Tu Bian Yingxiong X

The anime is bold and stunning in appearance, which is what I most adore about it. Its storytelling is enhanced rather than detracted by the way it combines 2D, 3D, and experimental animation techniques. What begins as a quirky superhero parody turns into a profoundly moving story about identity, loss, and the price of power.

Although the tonal changes may surprise some viewers, they are intentional and closely related to the characters' growth. It's raw, strange, and unafraid to embrace absurdity whilst venturing into dark territory.

At first, it seems like it might be your typical superhero parody, but it quickly flips the script. The story gets ... surprisingly emotional and thought-provoking. It caught me off guard more than once, and I really appreciated that.

Although the animation is splendid, I feel like there's something missing on every episode I watch. The pacing also seems odd. There doesn't seem to that excitement to watch the next episode. The story seems somewhat simple, and the characters till now feel very bland. Also I feel the japanese dub doesn't work all that well with the animation speed. The characters move and talk very different to what's being portrayed on the screen, so it all feels very jarring and out of place. Actually, the dubbing feels very similar to some japanese dubs on some of the Hoyoverse games.

I get the feeling that this title has a very specific type of fan base, which is trying to hype it, as if its the messiah of Anime (although its technically Donghua), while its about as good as being woken up by Jesus, but you are in a mexican prison.

1. Lets start with the good and obvious - the art style and animation quality.
The art style and animation quality seems mostly comparable to Arcane - but for sure not on par with it.
Thats the good thing, it raises the bar. And unfortunately, this is the best thing about "To Be Hero X". From here on ... it goes downhill.

For 7 episodes, it has 3 or 4 art changes in specific scenes. This is should not be considered as bad per se, but throws of the supposed "seriousness" of the scenes. Especially in Episode 4, where you get some ala-Western Comics style scenes during a life and death situation. Imagine something like the fighting scenes from Scott Pilgrim.

Animation and Art - 8/10

2. Music and sound track
The Opening is quite good.
Overall music and sound track seems at the very least above average.
Audio quality on several occasions seemed to drop a bit, but its still in acceptable ranges.

Music and sound - 7/10

3. Choreography and general movement
One of the things that i see, is the choreography and the characters body movements.
Body movements in fights seems pretty good, but outside of it? Boy... its pretty bad.
You have non-stop mix of normal speed actions, like MC 1 raising his hand, then Side character 1 jumping from joy as if its sped up by 4x.
The body movements are also some times unrealistic, far from actions one would take in real life, unless he is specifically trying to impersonate an anime character and be cringe.

Choreography and body movements - 5/10

4. Characters, growth and interactions
Man... We change 2 different MCs in the span of 7 episodes.
In fact, the 8th episode will have a 3rd different MC.
And whats worse - their character depth is... lacking at the very least.
The first MC, from episode 1 to episode 4, has the depth of a puddle after a slight drizzle.
Sung Jin Woo from Solo Leveing is like an ocean compared to Ling Ling (the name of MC 1).

MC 2 brings some slight improvement, but the character is still not very likeable. Supposedly wants to confess to Side Character 2, but does not do it, because some guy (Side Character 3) he does not really like does it first (and he lets him do it).
Then MC 2 cries when that same guy dies. Although they were no more than colleagues for some short time.

Both MCs have seemingly 0 motivation or thought about anything they do, their thoughts for the future are no further than the one of a fly.

Character interactions are on the level of low budget teenage love drama. Cringe dialogues left and right.

And the character development for those 2 MCs is close to 0, mostly because of the next paragraph, the story and pacing.

Characters and growth - 3/10

5. Story and pacing

Here comes the worst part. The one that most likely will make you drop this series.
The first 4 episodes, you are thrown into a incredibly fast paced story, where... i have no idea actually what i am supposed to understand.
MC 1 becomes hero in the matter of 5 minutes.
He has 0 motivation to do so, 0 goals. He is just made to do so.
He supposedly gets "goal/motivation", to meet with the girl (hero) he "loves".
2nd episode comes in, you get straight away time skip for no reason.
And you are thrown absolute head-bang inducing "character development".

Time lines of events are hard to grasp. The time skip seems to be an exception in Ep.2, otherwise everything else has literally no information about how much time has ed since something happened or how is it placed relatively to other events. While that may be on purpose, its not going to help with the amount of MCs that there are probably going to be, with al of them seemingly occurring during different time periods.

From episode 5 to episode 7, pacing seems like if its initially slightly better... then it gets kicked off a cliff, falling into oblivion in episode 7.

You also get some seemingly overly convoluted plot twists and shock factor scenes at the end of both arcs, which do not make much sense so far in both story and directing.

During all of those episodes, i felt exactly 0 attachment to either of the MCs or to any of the other ing characters.

To make matters worse, its not only the named characters that are unlikable.
The entire human population in this world seem to be as intelligent as a Counter-Strike bot on Easy difficulty.
All of the background (non-named) characters, basically the crowd and fans that provide the Heroes with their Power via Trust, lack any emotions or empathy. This becomes VERY apparent in episode 4, where MC 1 power level (Trust) becomes from something in the millinos to 0 in matter of a day, then in matter of seconds he regains it. Quite absurd i would say.

The interesting premise of the power system for heroes and villains cannot bear the burden of the rest of the issues.

Story and pacing - 1/10.

6. Production, platform and other
CrunchyRoll really fell on its face with the release of this series.
The Japanese Dub says something like "scarfu" - which in context shows literally a BIG RED SCARF.
And the subtitles says ... "soles".
Or another scene, where the dub says "Standing man"... and the subs say "Firm man".
The subtitles and their timings by CR are abysmal and aneurysm inducing if you try to understand what is meant, especially when there are no dialogues going on, but some random subtitles suddenly start popping in. Or vice versa, no subs when dialogues are ongoing.

Production, platform and other - 2/10.

Total score - 4/10.