I'm actually still shook from how good the screenwriting in Ave Mujica was. In particular, the entire cluster of scenes showing Sakiko right after the dissolution of Ave Mujica.
The absence of music and dialogue, simply Sakiko using the train to go home, surrounded by a world that won't let her forget she's failed and that won't stop screaming at her that she is as much of a piece of garbage as she thinks she is. It's unbelievably violent. Seeing the Mutsumi billboards in the distance, gigantic and lit.
She then gets home, and is not only reminded of her piece of shit father, said piece of shit drunkard failure of a man is listening to Nyamucchi's still successful videos. Not even at the place that should be home does the world stop screaming at her that she failed. Sakiko calmly does her dishes, then grabs her stuff and heads to the public bath.
And at the public bath, they have the radio playing Uika's music. You can't escape the world's screaming of how much you suck on transit, you can't escape the screams at home, you can't even escape them at the public bath, a place intimately linked with peace, with cleansing. No, you are the worst, Sakiko, the world screams, and if it could strike her down, it would without hesitation.
She's silent the entire time. Blank expression. Torn to shreds, but the porcelain remains.
It's viscerally violent. Insanely well executed. I spent those minutes with my heart in my hand from just how bad I felt for Sakiko, thinking all the while, "things get better for her, right? Right?".
