her pet project has started unraveling with the mask reveals. she is forced to write a new script, and to steer the ship in another direction. mutsumi's words during the interview further deepens sakiko's turmoil. now, media is talking about a possible breaking of the band. the only thing left for sakiko who went all in on ave mujica. as mentionned before, mutsu doesn't talk a lot because she is cursed to say the worst thing at the worst possible time.

"I never found being in this band fun." In soyo's eyes, that was the nail in the coffin for crychic. a sentence that completely eroded tomori's self esteem.

"It won't last long" she said openly during a live interview after a major shift in the band's image, which sakiko is having a hard time reconciling. (exemplified by telling the interviewer to refer to them as their stage name and not their real identity). As previously said, ave mujica is the only thing left for sakiko, and mutsumi accidentally threw a wrench into it.

[avemujicat]

avemuji ep7 spoilers !! read at your own risk !!

those last few scenes with crychic, but especially when they performed together, genuinely broke me :(

they finally got to talk through all of their issues and communicate everything that went wrong which . ough . taki and soyo both being late for practice cause they were talking to mutsumi and sakiko is a detail i’m not seeing people mentioning as much as i assumed they would, especially when being on time is something that taki takes incredibly seriously

and :( soyo bursting into laughter after tomori has essentially ripped soyo’s innermost feelings right out of her chest and put them right on a page once again, but rather than hating her for it, this time she smiles :’)

as if that wasn’t enough, they also got to play haruhikage together one last time to say goodbye to the band that became a home to them, but on their own terms this time . all of that, in combination with the narration of what the band meant to each member, genuinely had me sobbing :’)) like, they’d just played a song that tomori wrote while thinking about sakiko, when sakiko is the one who told and encouraged tomori to express herself through singing, and now crychic gets to be a safe and happy memory for all of the members rather than a painful one, which is exactly how it should be :(

i don’t wanna ramble on toooooo much but i’m trying so fucking hard not to think about tomori sobbing her way through the lyric “that me who couldn’t cry that day” . the same tomori who said that she wishes she could have something so precious it could make her cry at the end of mygo ep3 . don’t speak to me .

[fostersffff]

I feel like I'm missing something here.

Maybe it's all blurring together but I feel like I remember people talking about Uika way more harshly for a very long time, but she's largely been benign in the story so far. It's clear she's a lot more directly obsessed with and possessive of Sakiko than Soyo was, but that feels less evil and more like... mostly standard teenager behavior?

[cnidariandreams]

mygo really fuckin me up this week before the OP even starts

[anyujins]

her black sorrow moment

theyre so ex sapphic situationship

[yurisorcerer]

Every week I walk in to the torment nexus and walk out with my heart broken in three places. What a fucking show.

Some interesting play with structure and framing this episode. At last week's conclusion Soyo was shown discovering Mortis, and the whole scene was framed in slasher movie tones. Here, now that she has a better idea of Mortis' whole, you know, thing, Mortis is instead framed as the angry, lost girl that she really is. I really enjoyed (and did not at all expect) Soyo actually playing along with Mortis' whole 'calling the doctor' bit, it shows a pretty deep empathy that I don't really know if we've seen the character express before? (It's been a while since I watched MyGO, so I may be forgetting something.) Also, she apparently spends 3 whole days sleeping over there trying to patch things up, which, while there's definitely a selfish aspect to her motive (she misses CRYCHiC too, after all), I think deserves serious real one points. I don't think I have the emotional stamina to spend 3 whole days consoling anyone about anything.

Full credit to Rana also, who can just intuit what's going on with Mortis and Mutsumi without even actually being told. (She doesn't actually go out of her way to help, though, and spends a decent amount of time this episode playing with cats. Rana remains this subseries' most mysterious character.) Mortis actually seems to develop a bit of a crush on her, and is that a twinge of jealousy I detect from Soyo about that fact? My god, what a relationship chart this series has.

I like Umiri's brief scene in this episode. Forever the eternal mercenary, she describes the breakup of Ave Mujica as though it happened around her and not to her. And yet when Ricky Taki calls her on this, she gets annoyed. Truly the "fake ass IDGF'er" meme in human form.

The first half of this episode, I must stress, is actually pretty light by this show's standards. So of course, there needs to be a breaking point somewhere. Here, that breaking point is between Mortis and Mutsumi, who stirs for the first time in a solid month only to find how awry things have gone in her absence. This isn't what she wanted, and Mortis is appalled to learn so. The two have an argument in headspace, which of course to anyone outside of the Mutsumi-Mortis system's own head just looks like an argument with herself, and she actually carries on so bad that she ends up tripping and falling in front of Live House Ring and making a huge scene, which of course a throng of anonymous busybodies are nearby to witness. It's SO much that it would come off as contrived if the show weren't so set on showing us how badly this is fucking over Mutsumi and Mortis. It's hard to watch.

There is something admirable about the show's complete lack of handholding with this kind of thing. This episode alone depicts multiple conflicts within a fully-realized mental space, a tug-of-war between Mortis and Mutsumi for their collective fate that is just profoundly sad to witness. I do wonder how legible this is to audiences who aren't plural. Part of me---literally part of me---is worried this series might be too ahead of its time for most audiences to properly appreciate.

(I've barely talked about Sakiko here and she is absolutely going through it up and down this episode. From the horrible, obviously untrue claims she makes about not caring about either band or even about Mutsumi, to the fucking folder of notes she's gotten from Tomori over the years, to the fact that she sadly looks for another one despite telling Tomori off for them last week. To. This fucking expression, just, god.)

There's a mostly-lighthearted interlude with Nyamu (it remains really funny that her dark secret, compared to everyone else's, seems to just be that she's from the sticks), but even that is twinged with her finding out about Mortis and Mutsumi's public breakdown. The episode then ends with MyGO finding out about Sakiko's whole extremely fucking complicated family situation. Episode 7 is entitled "Post nubila Phoebus," "after the clouds, the Sun." In most other contexts that would be a shining beam of hope, and maybe it is here too, but I'm fairly sure things will get worse before they get better. (Recall, we still have no idea what's going on with Uika, just as one example, and she's the only character from either band who doesn't put in even a cursory appearance in this episode. Where is she!)