It sure looks like it from the first three episodes. Bang Dream! It’s Mygo!!!!! opens with a band dramatically breaking up, against a backdrop of a suitably moody rainy night. The fallout of that breakup is present in all three episodes released so far, leaving psychological scars on its ex-members. Previous seasons of Bang Dream did not shy away from intra band conflicts, but those were mostly misunderstandings that could be resolved quickly, people acting with the best of intentions making mistakes. Here however there seems to be an actual villain if we take the opening scene at face value, something that the third episode, seen from the point of view of Tomori,who was hurt bad by the breakup, seems to confirm. To the point that when Anon asks her to start a band with her, she runs away.
Throughout these first three issues Tomori, the silver haired girl in the clip below, comes across as neurodivergent. You can see that on display in the background of this clip, in a wonderful bit of what Jo Walton calls incluing. As pink haired protagonist Anon talks to her class mates on her first day at school, she notices they all have guitars and everybody’s in a band. While she hasa talk about it with her three class mates, in the background Tomori is quietly ordering the magnets on the chalk board to be in the proper order.
At that point Anon and Tomori had already met once, as Anon found her collecting pebbles on the school ground, the first clue that Tomori is a bit different from most girls. Later, when they run into each other again and Anon gets a little scrape on her knee, Tomori offers her a bandaid with a penguin picture on it. When Anon is politely interested, it awakes Tomori’s hyper fixation as she starts explaining about the type of penguin it shows and how she collects these. Again, something very recognisably neurodivergent. There’s of course no real diagnosis given for her, but that third episode, which is literally from her point of view, does show that Tomori is aware she’s different and sometimes struggles with it. I couldn’t help but feel a bit sad for her after watching this. She seems such a lovely but easily hurt girl. Fortunately Anon at least is aware enough to pick up on her moods and kind enough to help her. I like what Bang Dreams is doing with this.
I also like the lack of characters from the previous series. So easy to put a lot of cameos in here, but that would’ve have stifled the series. It’s enough to just have the references and the occassional off screen cameo.
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