Changes made to content
... Saturdays. ⏎ How was the first episode? ⏎James Beckett ⏎ Rating: 3 ⏎ Muteking the Dancing Hero is the kind of show that is so confidently and charmingly deranged that I can't help but ire it, even if I wasn't always enjoying the act of watching it. Muteki is a new arrival in the candy-colored tech utopia of Neo San Fran Cisco, and in this first episode alone he must brave the following challenges: Rescue an anthropomorphic cartoon mouse from an angry shopkeep with the power of dance; save a ridiculous elderly lady from an oncoming trolley (also with the power of dance); get accosted by a Taco Bell robot and a strange DJ whose name is “DJ aka DJ”; flirt with a diner waitress that looks like if Princess Bubblegum had a lovechild with Wendy (from Wendy's™), who may also be an evil minion of the tech-bro villain of the anime, a guy named Theo Eight (who is himself what would happen if Elon Musk got fused with the corpse of Steve Jobs, and then had plastic surgery in order to more closely resemble an evil twin brother of Leonard Nemoy). ⏎ All of this occurs before we even discover what the hell Muteking the Dancing Hero is even about, mind you. That finally happens when the pop-diva Aurora, who I'm pretty sure is also that Wendy-looking waitress from earlier, uses the power of her incomprehensible technopop to turn every single person in her audience into sludge monsters. DJ aka DJ shows up and awakens Muteki's latent power to transform into a roller-disco superhero that defeats evil with the power of his “cool” dancing. Also, Muteki finds out that DJ aka DJ might possibly be banging his hip grandmother on the side (Muteki's grandmother, not DJ's. Just in case that was unclear). ⏎ Look, I don't know how else to recommend or even reckon with Muteking's premiere without simply describing what happens in it, because it's pretty wild. The show looks and sounds like a parody of anime that you might have seen on an episode of Law and Order back in the early 2000s, assuming that show has ever featured a story where someone was driven to commit roller-derby themed murder under the influence of a bizarre Japanese cartoon (which it probably has). It is the dictionary definition of A Lot, and contains not one iota of irony in its bones. I don't know if there's going to be convincing any fence-sitters, here. You're either already on board this Nanners Train, or you're not. ⏎ As for me, well…like I said, I respect Muteking, but I also found it to be more than a little exhausting. 14-year-old James probably would have gotten a kick out of it, but 29-year-old James couldn't get through even one episode of Muteking without taking some breaks to recombobulate himself. If you're in the mood for something weird and wild, though, and you appreciate art that is almost supernaturally uncool, then maybe Muteking the Dancing Hero will be for you. ⏎ Caitlin Moore ⏎ Rating: 3.5 ⏎ There...