Tu Bian Yingxiong X

I will eternally be grateful to To Be Hero X for opening my eyes to the world of Donghua. I had honestly written Chinese animation off, but I decided to give this a chance and I am so glad I did. It has been one of the best live viewing experiences of my life. Not only is there not a single dull moment in this show, but every single character introduced makes you want to root for them. It’s one of the best ever battle royale style set ups and combines amazing production values with a captivating narrative. If you like action, superheroes, twists(a ... TON of them), multifaceted and complex characters who aren’t always perfect and stories where the author isn’t afraid to kill people off look no further, TBHX has it all.

The really cool thing about TBHX is that it has so many different characters. There’s such a wide range of abilities, backstories and personalities, it’s not exaggerating to say there’s someone for everyone to root for in this story. As time goes on, you’ll find yourself becoming attached to characters like sports teams. In an ideal situation, all of the heroes would reach “X” status, this world’s top hero, but there can only be one and every week I found myself struggling to decide who I really wanted to support, eventually settling on Lucky Cyan. I enjoyed every single arc though, some more than others. The other really cool thing about TBHX’s story is that it’s told out of order in these story arcs. So our first and last arcs are right next to each other chronologically, but everything between them takes place at various points and it just gives you all these different perspectives of major events in the history of the world. As they say, there’s three sides to every story, your side, my side and the truth and often I found myself taking a certain stance on an issue before seeing the other perspectives and completely re-evaluating how I felt. I haven’t seen his other work(s) yet, but this is done by the director of Link Clink which I’ve been told has a lot of these same sort of twists and tropes.

There’s amazing production values here which I’ll talk about later, but this show is so much more than that too. There’s a lot of behind the scenes power plays made, political theater, betrayals, manipulation, it’s not the most complex story in the world, but a lot of effort has clearly gone into it and it has an unpredictability to it which made every single week an experience. Some shows you can binge watch, but TBHX’ live watch with speculation, theories and hype building throughout the week was special.

The production on this show is awesome. It starts out with a 3D style reminiscent of Netflix’ arcane. This really grew on me because I’m not a massive 3D animation fan, but by the 2nd or 3rd episode I came to appreciate the distinct charm it gave this series. Then we switched to 2D with the Cyan arc and that’s when this show became even more special to me. The fights were insane, the voice acting(I watched in JP) is superb, Sawano on the soundtrack! C’mon, what’s not to love about this one. It’s a feast for the eyes, ears and got me hype as hell thanks to one of the best soundtracks of the year.

It’s hard to talk too much about this show without spoiling key twists, so it is something you just have to experience on your own. It’s definitely a battle royale story, but it’s probably up there with Ishura as the ones with the most depth and characterisation. These aren’t just superheroes, they’re people with hopes and aspirations as well as insecurities and fears. The key lesson from this story being we can all be heroes. Might not stop aliens or a league of supervillains, but we can all make a difference in someone’s life and make the world a better place. The show covering real world issues like sexism, capitalistic greed and more also helped make such a fantastical world feel so real. This just meant a lot to me with all the great characters, the story’s twists and turns and the badass female superheroes. One of the best shows of the year.

TBHX gets 9 out of 10.

The animation is usually fantastic, and the music is very solid.

With the good out of the way, let's get started.

The characters are fine. Lots of them have interesting-ish backstories, but unfortunately, due to the pseudo-anthology nature of the show, very few of these characters get a chance to shine, and even then (e.g. with the first arc) I still leave feeling that the storylines were rushed and focus was put on hype moments rather than character moments. Additionally, some of the characters just get done dirty. The first arc again comes to mind with rather egregious instances of treating women poorly writing-wise.

The power system, like ... everything else with this show, has promise at first. It's a unique idea, and the way it's played up in the first two arcs leaves you wanting to learn more and see how things evolved. Unfortunately, after that point the focus leaves how the system works and the downsides of it, with very minimal callbacks to the actual lore and mechanics behind it. Instead characters just have their powers, their powers work, and nothing is explained in terms of drawbacks. It's a huge disappointment for someone who was looking forward to a unique superhero show, but it just turned into another OPM after episode 8.

The only instance where I actually cringed at the animation was the very last sequence of the very last episode. I dunno what it was about that, but every character except X looked very different and worse than their usual designs.

I found the plot confusing—like it was trying to build up to some huge mystery, but only starting caring about that three quarters of the way in. The rest of it felt like there were hints to catch, but not in a way that I could put together without also watching the additional PVs on Youtube. The characters only being majorly featured for 2-3 episodes each didn't help this. Just long enough to get an idea of who they were, but not long enough to actually care.

Speaking of external material, apparently there are like 60 PVs and trailers and other videos that expand on the heroes and their backgrounds and lore. And I just have to say that if that makes your viewing experience better, good for you. Personally though, when I watch anime, I try to stay on Crunchyroll and not make trips to YouTube to try and fill in the blanks. I think it would have been better if any of this important information was just like, put in the actual show.

This all boils down to the question of why this season was divided into and described as an anthology. My fervent belief is that the viewing experience would have been better if one watched episode 24 first, and then 1–23 afterwards. The setup is just that important, and any semblance of plot/finale/buildup is completely absent from the first several episodes. The lack of any guidance or look behind the curtain until the very end could work for a more linear story, but because we spend our time jumping back and forth between characters and timelines and plots, it instead leaves things confused and aimless.

Lastly. There's a piece of info dropped midway through the show that is just. So absurd I cannot take it seriously. Fortunately they've chosen to ignore it completely after mentioning it maybe twice, so evidently this super big reveal doesn't matter at all. Love that.

TL;DR: It looks quite good and sounds quite good. The plot is told in a manner I disagree with and feel confuses the viewer, and the character writing is skipped over in favor of hype moments and aura. If you like fight scenes and Solo Leveling, this could be the show for you. If you want good character writing, look elsewhere.

One of the few pieces of media where in 24 episodes they are incapable of telling a cohesive complete story. The show starts with an intriguing premise and world building, but diverges to flashback after flashback about origin story of cameos characters in previous episodes without much relation to the original plot at all. The writer expect you to care about random characters with no context for why they even matter to the original plot. instead the background characters in these flashbacks are the only ones with worthwhile information to the setting and world building. The viewer is left with way more questions than ... answers after finishing the show. It feels like watching 1 hour of ads just to watch a 20 min video. The only reason it still deserve a 7 is the amazing animation and music.

Id recommend watching this once they actually finish the whole story in season 2.