Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime.
For the BanG Dream Yumemita column, new entries will be posted either on each Thursday an episode airs, or as soon as possible during the week thereafter.
We’re gonna take this one in reverse order, because a decent bit happens in this episode, but almost all of it—at least as far as “developing the plot”, if we want to put it that way, goes—happens at the end. Miyako has been in a foul mood more or less permanently since the events of last week’s episode, and here, it comes to a head. During a practice session, Nonoka attempts to cheer her up in her usual direct, lively fashion, and it has precisely the opposite of its intended effect. Miyako’s resentment toward the rest of the band and her frustration with herself boil over, and she has a full-on seething breakdown, where she rages at Nonoka for what she sees as a very shallow cheerfulness and at Arale and Ritsu for “pretending everything’s perfect.” Just when it seems like things have hit their nadir, Yuno abruptly joins the session and announces that she’s quitting the band. Quite the place to leave us for the next week!
As opposed to talking about the events that lead up to all of this, it’s perhaps worth evaluating Miyako’s emotional state. Miyako’s resentment has been building for a while at this point. It was introduced to us more or less as a joke way back at the start of the show where she chastised herself under her breath for making trouble for her supposed betters. It’s been gradually building since then, and at this point she both sees herself as responsible for the backlash Mugendai Mewtype have been getting online. (The concert may have technically been Viola’s idea, but Miyako was the one who proposed it to the rest of the band.) The fact that no one is openly angry with her seems to both baffle and deeply bother her, playing as it does off her mile-wide self-loathing streak. To make things worse, a phonecall from her editor earlier in the episode sees said editor offer to extend her deadlines. Even though this would almost certainly be a good idea, and the editor probably meant it completely neutrally, it contributes to the self-loathing spiral as well. Miyako feels like this is proof that she can’t handle all of this stuff at once, and she’s failed to “shine” even with her manga.
Arale and Ritsu have inadvertently perhaps made things worse as well. Earlier in the episode they agree to give Miyako some space. (Because this is Yumemita, they come up with this idea by imagining themselves as the leads in the Precure pastiche they’re both fond of.)
Is the fact that this conclusion is arrived to via a Precure pastiche a completely meaningless diversion that sidetracks the episode or a clever bit of foreshadowing that this simple idea derived from a children’s cartoon won’t work out in the often-complex real world? You decide!
Unfortunately, this seems to have just left her to seethe on her own, and made things worse. (As mentioned, she accuses them of deliberately pretending everything’s fine during her rant.) What Nonoka’s reaction will be to being told off so hard we don’t yet know, and Yuno, as always, is a bit mysterious. She claimed to be enjoying things during a rehearsal earlier in the episode, even saying that “the fun part” of being in a band is when the group’s sound starts to click, so her sudden desire to leave warrants some explanation. One also has to really feel for Arale here, who takes Miyako’s resentment pretty hard even in the early part of the episode, calling her description of Viola as her biggest fan “heartbreaking.” I also can’t imagine that she’ll feel great having seemingly caused an emotional rift by inaction. Given her past fears of causing problems by saying too much, she’s now caused one by saying too little.
This is all, more or less, where we’re at. I’ve left quite a few things out here—including Viola and Ritsu’s standoff near the start of the episode where Vi does some excellent villainous shit by going on a weird tangent about the Garden of Eden, and Ritsu admirably holds her ground despite this—because I’m trying to make these writeups breezier and less recappy. (And also because, to me, Miyako’s state of mind and the breakdown that results from it are the most pressing things about the episode.) Hopefully I’ve succeeded and this isn’t simply incoherent as a result!
I am aware, of course, that there’s been no shortage of discorse that the show is too much about Viola and her girlbossing as opposed to Mugendai Mewtype themselves.1
Despite that she’s mostly only in the opening minutes of this episode, she’s still played a crucial role in setting up these events—the concert was her idea, after all—so I doubt this episode is going to satisfy that particular crowd. (And I must stress, I don’t remotely agree. I like all of the Mewtype girls a good deal, with Arale and Miyako as my favorites, but Viola remains my favorite character in the show overall.) For those of us who are just along for the ride, I’m really quite interested to see what the fallout from this all looks like. I cannot imagine things simply snapping back to normal immediately next week.
Until then!
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1: It’s worth noting that someone who doesn’t seem to feel this way at all is Miyako herself. Or rather, the pseudonymous VTuber that voices the character of Miyako. She’s spent the past few weeks drawing shipping art and even writing a delightfully unhinged bit of fanfiction. (Mind the Twitter link.) Of course, Miyako is not one of the writers, so you could easily wave this off as simply her playing the character on social media as well, if you were so inclined.
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