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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.)

Seeing this number of positive reviews on this show made me decide to write an honest review on it. This review is written by a person who was on the Darling in The FranXX hype train before it arrived at the r/anime station, and also by a person who absolutely loves Trigger and their work, from the Gainax beginnings to their "independency".

Darling in the FranXX started out pretty solid, if you ask me. It already introduced a very interesting metaphor in the first 2 minutes, and I was very excited at that point. Then came the naked girl cliche. Ignoring it as an "A1 shenanigan", ... I continued the episode and was able to find it a tad bit enjoyable, mostly because of the cool world concept and the interesting-looking characters.

That didn't last long. In the first 6 episodes, those seemingly interesting characters have either done nothing or have been super annoying. I was not expecting side character development in 6 episodes, but this was just unbearable. 02 also got old real fast, making Hiro the only one able to save the show. Turns out Hiro is just budget Kirito therefore shattering all my hopes for the characters part.

But wait! There's more to a show than characters. "Great Art" is indeed true, and I won't even deny that the art is consistent and good, but it's normal. It brings nothing to the table, it's just the standard "good" animation. The music is also unnoticeable. I was expecting better music from Trigger. Have they even worked on this anime?

While I can't say much about the story, since right now many questions remain unanswered, I can say that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere in these 6 episodes. It seems more like they're experimenting with the mechs and the "kyoryuu" battles right now, and sometimes adding a little bit of info.

I am not enjoying this show. I'm having trouble finishing these last episodes and that's a no-no for me.