Production

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Planning

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After producing the 3rd season of the main BanG Dream! series, the production team developed the idea to "portray characters more realistically" and "depict irreversible major events in the storyline". Subsequently, Bushiroad producer Yuki Nemoto conceived a "serious-themed band project" originating from the idea of "debut a melodic hardcore band and a metal band". When the script reached approximately episode 4 during development, Bushiroad decided to integrate this project into the existing BanG Dream! universe. This decision led the production team to pause scriptwriting and overhaul character designs and story settings. The original plan of telling a 26-episode story about two bands with a total of 10 members was restructured into two seasons separately focuses on different bands. Ultimately, the production team decided to allocate the core narrative to two anime series, It's MyGO!!!!! and Ave Mujica, clearly delineating the narrative trajectories of the two bands.^[1]

Writing

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According to lead writer Yuniko Ayana, the choice to make It's MyGO!!!!! a more tonally serious drama came at the request of Yuki Nemoto.^[2]^[3] Nemoto said he hopes It's MyGO!!!!! will be a work resonating with the younger generation, portraying the genuine, laughter-and-tears-filled interpersonal relationships among high school students.^[4] Given the lighter tone of previous BanG Dream! installments, Ayana initially struggled with balancing this heavy-toned direction with the desire to not alienate fans of earlier installments, but series director Kōdai Kakimoto encouraged her to give it her all.^[2] Ayana drew on her past personal experiences with "betrayal and distrust", which provided the impetus for Tomori's emotional conflict within the series narrative.^[2]^[3] To prepare for writing the series, Ayana did research into real-life bands of high school girls, which informed some of the story and characters.^[3] Ayana stated that she felt It's MyGO!!!!! was the most realistic work she had written thus far, even including her works outside of the BanG Dream! franchise.^[2]

According to Kakimoto, the script for It's MyGO!!!!! underwent multiple drastic overhauls. Initially, the story direction was based on character settings, but the actual writing process revealed the characters' multifaceted personalities, triggering chain reactions, such as altered motivations, reconstructed relationships, and interwoven plotlines. Each adjustment required rebuilding subsequent developments and retconning scripts already in progress, resulting in some episodes being rewritten up to five or six times. For example, the initial concept portrayed Anon Chihaya as a "bold-acting returnee student beneath a model-student facade", but to differentiate her from other BanG Dream! characters like Rokka Asahi, her flaws such as "trend-chasing vanity" and "calculating nature" were amplified to "deepen human authenticity".^[1] He further stated that before merging into the series, all characters had more sharp-edged personalities than the current versions, and they had considered ending the story with the band's dissolution. After being incorporated into the project, the overseers granted them "complete creative freedom" to develop original storylines. After revising "overly realistic elements", they established the framework that first season focusing on MyGO!!!!! and second season centering on Ave Mujica.^[5] In order to better integrate this series into the BanG Dream! project, the writing staff made the decision to assign the characters to existing schools in the BanG Dream! universe, and created their interaction with the previous BanG Dream! characters.^[6]

To design Tomori's notebook and style of writing, the production team referenced numerous lyricists' poetry collections, along with the doodles and handwritten notes found within them.^[7]^: 57 Writer Midori Gotō created Tomori's monologues and poems in Episode 10.^[6]

Animation

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According to Kakimoto, the animation was almost entirely produced in-house at Sanzigen, and every animator worked on multiple episodes. The creative team also entrusted Sanzigen's animators with handling both the storyboards and directing.^[8] Studio president Hiroaki Matsuura pointed out how the series fuses CG and hand-drawn techniques. While most of the visual elements were produced as CG, Sanzigen's animation team added many hand-drawn details such as refined hair, eyes, and shadows, particularly for close-up shots.^[9]

Writer Yuniko Ayana said that the third episode of the series, presented from Tomori's first-person perspective, was fun to write.^[10] The episode was praised by critics for its unique visual presentation.^[11]^[12]

Matsuura said that Episode 3, which is entirely presented as a long take showing Tomori's point-of-view, was inspired by a particular artist's live footage and that he specifically requested for the episode to imitate its feel.^[9] To write the episode's script, Ayana watched the film Being John Malkovich so as to understand how to best write a story presented from a first-person perspective. Because Tomori herself was not visible for most of the episode, with her presence primarily being conveyed through her spoken dialogue and the occasional use of her reflection in mirrors, Ayana had to consider how to best tell the story with the visuals of what she witnesses, which she described as a novel challenge. She also noted that the infrequent use of mirrors in the episode expressed the nature of Tomori's character, as she would rarely look at her own reflection.^[10]

The fixed camera shots in episode 7, which followed MyGO!!!!!'s movements in the dressing room prior to their first concert, were also given particular attention, and Ayana watched the hidden camera television program Human Observation Show: Monitoring [ja] to inform how to write for these scenes.^[10] Matsuura explained that in the wide shots, the characters were always moving, which he said was not standard for other anime but made the scenes feel more believable.^[9] Kakimoto agreed that the fixed camera system better captured the band's natural interactions with one another, as opposed to following them closely as they might in a documentary context.^[7]^: 87 He hoped the audience to feel as if they were MyGO!!!!!'s live staff or one of the members.^[6] To inform the animation of certain scenes, the writers and animators sometimes acted out the story's events during meetings. In particular, Ayana acted out how she had envisioned Soyo's movements during the ending of the eighth episode, when Soyo begs Sakiko to reform Crychic; one of her co-writers acted as Sakiko during the demonstration.^[10]

The live concert scenes of the anime were all recorded by real musicians, including Daisuke Hasegawa, the guitarist for Aqua Timez, and Ryuhei Kinoshita. For the scene where Anon Chihaya makes a mistake during a performance, Hasegawa intentionally hit the wrong strings, and recorded close-up footage of the hand movements, which was then provided to Sanzigen as reference material.^[13] Storyboard artist Tomomi Umetsu enriched the live performance scene in episode 10, while animators improvised the members' expressions and acting nuances under the guidance by CG director Daichi Omori and Motomu Endō.^[6]

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