Forum - View topicREVIEW: Muteking The Dancing Hero
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John Thacker
Posts: 1009 |
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Remarkably stupid show that, to be expected, gets all the details of gentrification wrong because of a brain dead, low intelligence understanding of gentrification.
No, you are not. Gentrification is due to not building enough housing. The people who oppose development cause housing prices to go up and people to be unable to afford to live there anymore. Many of these people view themselves as on the Left, or pro environment, or most view themselves as opposing gentrification even as they make it much, much worse than in places that, unlike San Francisco and the surrounding areas, didn't have a dramatic slow down in housing production. Some people admit and understand that they are being exclusionary when they prevent housing from people built. Others do not, and may not even understand it themselves. But San Francisco's insane housing prices are almost entirely from not building housing (though Prop 13 makes it easy for people who already own housing to oppose new housing.) Even building luxury housing keeps rich people from turning cheap housing into expensive housing. Research and experience overwhelmingly demonstrates that even building expensive housing reduces housing prices in the neighborhood and the metropolitan area. By failing to understand the problem, you make the problem worse, even if you mean well or identify the problem. Thankfully some people are waking up to how SF's no growth policies have driven away the low income and black and Hispanic population of SF, as we just saw David Campos lose his primary. |
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meiam
Posts: 3450 |
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Can't comment on the show, but I doubt anyone would watch a show whose message was something along the line of "hey current resident, you're the reason why your neighbourhood is going to crap because you oppose change". It's good to remember that any show is first and foremost supposed to be entertaining and very few people are entertain by being told/lectured about something they oppose. They'd much rather hear they're previous view be confirmed, ie that landlord and company are evil and the cause of all their problems.
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 3052 Location: Email for assistance only |
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You're making up an argument of how you think the show's messaging is framed while admitting you have no comment on the show because you haven't watched it. The entire basis of your statement could be entirely imaginary without knowing how the show actually presents its themes.
Gentrification is taking neighborhoods that were culturally and demographically not white, pushing the residents of those neighborhoods out via rent and price increases, and then wallpapering over all the unique businesses that existed there. Your argument seems to be that this is fine and not gentrification so long as we build new, low-income housing for them to migrate to. Also the way you're approaching the writer by attempting to negate their experience and indirectly call them stupid is rude and unwarranted. Last edited by ANN_Lynzee on Sat Apr 23, 2022 1:47 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 660 |
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Gentrification isn't just housing prices, y'all, and Muteking is more about the homogenization of culture and loss of neighborhood personality than housing prices.
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SHD
Posts: 1759 |
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Not that I disagree with the core idea/message, but I just have to add:
...in the US, perhaps. But gentrification happens in a whooole lot of places, including countries/regions that are racially and ethnically a lot more homogenous (or at least far less diverse) than the US, where it manifests in different ways although the end result is the same: people with less income are pushed out by people with more income. Hell, where I live what usually happens is that residents get pushed out via rent and price increases driven by tourism/Airbnb (landlords realizing that tourists, expats, foreign students, etc. with western European/American/other backgrounds are able and willing to pay a lot more than local renters), which also includes tourist- and expat-focusing businesses coming in and making places unliveable due to noise pollution, driving grocery/service/etc. prices up, and so on.
Honestly, as cynical as the argument is, it would be at least some sort of a help for those who have already lost their original place. Except it's not happening, at least in my city there's a ton of new houses being built, none of them even remotely affordable to anyone who is not at least upper middle class (and willing to pay back a loan for the rest of their life). They're built mostly as investment for rich people to buy and then rent out for insane prices as Airbnb, for foreign travelers or expats, etc. And so, with the increase of gentrification and lower income people having to move to shittier housing, the rent/price of shittier housing also goes up, and it's an evil, vicious circle. Anyway, in short, gentrification is, at its roots, a class thing, not necessarily just a race/ethnicity thing. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 931 |
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I'm San Francisco born and raised, but I have to say, going by the first few episodes, I am really disappointed with how little this show's setting resembles San Francisco. Feels more like generic secondhand Americana. It's certainly no Macross Frontier.
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horseradish
 SubscriberPosts: 574 Location: Bay Area |
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I watched the first few episodes, but I was bored. I loved the fun ED. I liked the contrast between the vibrant colors of the city and the drab black of the evil corporation. I also appreciated the inclusion of nonbinary characters who were just there living their lives; the owner of the arcade was possibly a transwoman who was kind to the young customers and had no okama stereotypes based on what I saw. However the transformation sequence and and conflicts in the show were repetitive and dull. The formula felt shoehorned in as an artifact of the original since there's no tension or uncertainty that Muteki would win. They felt rather pointless and shallow compared to the complex issue of gentrification, so I doubted the show would reach a satisfying end. Maybe I'll go back and finish it someday.
Gentrification affects areas in different ways based on the demographic and history of the specific region. In the Bay Area, we have had notorious issues with exclusionary zoning and consequent segregation. We are one of the most diverse places in the world, but poor, middle class, and rich live in their separate areas, which can then be easily broken down into Asian, White, Black, and Latinx neighborhoods. There isn't much integration overall even today and the quality of life can vastly differ within a mile. There have been arguments that housing wouldn't be such a problem if we tore down the zoning laws and had more mixed-use development, but then the people who live in wealthy places would have to deal with others intruding into their lives. They already fight against public transportation placed anywhere nearby. It's really complicated and Muteking was not equipped to tackle such a difficult situation.
I think the creators would have to understand what it's like to live in SF over many years and bear witness to the changes that have happened over the past few decades. If they consulted with researchers or knew long-time residents, maybe it would have been more accurate. |
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ANN_Lynzee
ANN Executive Editor
Posts: 3052 Location: Email for assistance only |
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Of course it varies by country/region, but the anime we're discussing takes place in San Francisco and that's the context of my statement. |
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Mr VacBob
Subscriber Posts: 16 |
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This is a really strange thing for an anime to be about, but I guess it'd be even weirder for it to be accurate, because the way SF works makes no sense in Japan - they have national zoning and their houses deprecate like used cars, so Tokyo's housing prices have been flat for ages and it doesn't have this issue.
And of course, obviously cities have to change over time because older people are going to be replaced by younger people, who have different interests - when that doesn't happen it just empties out as in Sakura Quest.
The post you're responding to unfortunately is a much better explanation of SF's housing crisis than it sounds like Muteking is, but the new housing isn't about forcing people into low-income housing. Rather the problem is there isn't any housing of any kind, ever, because the city is basically determined to stop anyone from ever moving to it. So: - there's no expensive housing, so richer people instead outbid poorer people for the existing older housing. (So building more expensive housing prevents gentrification through "yuppie fishbowls".) - while all existing housing is rent-controlled, there's no new rent-controlled housing built either, so gentrification happens just because their own children can't afford to live there and have to leave. - if you've lived there since the 70s, you're now a millionaire if you sell your house, so otherwise poor people might want to do that anyway. - and there's also not enough schools or large enough houses for families, so they tend to move out once families get bigger and are replaced by single people/couples. It's not because of "tech" though. The tech boom in SF is very recent and displacement happened before they got there. The explanation Muteking gives for this is pretty common in the area though; it's called "left-NIMBYism" and the people who believe it tend to be DSA members whose parents turn out to be landlords, socialists on the SF city council who own mansions, or leftist magazine owners known on Twitter for firing all their writers when they tried to unionize. (Not to name names on an anime forum…) Some much better writing by a local Black affordable housing developer: https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-look-of-gentrification https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-history-of-gentrification-in https://darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-history-of-gentrification-in-111 Personally I'd rather talk about "displacement" than "gentrification", since it's more specific and people seem to think you stop "gentrification" by not painting bike lanes. As for whether gentrification is caused by things other than housing prices… unfortunately, if this is about SF, literally everything is about housing prices. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1261 |
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While this was airing, I wondered what weekly reviews and comments would've been like. I figured it'd annoy everyone one way or the other, either from not being able to get past the cheesy superhero bits or the swings it took at serious subject matters despite adamantly sticking to being a cheesy superhero show (either because they're there or because they can only go so far). So, uhh, comments here seem to line up with that pretty well, for the most part...
I'm glad to see a largely (if not entirely) positive review in any case, because if you go into it with juuuust the right mindset, it's a real good time and has its heart in the right place. |
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Ishida_Akira(fake)
Posts: 113 |
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I tried to watch this show, but I could not get passed the 2nd episode. I want to mention that I loved Crows, and even Insight was quite decent to me. But this one was just... bad. First off, the dancing is terrible, and for a show that has that as its theme, the dancing should be at least good. But my problem is that the antagonists are literally the same as the old Legion of Doom from the old Avengers cartoon: cartoonishly evil. I admit I don't really care about gentrification, but as this review said, there should be something else for me here. There isn't. The animation is pretty bad, the characters are one-dimensional.... and to be quite honest, it doesn't even seem to get the gentrification part right. From my understanding, the way it works is that a poor neighborhood is significantly improved, but in such a way that the cost of living there also increases, making it hard or even impossible for the people who were living there in the first place to continue doing so. So give this one a pass and check out Crowds and Insight if you want to see some tokusatsu tackle social issues. I would also recommend Yoru no Yatterman as well, but that one fumbled the second half so bad it's not worth talking about it.
tl:rd: Not a good show. Misses it's own point and doesn't even look good while doing it. |
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