Depending on who you ask (or what studio and brand you prefer), superhero films are either on the cusp of a shining new era or ready to tip into being completely obsolete. However, you can typically find one stable opinion — ceaseless franchising absolutely leads to exhaustion, and the willingness to try new things might provide any fan, creator, or business with the second wind necessary to reignite their passion. As such, for those who are still willing to give superheroes the benefit of the doubt as long as they aim for something different, it’s very easy to recommend TO BE HERO X . RELATED: Anime to Watch if You Like Superman This donghua, part of a longer-running To Be Hero series (don’t worry about catching up because TO BE HERO X can be enjoyed purely on its own), was created and directed by Li Haolin. It details a world of heroes that are powered by Trust, namely mankind’s ability to believe in them and support them. Bad guys are typically juiced up by Fear, with strength in that category coming from anger, resentment or paranoia. Like My Hero Academia , TO BE HERO X presents superheroism as both a public good and a service ripe for branding and corporate interference. This becomes obvious within the first few minutes of the show, where a young man becomes a hero at the behest of a company that essentially “produces” heroes and tracks the data necessary to rank them. Joining the Top 10 and eventually reaching the number one “X” position is a highly coveted mission. NOTE: SPOILERS AHEAD! But when I said that the young man, Lin Ling, becomes a hero, I left out a crucial detail: he only becomes this hero, “Nice,” when the former Nice literally walks off a rooftop. Nice’s manager, Miss J, swiftly finds Lin Ling and, seeing a physical resemblance between him and the deceased Nice, decides to give Ling the superhero equivalent of What Not to Wear and install him as the new Nice. Now he has to deal with Nice’s corporate-mandated and extremely jaded girlfriend, his predecessor’s old selection of enemies and allies, and his own dream of rising up the superhero ranks. RELATED: Could You Be a Top Hero in TO BE HERO X? If that sounds like enough to fuel an entire show, well, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. TO BE HERO X serves as a loose anthology series, with each story interconnecting in some way with the next. After Nice’s four-episode arc, we immediately jump to the story of E-Soul, a hero with their own convoluted origin tale. And from there, more stories are told, some of which take place before the previous one, after, or even concurrently. Combine that with its shifting visual style (the result of it being a shared work between three different animation studios and also some story-related reasons that I won’t spoil here), and TO BE HERO X is a refreshing watch. The combination of an anthology structure and shared universe mythology means that TO BE HERO X runs through a grab-bag of prominent superhero themes. These include the public’s faith in the sheer idea of superherorism and how quickly that can be twisted into jealousy and disdain (people who recently saw Superman might find that one familiar), and issues of identity and purpose. It also questions the role of the superhero as both celebrity and object of cultish obsession, and even how they can become both a revolutionary figure and a soldier for the status quo. RELATED: Why TO BE HERO X Gets Superheroes Most prominent, though, is the question of how superheroes relate to the common man. Because if there’s anything that makes me, personally, lose interest in a comic book movie, it’s the inability to connect with them in any way. Wish-fulfillment can only take you so far. To me, a good superhero must embody some kind of universally grounded wish, one that we understand even when we’ll never get to wear a cape. Not all of TO BE HERO X ’s stories are created equally in this regard, but the best ones, to me, are fixated on the qualities of superheroes as they relate to us. What do we want out of them? What do they lead us to aspire to? What do they say about our desires for justice, personal or otherwise? As TO BE HERO X continues its run, there’s no better time to jump on board, especially if you’re looking for a superhero series that loves to leapfrog around the gamut of stories that can be told. I can’t promise that you’ll like each one the same amount, but I can say that in an entertainment ecosystem that seems to latch onto trends and then run them dry, TO BE HERO X is consistently changing. In its world, superheroes gain their power from the public’s ability to trust them, and the main thing you can trust from TO BE HERO X is that each arc will be at least a little bit different from the last, making you want to see how it all comes together.
