Our band could be your life: some thoughts on BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!!

I suppose I should start by confessing to an act of musical blasphemy. As those of a certain age and musical taste will recall, “Our band could be your life” is the famous first line of the song “History Lesson, Part 2” by the punk rock band Minutemen.

The contrast could not be greater with the BanG Dream! project and its MyGO!!!!! subproject: On the one hand the musically and politically uncompromising hardcore group, famous for their low-rent aesthetic (“We jam econo”), unsuccessful in their only attempt at making a more commercially accessible record (“I got it! We’ll have them write hit songs!”). On the other hand a media-mix property comprising manga, anime, live concerts, recordings, and mobile games with micro transactions, altogether yielding tens of billions of yen of annual revenue—the real “Project: Mersh.”

And yet . . .

I don’t watch many seasonal anime, and BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! was well off my radar. But as episode after episode aired, the folks in a discord I participate in kept saying good things about it, and I finally decided to take the plunge.

At first glance the show seemed unpromising: yet another variant on “cute girls doing cute things,” this time with a musical twist, starring a CGI cast distinguished mainly by their hair styles and colors, and with an in media res beginning that had me quite confused about what was going on. But I gradually caught on, became invested in the characters and their stories, was surprised to find that episode 10 was one of the best episodes of anime I’ve ever watched, and after completing the show went back and binged all 13 episodes again.

Then I thought to write down my thoughts on the show,¹ and for some reason a band came to mind that I hadn’t listened to or thought about for many years.²

Our band could be your life. It’s a line that admits of multiple interpretations, but the one intended by Mike Watt, bassist for Minutemen, was that it was directed toward younger members of the hardcore scene: that “there’s not a lot of difference between us,” that what Minutemen had done as a band they could do too, and make a life of music just as Watt and his bandmates D. Boon (guitarist) and George Hurley (drummer) had done. It’s a saying that could apply just as much to high school girls in Tokyo as it did to the punk bands of Southern California.

You could also change one of the pronouns: “your band could be your life,” coextensive and coterminous, as was true of Minutemen: the band disbanded after D. Boon’s death in an auto accident at the age of 27. That’s the meaning Tomori echoes in episode 4, as she contemplates joining another band after the implosion of CRYCHIC: “Let’s do it our whole lives.” While Soyo hesitates (“Our whole lives?”) and Anon protests (“Do you know the average lifespan?”), Taki signs on immediately (“If it’s with you, Tomori-chan, . . .”). By the end of the series, even though some members still express lingering doubts, they’ve committed to each other for the long haul: “layering lots and lots of moments like that . . . I think it will become a lifetime.”

Punk rock changed our life. Tomori is the emotional core of both MyGO!!!!! the band and MyGO!!!!! the series. After the end of CRYCHIC she retreats into her room and into her shell, obsessively writing notes to herself, trying to make sense of what her life has become and what it might yet be. Those notes become the lyrics of the songs created by the embryonic band that finally births itself as MyGO!!!!! The music itself isn’t really punk—as one redditor commented, they basically reinvented emo—but the angsty music the band creates is an perfect match for the angsty lives of the teenagers who created it, and the raw lyrics are as punk as they get.³

Tomori becomes the engine that pulls the other members of the band out of the ruts they’ve fallen into: Taki jumps at the chance to play with Tomori again, Anon wins back her self-respect after washing out of school in England, Soyo begins to move past her mourning for CRYCHIC, and Rāna finds people to take her in and provide her a (musical) home. “Changed our life,” indeed.

Me and Mike Watt, we played for years. Mike Watt and D. Boon met when they were both 13, slightly younger than the girls of MyGO!!!!!, and learned to play music together. “I wasn’t even a musician,” recalled Watt, “I just wanted to be with my friend.” They played in several bands together before forming Minutemen.

Someone once wrote that no man ever loved another man more than Mike Watt loved D. Boon. When Boon died he was grief-stricken, by his own admission not even able to listen to Minutemen’s music until many years later, when a filmmaker created a documentary about the band. Now in his sixties and still making music, every recording Watt has released since Boon’s death has been dedicated to his memory.

Those who read, watch, or play girl-centric manga, anime, or games often indulge themselves in shipping the girls together in romantic pairings. Fans of BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! are no exception to that. But as someone who’s read a lot of yuri manga and watched a number of yuri and quasi-yuri anime, I detected few if any signs of deliberate “yuri baiting” in MyGO!!!!!: no flirtatious dialogue or gestures, no blushing at touching of hands or indirect kisses, no implied “doki doki.”

It’s clear though that the various members of MyGO!!!!! have closely bonded together, and hold special feelings for each other: Taki’s protectiveness toward Tomori, Tomori’s admiration of Anon, Anon and Soyo’s mutual recognition (and apparent forgiveness) of each other’s lies and scheming. If love is what we should call it (and I think we should), it’s a platonic love that—like that of Mike Watt for D. Boon—does not entail a romantic dimension, but is no less real and meaningful for that.

Real names’d be proof. Another ambiguous line, the second line of the song. The folks at Genius.com think that it means that “Minutemen are real people and not fake rock personas, hence they use their own names.” The girls of MyGO!!!!! do likewise—but not the band that appears in the final episode of the anime, the next entrants in the ongoing BanG Dream! franchise.

The members of Ave Mujica hide behind masks and stage names: “Oblivionis,” “Timoris,” and so on. Dressed in elaborate costumes (a far cry from the hastily thrown together outfits of MyGO!!!!!), the band’s conceit is that they are discarded dolls given brief life for the space of their performance. Off stage, some of the members’ motives are revealed as base and mercenary: restoring lost wealth, gaining new fans and followers.

Could there be a more apt metaphor for what the girls of BanG Dream! really are? Empty shells assembled from millions of polygons, their limbs moved by unseen hands, their lines spoken by unseen voices, their songs written and played by unseen musicians—all in the service of Bushiroad corporate OKRs.

And yet . . .

From seemingly unpromising elements in a thoroughly commercial endeavor, those who created the series BanG Dream! It’s MyGO!!!!! created a heartfelt and emotionally affecting work of art. Whether they can capture lightning in a bottle once more is an open question. Perhaps, as the last scene of episode 13 foreshadows, the sequel will simply descend into melodrama or even (as a discord acquaintance speculates) into high camp. But whatever happens, I’ll be there to watch.