Four episodes on, I still cannot stop thinking about Mutsumi and Nyamu’s relationship, as it was in episode four, just before everything came crashing down for Ave Mujica:
I’ve been trying to write about Mutsumi and Nyamu for ages, ever since the first episode of Ave Mujica came out. Mutsumi has fascinated me ever since Mygo; the little we saw of her there reminded me so much of Tomori. They seemed to share the same sort of awkwardness, the same sort of differences fitting in with other people and reading social cues. There’s a scene early in that series where Mutsumi is greeted by a class mate and it takes her a few seconds to react, that first gave me that idea that she’s like Tomori. The present she gave in episode ten to congratulate Mygo!!!!! on their ‘reunion’ concert was another big hint for me. Here’s somebody who’s portrayed as being neurodivergent, not exactly the same as Tomori, but similar. If we can draw parallels between MyGo!!!!! and Ave Mujica, she’s clearly the latter’s version of Tomori.
Does that make Nyamu Ave Mujica’s Anon?
There certainly are similarities. Like Anon she’s a newcomer to the established relationship between Sakiko, Mutsumi and Uika (does that make Umiri the Raana equivalent) and like Anon did to Tomori, she latches on to Mutsumi for her personal gain. What she’s lacking so far is Anon’s innate kindness. Anon wasn’t above using Tomori or Soyo to increase her own popularity, but her selfishness has limits; she doesn’t want her actions to hurt them.
Not something Nyamu seemed to care about with regards to Mutsumi.
Anon found something in Tomori that she lacked herself, but the same was true in reverse, with Tomori finding a strength in Anon she lacked herself. The relationship between Nyamu and Mutsumi is more complicated than that. Like Anon, Nyamu does find something in Mutsumi she’s lacking herself, but it frightens her. Enough that she rejects an invitation to do a stage play because Mutsumi’s acting talent scares her so. Neither is she perceptive enough to understand the change ‘Mutsumi’ had undergone at the end of episode three. All she saw was the acting talent that scared her.
It is the Anon/Tomori relationship as seen through a glass darkly, distorted, wrong, fitting in well with how Ave Mujica as a whole seems like a dark mirror version of MyGo!!!!!.