Guys we are talking about movies.
Fictional stories that parallel reality in part due to geography and names of urban centers.
I mean Manhattan was depicted in Escape from New York before robocop was created. So there was precident in cinema going back to silent films depicting urban centers in a unflattering light.

I grew up in Detroit suburbs and then in my early 20's lived within a mile of the D.I.A. Detroit Institute of Arts circa 1990. My clan paralleled the Cass corridor.
I lived amongst the post Victorian era of 1880's abandoned mansions and the still standing remnants of the late 1960's riots.
My home was one of two white houses on our block.
I cherish my experiences more then I can type. Ultra wheels were invented around that time and I roller bladed ALL OVER DETROIT. (I even went from the DIA to Royal Oak up Woodward a few times. Kinda sketchy however I survived.
In my opinion (back then) 95% were decent hardworking citizens. 5 % preyed on others and gang banged.
Again, this was my experience, may not follow statistics, purely my subjective experience.

So Detroit was nothing like the depicted dystopia........
Yes there is crime, yes there always will be political corruption.

Let's keep movie fiction and reality in proper perspective.

Cheers to the membership

I had the honour of seeing the Gundam statue in Odaiba in 2012. It's bizarre in that it's outside the doors to a food court in a shopping centre. So odd yet so cool!

Did the Gundam cafe in Akihabara too but it was really expensive and the food was a bit crap. Dunno if they had it in 2009, but in Odaiba there was a little trailer set up which had all the merch for sale. Picked up a photo book and a bear brick. A lot of tat was fairly expensive.

Well worth a visit though. Didn't it get dismantled though?

My girlfriend went to CCS for four years and taught for two around 93+. I know this area very well.

A memory of mine that stands out is when they were doing construction on the student housing building she was living in. You could go up to the upper floors and entire sections of walls were gone from the exterior. The view was extremely The Crow. I didn’t see any fires on Devil’s Night though.

Being able to walk one block to the DIA and get in free every day was very nice.