Anime Review: TO BE HERO X explodes in “The Ruins Incident”

TO BE HERO X
Director: Li Haoling
Producers: Aniplex, bilibili, BeDream
Studios: Pb Animation Co. Ltd., LAN Studio, Paper Plane Animation Studio
Streamer: Crunchyroll
Release Date: April 5, 2025
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, donghua

Adam and Hilary have covered To Be Hero X arc by arc, but the twentieth episode was so eventful that we decided it deserved its own write-up. Who thrived and who died during The Ruins Incident? Which of us won the bet we waged during Loli’s arc? All will be revealed.

The following write-up contains spoilers for Episode 20 of To Be Hero X. This review was originally posted to K-Comics Beat.

Ultra badass

HILARY: So, we have finally arrived at our “????” episode, and it was absolutely wild. Not what I expected, but I’m not complaining (other than the fact that I lost the bet). What did you think of it, Adam?

ADAM: I was about to say, I lost the bet! I thought that “????” would be all about our mysterious villain, but that was not to be. Instead, it was a grand finale for the whole series so far: an opportunity for E-Soul, Loli, (the original) Nice, the Johnnies, and Ghostblade to beat the crap out of each other. Then Queen and Lucky Cyan showed up and beat the crap out of them. Queen didn’t drop this one.

This was To Be Hero X going full Link Click, weaving a half dozen independent storylines into a satisfying metaplot. I was just as satisfied here as I was with Link Click’s first season climax. Since To Be Hero X is twice as long, though, I have to admit that it dragged a bit in the middle. But now all is forgiven (mostly.)

What were you expecting from this episode, and how did it surprise you?

HILARY: I was so caught up in the fight that I forgot Queen and Lucky Cyan were still part of this arc’s plot. When Queen showed up as an ultra badass, I was hyped. The scene showcased her powers and proved why she ranks as the number two hero. I don’t think we got that in her showdown with Bowa, even though Queen only appeared here for a short time compared to her own arc.

©bilibili/BeDream, Aniplex

Rockman and Zero

HILARY: I thought this episode would give us a break before the hero ranking competition. But I think this all-out brawl had more emotional oomph. We have Nice, who kills innocent people because he’s desperate to stay relevant; we get E-Soul, who has lost himself entirely; we get Loli going berserk when she loses her father, and so on. If we do get a hero ranking competition in the last episode, it’ll have an added emotional weight thanks to this climax that it wouldn’t have otherwise.

ADAM: I’ve seen chatter online that the Hero Tournament will come in the show’s second season, if we get one. That would make sense to me rather than trying to cram it all into just four episodes. Then again, this series loves to pull the rug out from under its audience, so if that was just another fake-out, I wouldn’t be surprised.

HILARY: What surprised me the most, though, was that we got some insight into Rock and his motivations. Up until now, he’s been an enigma other than manipulating Yang Cheng into becoming E-Soul. Who would’ve thought he was trying to bring back the first hero?

ADAM: I have mixed feelings about the turn with Rock. I liked the idea of him being an amoral scumbag willing to toy with other people’s lives for his own power and prestige. The fact that he is also a religious cultist trying to recreate Zero, the Evil Superman, clutters up that premise. On the other hand, the other CEOs also seem to be amoral scumbags willing to toy with other people’s lives for their own power and prestige. So Rock needs something to differentiate himself. Being a cultist makes sense!

HILARY: Yeah, that Rock plot twist wasn’t something that I expected. I did like the explanation of Zero and how fear came about because of his accidental killing of another hero. I wouldn’t mind if one of the remaining episodes focused oA Zero’s backstory. Which hero did he accidentally kill… and was it an accident? Dun-dun-dun.

©bilibili/BeDream, Aniplex

A pretty poster boy

ADAM: We saw this foreshadowed earlier with Lin Ling being bound by the expectations of his fans. It makes sense that fear/trust value might also be capable of taking a powerful superhero that everyone thinks is a monster, and actually turning them into a monster. That’s messed up, though! No wonder the Hero Affairs Commission is so suspicious all the time; any one of their charges could become a world-destroying threat should they lose control of the narrative.

In terms of fights, I had fun watching Loli really lay into Nice in this episode. The show gave her the short end of the stick in that her arc was really just the lead-up to Ghostblade’s story. Since then, though, she’s made a strong case for herself as an effective side character in other people’s stories. This episode saw her finally make a case for herself as someone who can play the lead role. Of course, it took the death of her father and the hospitalization of her girlfriend to do it! (Not to mention the brutalization of her childhood friend Da Xiong.)

I’ll be honest with you, though: the moment we learned in this episode that the original Nice was a “fear-based hero” on the brink of losing his powers, I thought, “Hilary is going to have a field day with this.” Did Nice’s dark secret live up to your expectations?

HILARY: Oh, Nice. Nice, Nice, Nice. He didn’t turn out to be the tragic hero who killed himself due to society’s pressure to uphold his perfect image. But his being a fear-based hero makes sense and falls in line with his personality. It’s sad that we don’t see Nice be a real hero because, as we saw near the end, a lot of his heroics have been embellished via Photoshop. He wasn’t the one who beat those shadowy suit clones! But now his team’s lies have now become “the truth.” It makes you wonder if he ever was a hero or was just a pretty poster boy for his company to use.

©bilibili/BeDream, Aniplex

Everybody lives

HILARY: Shand’s comment about how heroes will become obsolete if Fear disappears reminded me of Yang Cheng’s story. At first, his trust value was close to 0. But when he pushed aside his fear to protect Pomelo from thugs, people saw what happened and thought, “This guy’s really strong. If he can protect that little kid, he can probably protect more people.” So his trust value shot up. You don’t need heroes when you’re happy and safe; you need heroes because you’re scared and in danger. And without fear, who needs heroes?

ADAM: Wreck was so upset that Nice cut ties with him after becoming a hero. If only he knew that Nice was just as miserable as he was. They could have been villains together! Nice might have been a lot happier that way, or at least, he could have lived a more honest life. Somebody write the AU fanfiction, please.

HILARY: …I’ll send you links. I do not have multiple AUs of this already bookmarked…

ADAM: I was excited by the appearance of the shadowy suit clones as well. It’s the kind of twist I suspect would only work for folks keeping up with the advertisements before the series aired. But I was, so seeing them appear and cause trouble was another great “everything is connected!” moment in an episode full of them.

Something else that stands out to me about this episode, which Richard Eisenbeis wrote about over at Anime News Network, is that it’s quite anticlimactic despite how exciting it is to watch in the moment. Loli earns respect but loses everyone she cares about; Queen humiliates Nice, and he later jumps off a building; E-Soul fails to kill the Johnnies; Big Johnny’s toy line switches from an all-ages plush to an action figure for 10-year-old boys; Ghostblade loses his daughter and quits his job. Nobody gets what they want except Queen and Lucky Cyan, who at least save their coworker. The other silver lining is that, contrary to your hopes in our last write-up, all the heroes survive. They aren’t all happy about it, though!

©bilibili/BeDream, Aniplex

The man, the myth, the legend

HILARY: Nobody’s happy, but at least we now get an explanation as to why they’re not happy! Ghostblade’s departure is bittersweet–more bitter than sweet, really. He’s finally left his agency and has chosen to live a more “normal” life. But now his daughter’s in a coma, and he chooses to just leave her a bouquet of flowers rather than stay with her. Of course, we don’t know if he visited his daughter in the hospital after his ex-wife left. But I think he’s still struggling to reconnect with his family after all this time.

Ghostblade still plays a major role in the upcoming hero ranking competition, but I wonder whether he’ll compete as an independent hero or join another agency. If he does, I don’t think it’ll be any better than MG because all of these agencies are trash.

We have to talk about X. The man, the myth, the legend is now the top hero for three consecutive terms–an unprecedented feat! It’s hilarious that he ranks as the top hero when all we’ve seen him do is buy a newspaper, play with his coin, and drink soda on rooftops. And snap his fingers, of course. What has this guy done to prove he’s the most powerful hero out there? Any theories on what his powers are?

ADAM: That’s the mystery. I could believe that X is a Saitama-type who lives a perfectly ordinary life aside from his absurd superpowers. I could also believe that he is a criminal mastermind responsible for everything that’s happened in this series so far. That could be the point: X is just a suit, a meme, or whatever the folks looking at him want him to be. Is that the ultimate manifestation of trust value? A superhero without actual personhood? Or maybe Eisenbeis is right and he’s an alien or something. (I thought a few weeks ago that he was a time-traveling Lin Ling, but I’m not sure now.)

HILARY: Wouldn’t it be funny if we never find out what his superpowers are, even in the last episode? insert cry-laugh emoji We’re just left in the dark, and Li Haoling is simply laughing in his armchair like a supervillain as we spam all over social media, “What the hell, To Be Hero X?” (Please don’t do this, Li Haoling, I beg of you.)

©bilibili/BeDream, Aniplex

Our boy is coming!

ADAM: There’s one thing I know for sure, though, and it’s that Ahu appeared in a recent commercial for To Be Hero X. It’s finally happening, Hilary. Our boy is coming! Just a few more episodes and Ahu will be here!!!

HILARY: BEST BOY AHU. He only has that one episode, which could either be very good or very bad. We’ve seen how good To Be Hero X can be with a minimal number of episodes (Ghostblade arc) but we also saw how it can fall short (Loli arc…). I’m hoping it’s the former.

ADAM: Any guesses for Dragon Boy? It’s surprising to me how little we know about him this late in the game, except that he’s a pinch hitter for Rock and therefore probably bad news. Of course, since this is To Be Hero X we’re talking about, maybe they will reveal that he was a good guy all along, and I will regret my words and deeds.

HILARY: Of all the heroes we’ve seen so far, Dragon Boy looks like the edgiest hero. Online chatter points out how much he resembles Zero. In the various PVs we’ve seen, he has a darker, almost sinister vibe as he pummels people. There’s one part in his intro PV where he pulls himself back to his feet with eerily smooth fluidity, like he’s a zombie. Perhaps we’ll see Rock turn Dragon Boy into his puppet, or even the next Zero, in his arc.

I’m not sure if you saw the next episode preview, but we haven’t seen the last of Nice yet! He’s going to be in the Dragon Boy arc along with X, whose civilian appearance is as ordinary as they come. It doesn’t look as though Ahu will appear in next week’s episode, though. wipes tear away Perhaps in two weeks?

ADAM: Putting Dragon Boy, Nice, and X together sounds like a total trainwreck. I’m into it. So long as they keep Ahu out of it, if he gets hurt, that would be the real ruinous incident.

To Be Hero X airs in the United States via Crunchyroll.