To Be Hero X
How to animation can recontextualize a story
Introduction:
To Be Hero X is a really interesting and beautifully animated show about superheroes that gain their powers from the public’s trust in them. This mechanic makes a hero more powerful the more people trust them and it forces powers onto people who’d rather stay out of the spotlight. This show does a great job at presenting heroes, and the corporations that promote them as being extremely complex and really interesting. There are countless times in this show that we cover the same story from different angles and it recontextualizes everything!
Poster for ‘To Be Hero X’ showing off the main heroes stories that we follow.
What’s Inspirational About ‘To Be Hero X’:
What is most inspiring about this show is its characters. Each one has a very compelling story to tell with really interesting dynamics between all of them. The intro to this series is the Hero Nice and Lin. It does a really good job at exploring the restrictive lives that Heroes live because of the belief of the people and while they gain great power they are also greatly limited by what their ‘followers’ believe in them to do. It is a really compelling first four episodes. After that we get to see how this world of heroes is full of corporate corruption, as well as how fickle public support can be and how it can be weaponized. It is such a good exploration of these themes and is presented so well!
The animation is incredible. This show dabbles in several different animation styles and while I believe some styles are executed better than others all of them are really pretty. Not to mention how much fun we get to have with the changing animation styles in the final episode. It is just so dynamic and exciting to watch.
My favorite time that a part of the show is recontextualized is when a group of superheroes is sent on a secret mission to a crashed alien ship. We first see the mission through the eyes of Loli, then the show takes us back in time to see it again through Silent Blade's perspective, then again through little John’s perspective, and finally we see it all again through our antagonist's lens before all hell breaks loose and heroes Queen and Lucky Cyan have to swoop in to save the day. It is a master class in storytelling and having the understanding of the story upended every single time. We jump back in time. It is extremely impressive and I can’t get enough of it.
There are two things in this show that bothered me. First is the non-linear format. While this is necessary to retread scenes from different perspectives and get that amazing recontextualization mentioned before. But every single arc ends on a cliffhanger. From Moon’s Death, to which E-Sol died, to is the science team alive, to who the heck are the traitors?! It is extremely cool how intertwined everything is and how each character processes these moments. However it left me with so many questions and left me exhausted with worry and cliffhangers. All of which I hope are answered in Season 2.
The second thing that bothered me was within the first 8 episodes. In Lin & E-Sol arcs of the show the women are completely sidelined and treated like objects of desire of our protagonists. However, this might be a deliberate character choice on the writer's part because other characters like Lucky Cyan & Queen are very well written. However, every female character’s actions are inspired by, inhibited by, or pushed by the men in their lives. Showing how misogynistic this corporate world of Superheroes inherently is. While I think more could’ve been done to address this they do try and this story does have many excellent Female characters.
Queen is my favorite character so far and I certainly feel her frustration. I really hope she can overcome the people manipulating her and stand on her own soon.
Final Thoughts:
I felt so emotionally raw at the end of season 1 of this series. Part of it was exhaustion from keeping track of the timeline, all of the cliff hangers, and characters. However most of it was from just how amazing the art, animation, and storytelling that this story provided. I am so excited to see how this story unfolds and what else is going to happen. I do hope that we get resolutions to the various cliff hangers that this season left for us.
If you are a fan of animation or really complex storytelling I highly recommend that you go check out “To Be Hero X”.
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