Anime Review: TO BE HERO X is off to a super start

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To Be Hero poster, featuring vibrant pop art depictions of the ten heroes. 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

The first episode of To Be Hero X, the highly anticipated new animated series from Link Click‘s Li Haoling, is almost here. Our writers, Adam Wescott and Hilary Leung, got early access and sat down to share their thoughts. So what can you expect from this promising new show? Does it successfully combine 2D and 3D animation? Who is the mysterious X, the strongest hero of all? And why is Nice ranked the 10th most popular hero when he obviously deserves the 69th spot? Find the answers to these questions (except for that last one) below.

We don’t include major story spoilers from the first episode of To Be Hero X. However, we do discuss the premise, characters, and a few structural elements that stood out to us. If that matters to you, feel free to watch the episode first and come back after. No pressure—it’s really not a big deal.

But there’s…plot?!

Adam: I wasn’t expecting the first episode to be such a direct response to the Spider-Verse films and Arcane. There’s much more 3DCG animation than I thought there would be, but also plenty of 2D in different styles spliced in. Was that what you were expecting? I know there are 3DCG donghua, but I’m not so familiar with them.

Hilary: I wasn’t too surprised, but based on the trailers that were shown, I expected more 2D animation. To Be Hero X‘s 3DCG animation, though, is on par with other donghua.

I wasn’t sure what to expect either going into the first episode. The premise was vague, and the show’s first couple of trailers focused more on how heroes were made. I thought it’d be more like a training arc where the Top 9 were competing to become the top-ranked hero. But there’s… plot?! A mystery?!

Adam: I was expecting a battle royale show going into this, definitely. Something like Fate/Stay Night or Re:Creators. Or Kamen Rider Ryuuki if you want to go old school. But this is definitely a series by some of the folks who made Link Click. You’re a fan of that series, right?

Hilary: Yep. But Link Click started off more slice-of-life, and it wasn’t until the latter half that everything came together more cohesively. Then again, I have yet to watch the second season…

Nice, a man with carefully groomed white hair who is wearing a superhero costume, has an unreadable expression on his face. Neon city lights can be seen behind him.

That one-rank difference

Adam: Link Click looks more like a typical 2D anime, so I think it’s easier for anime fans to latch onto. You can see some similarities in the first episode of To Be Hero X with Link Click’s structure as well. It’s a “case of the week” episode about Nice, one of the top 10 heroes. So it’s possible the show could proceed with each episode focusing on a specific hero until the end.

Hilary: That cliffhanger, though! Link Click also had a cliffhanger at the end of the first episode, but they brushed it over like it was an unfortunate accident. To your point, though, the case-of-the-week format seems likely considering how much time they spent introducing each of the 10 heroes in the marketing. It wouldn’t make sense to introduce 10 people and not actually dive into their characters.

Adam: One of my worries is that ten unique characters is a lot of characters. It also looks like there will be other heroes and villains who aren’t in that main ten.

Hilary: Yep, like Mr. Rank 250 249. That one-rank difference is super important! You’re top 250!

Adam: The world where this story takes place is clearly huge. Will they have enough time to cover everything?

Hilary: I think I read somewhere it has 24 episodes.

Adam: That would definitely help. So many anime these days are 12 episodes that I just assumed this one would be the same way.

A young man with black hair and brown eyes. His expression is uncertain.

Faith and trust

Adam: Since we haven’t said much about the plot of this show yet, we should clarify it takes place in a world where heroes are given power by people who believe in them.

Hilary: Faith and trust are the basis of becoming a hero. And the show emphasizes early on that anyone can be a hero. But it also begs the question: do you need powers to take the first step toward herodom in the first place?

Adam: If you have a dead-end job and nobody to root for you, good luck earning those superpowers. The show feels very contemporary in that way—just like Link Click was.

Hilary: Not to mention that since anyone can be a hero, all heroes are replaceable.

Adam: It’s a world where superheroes are all-powerful but also extremely vulnerable. As the 10th most popular hero, Nice is riding a tide to success but also in a tricky spot. How do you hold onto yourself when all your supporters need you to be a hero? Can you do justice to the people you love who set you on that path?

Hilary: Gotta have some real strong mental fortitude—and probably alcohol. Joking aside, it comes down to fake it till you make it, right?

Adam: Considering one of the superheroes in the series is a dog, I hope he doesn’t get any ideas. Where is he, anyway? He appears in the original trailer for the show too. I expected more from you To Be Hero X.

Hilary: Give us the dog! GIVE US AHU.

Ahu, a small brown dog with a suspicious expression and wearing a dark brown and olive hat as well as a pink tie.

I trust Ahu, the talking dog

Adam: But yeah, whether you live in the US, Japan, or China, financial insecurity is something that affects us all to one degree or another. Aside from trust, fear is also a guiding force in the series. The trust of the masses is tricky enough to deal with; fear complicates everything.

Hilary: It’s an unconventional twist to the superhero genre: not good versus evil, but trust versus fear. What if you place all of your trust in the wrong person?! How do you know who to really trust? Plus, as we saw in the first episode, trust can be manipulated.

Adam: I trust Ahu, the talking dog—he would never betray me. But yeah, even a hero like Nice needs to decide who he trusts, or even if he trusts himself. Which is tough enough when everybody is watching you..

Hilary: When I saw Nice, I kept thinking about Edna saying, “NO CAPES.”

Adam: You know who doesn’t have a cape? X, the strongest hero in the world.

Hilary: Where is X? We don’t even know his real name or who he is.

Adam: He doesn’t show up once in this first episode, as far as I know, except for the opening sequence. It’s a funny choice, considering he’s been in the show’s marketing since the very first preview.

Hilary: Which is also why we thought it’d be a battle royale show. Who’s going to be the next X? If Queen (ranked number 2) ends up becoming the most trusted hero, does she get renamed to X? Ahu X?

A supervillain wearing a large metal frog mask. They are surrounded by black goo.

The To Be Hero series is weird

Hilary: By the way, given that we haven’t seen how the episode was broadcasted in China, do you think it was edited for the international broadcast?

Adam: So, this gets to something we were talking about before we watched the episode. Before To Be Hero X, there were two previous series: To Be Hero and To Be Heroine. I only ever saw the first episode of To Be Heroine, but it had something to do with a girl whose clothing transforms into hot guys with superpowers.

Hilary: I…what?

Adam: There was also a baby involved. He plays Dance Dance Revolution in the ending credits sequence.

Hilary: Out of ALL of the possible synopses you could’ve given me, that wasn’t one of them.

Adam: Look, the To Be Hero series is weird. The first was even wilder and grungier; its protagonist is a toilet seat designer who transforms from a handsome man into a middle-aged guy. To Be Heroine, by comparison, was a play for accessibility. To Be Hero X is the most polished by far—you can tell it was made from the bottom up to be a hit.

Hilary: Justice for the toilet seat designers! They deserve to have their stories told!

I’m watching To Be Heroine right now, and I agree that To Be Hero X is more polished in terms of animation. But there’s a couple of years between the two, so it makes sense that X is of a higher quality.

A blonde-haired woman wearing glasses holds a tablet. To her left and right are anonymous men wearing black suits, ties and sunglasses.

The Nabeshin Effect

Adam: To Be Heroine was an interesting series production-wise in its own right, too. They hired young net animators and gave them the freedom to go wild. Folks who worked on the series—or even began their careers there—went on to do cool stuff in later shows. Maybe they’ll even show up in X! That’s why Studio LAN, which produced To Be Heroine, has such a great reputation. They’re the ones behind Link Click, too.

Hilary: I hope so. I always see freelancers post what they’ve worked on via Twitter (I’m not going to call it X), and it’s always interesting to see the behind-the-scenes.

Adam: Definitely! I hope that other staff from the project—not just the directors, composers, and producers—get the chance to brag about their work.

To get back to the To Be Hero franchise for a moment, the anime director Shinichi Watanabe played a role in supervising its release in Japan. Not Shinichirō, the Cowboy Bebop guy, but Nabeshin of Excel Saga fame. (More recently, he storyboarded an episode of my beloved Train to the End of the World.)

Hilary: OH. Okay, thanks for the clarification. I was like, THE Shinichirō Watanabe?

Adam: To Be Heroine especially had a different theme song and even some different editing between its Chinese and Japanese releases. But I don’t know whether the Japanese and Chinese versions of To Be Hero X will be meaningfully different. Maybe we’re at a point where Chinese animation can stand on its own two feet in the market. Hiroyuki Sawano’s music also makes up a big part of the production, so they wouldn’t want to change that, right?

Lucky Cyan, one of the top ten heroes. She is wearing a white shirt and playing an electric guitar. You can see a tree and houses behind her.

Sawano’s Rolodex

Hilary: Definitely not. It’d be sacrilegious. The only possible difference I can think of is the potential censoring of blood and gore. So that might be the main difference. Speaking of music, what did you think of it?

Adam: I have such complicated feelings about Sawano. It’s like if you asked me, “Do I like Linkin Park?” Absolutely. There are times when Linkin Park hits the spot. But would you want every moment of your life to be scored to Linkin Park?

Something Sawano is particularly good at is bombastic character themes, which is a good fit for To Be Hero X. I think every hero in the show has their own unique theme.

Hilary: They do! They put some hints of their backstory into their character intros.

Adam: While it could have been neat if they’d found distinct bands or musicians for each character, I can appreciate that they combed through Sawano’s rolodex to find artists who fit. What did you think of the music?

Hilary: Hmm. To be honest, I didn’t pay too much attention to it because of what was happening in the story. None of the music really stuck out to me or was particularly iconic.

Adam: That’s really interesting because they clearly want these songs to be iconic. They went through the trouble of coming up with themes for each character, after all. Then again, I wouldn’t say To Be Hero X’s soundtrack stands out to me yet either. That might change.

Hilary: Nice’s theme, “Paragon,” certainly came in at the right moment but didn’t make me say “wow.” I’m going to wait for a full version to come out so I can download it.

Moon, Nice's girlfriend. She is wearing a superhero suit with a pink flower design on her chest and has long blonde hair.

The donghua uncanny valley?

Adam: In terms of the animation, I’m still biding my time to see how they integrate the different styles into the show. Again, this first episode has a lot of 3DCG in it, but will that remain consistent? Some of the characters have very different designs between their 3D and 2D modes, so I hope they’re careful to mark who is who.

The character animation is otherwise pretty good and more stylized in design than the uncanny valley realism you sometimes see in donghua. Just giving the cast imperfections, so they aren’t all just interchangeably pretty people, goes a long way. Or at least rendering the cast so that they are pretty in different ways.

Hilary: Ahu is the prettiest.

Adam: Other than Ahu and X, are there other heroes from the trailers you’re excited to see on screen?

Hilary: Bold of you to assume I’d be excited to see X! Based on what I saw in the character trailers and design, I was most interested in Nice prior to watching the episode. I was intrigued by his obsessiveness with things being done perfectly as well as his flawless public persona. The ballet performance in his PV also hints at his need to be in control at all times. So I’m not totally mad that he was the focus of the first episode. I’m also excited to see Lucky Cyan, Ghostblade, and Queen. I’m a sucker for potentially tragic backstories…

Adam: I’m curious about E-Soul’s appearance in the opening credits; he’s positioned next to some scary imagery, so I wonder what role he might play in the bigger picture. Of course, that might be a red herring. I’m also intrigued by Lucky Cyan just because it’s neat that there are heroes in this world who are just pop idols, rather than superheroes who fight crime. A bit like the comic series The Wicked + the Divine in that way.

X, the number one hero. He is sneering at the camera and wearing yellow sunglasses as well as a white suit.

More than “nice”

Hilary: Sorry, I just realized that I never watched the opening. I’m the type to skip them—and the endings too.

Adam: Oh my god. Criminal….

Hilary: I’m impatient! I need to get to the next episode.

I’m optimistic about To Be Hero X. The first episode was strong, and I thought it was neat that they opened with the 10th-ranked hero rather than the 1st. I’m a little disappointed that they didn’t do more with blending 2D and 3DCG, since that was what caught people’s attention. But the themes—what makes a hero, what role trust plays in a society that pushes heroes into celebrity status, and how easily that trust can crumble—will keep viewers thinking. The animation is also well done, so I think that will appeal to people and maybe even serve as a gateway to donghua in general.

Adam: I hope that if folks like the first episode, they might be inspired to check out other Chinese animated series like Scissor Seven, or even films like Legend of Hei.

This premiere convinced me that To Be Hero X will be very polished and probably win over folks new to donghua. But I also want to see whether it can capture the go-for-broke energy from To Be Hero and To Be Heroine. Anime these days skews more conventional than not, so the best thing donghua can do is be weird—especially if they find cool animators and give them the freedom to experiment, like they did with To Be Heroine.

The first episode was already a swerve from what I was expecting, so at the very least, it should be fun to speculate every week about future developments. Or at least count down the episodes until Ahu’s appearance…

Hilary: This episode was more than “nice,” but I’m hoping for weird personalities from at least one of the heroes.

Adam: I would say that the opening was a “nice” surprise. But time will tell if the show will be X-cellent.

Hilary: Dang, Adam. Look at you go. You have seven more puns to try to incorporate.

Adam: Oh no. I don’t have what it takes to be a pun hero!

Hilary: The true unsung hero…rank 250.

To Be Hero X airs in the United States via Crunchyroll on Saturday, April 5th.

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