Muteking the Dancing Hero

I was the first to sing Muteking: The Dancing Hero praises at the beginning of this season, so it is fitting that I am also the first to denounce its demise. I'll try to describe the huge waste of potential that this show was as well as I can, as someone who is not very familiar with the original show, but who saw something in this reboot.

Before I watched the first episode of Muteking, I was honestly not expecting much. I just had too much time on my hands and not really many shows I was interested in. It is fair to say that the ... excellent introduction to the world of Muteking throughout this episode completely changed my mind - I was very close to leaving my chair and dancing myself when the famous song hit! Obviously, not every episode would be like this, but I thought that the show definitely had potential.

Episodes 2 to 4 were mostly formulaic, which is not a bad thing by any means. Muteki, the main character, would visit the same 3-4 locations throughout the episodes and seemingly bond with the characters there: his crush Ms. Aida, the 4 clown siblings (these clowns will be covered below), the mysterious Vivi, and more circus members like Suteking, the brothers, and whoever the fuck else appeared. This portion of the show was obviously meant to foreshadow all these people coming together, as well as Muteking's eventual loss, with the latter being much more rewarding than the former.

Come the end of episode 5, Muteking lost his first fight to a monster. I thought this was beautifully executed - the shot of DJ and Muteki alone after the fight with the former wondering what they were supposed to do next was perfect, and it led to the next couple of episodes being DJ and Muteki bonding episodes, which were extremely necessary and, I thought, decently done. Top this off with another BANGER of a song and a turnaround at the end of episode 7, and trust in Muteking was once again restored.

There is no way the gang could fuck this up, right?
Narrator: the gang fucked it up.

What followed in the show was just pure and utter trash. The Muteki fame arc and Ceo's grand plan were both horrible. At the end, the show wanted to bring all the seemingly useless and unimportant characters together to resolve the big conflict of the show, but failed to do so. It takes a lot of cast building to actually pull this off, and you just cannot unite the following ridiculous groups against a villain:

- The four sibling clowns: the siblings from the arcade, 99% of whose screentime is just a ufo moving on a plain background (I could probably animate that better)
- The other five clowns: Muteki's dad, sister, the two random guys from the diner who no one cared about and the god knows what the fuck he is Suteking
- The two other idiots: Muteki's grandma (she's supposed to be the mastermind of the good guys but no viewer can take her seriously) and the TV rankings guy

This circus cast is who we see for half of the last episodes of the show, which all had horrible animation and were often a chore to get through. While watching them I would occasionally start thinking about how I could make this utterly wasted time up to myself (I will never get that time back). But hey, if you can make it through episodes 9, 10, and 11, 12 has a decent dance fight between Muteking and Ceo's own hero. To actually experience it, though, you have to somehow not die of laughter at Aida's "death" scene and her robot appearance. It is very difficult.

(Rant) Review over. Verdict: don't watch this. If you still want to experience this show, just watch the Muteking transformation sequences and listen to Reol's Aurora songs (which were total bangers btw). While the music in this show is excellent, about everything else will make you want to pull your hair out.

(If you still aren't convinced you should not watch this, Ceo's final attack when he had Muteki beat was a... hug??? Yeah spare yourself the endless contemplating of why in the world you are indulging in this trainwreck.)

Poopking the Dancing Zero.

I couldn't tell who Muteking the Dancing Hero is for. I'm sure it's for someone, but who I just couldn't tell you. Street dance enthusiasts? 90 cartoon lovers? Capitalism is bad + aliens probably enjoyers?
After Muteki moves to 80's San Francisco to become a dancer (i think) he suddenly gets caught up into trouble as music is being used(?) to absorb people into... aliens(?) and then Muteki turns into Muteking? and fights them somehow??...
Honestly I'm getting a headache actually trying to remember or think about the plot. All you need to know is that a big corporation has taken over and aliens ... are involved for some reason. It's weird. Very weird.

The animation is fine for what it is apart from some very obvious animation short cuts, but I like that bright colourful character designs and settings. The CGI is actually not too bad. Whenever Aurora the AI (I think) idol does a dance number it is genuinely quite impressive. However when Muteking hits the screen he hits like a ton of bricks with a barrage of clashing colours which feel seizure inducing. I'm pretty sure that the Muteking fights are quite literally recycled, on rails CGI scenes only with a different alien pasted over the previous weeks alien of the week.

I don't really remember any of the characters apart from DJ the annoying... er... DJ and the Ceo the evil (?) head of the... I think it's called Squid Black Company? I literally can't remember.
Trying to remember anything about Muteking the Dancing Hero hurts my head. When I sleep at night I only see Muteking's CGI model skate towards me as he chases me in my dreams. I want it to stop. I want to stop thinking about Muteking. It hurts.

2/10 bad

Honestly, I thought…I thought that after losing the potential half way in the series, it wouldn’t get worse. But now after completing the series, even Magical Girls are more mature than this.

First, with the interesting choice in the artstyle and music focus I thought a very unique series would happen. Then learned about it a reboot, and hoped that at least it would get any good.

Repetitive fights with barely any monster design, like, why not make up a design for each monster at least? Something to find differences? And the fight scene…Yes, fight scene. You can only find a different fight scene after you get ... over the half of the series, because it IS repeated a lot. Cheap cuts to avoid animating too much.

I enjoyed the setting before…Slowly, I realized how childish this reboot was, yes, you have DJ looking at BOOB in one of the episodes and I thought this show wouldn’t turn into rainbows and smiles and sickenly large happiness if it can make those scenes. But, I ended up wrong.

Overall, it is a kid’s show. Show it to your kids if you want. But watching it yourself is a chore. Keep it in mind for the future.

This is an terrible anime with the only good quality that I can consider is the concept and the ending of this show. And another thing is that the protagonists songs are cringe as hell and repeat through out the show without changing at all. The story is shit and the characters are also equally as crumby as the story. The build up to the climax is non existent and the chemistry in this show is fake. There plot points that come out of no where and make the anime more uninteresting as a result. This seems more of a mindless kids show then anything. ... if you are expecting anything else this is not the anime for you.