This was originally published on K-Comics Beat.
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
To Be Hero X‘s Dragon Boy storyline is the last multi-episode arc in the series. It’s also remarkably efficient: it fleshes out the original Nice, introduces us to properly his role model Smile, and even finds time for X’s civilian identity. Adam and Hilary get into all that below, plus: Suspiria! Cynicism! Parallels! And more.
The following write-up contains spoilers for Episodes 21 through 22 of To Be Hero X.
Hilary is feasting right now
ADAM: Well, how did you enjoy the Dragon Boy arc, Hilary? Or should I say, the original Nice arc. This show sure does love its curveballs.
HILARY: I know I’ve complained before about how so-and-so’s arc was overshadowed by some other character. Even though that’s what happened here, I did not mind it at all. This arc gave Dragon Boy enough of a backstory to explain why he is the way he is, but it also deepened our understanding of Nice and X—and did it pretty freaking well.
ADAM: The moment I saw child Nice being flung around by invisible marionette strings, like he was in the 2018 Suspiria remake, I thought, “Hilary is feasting right now!”
HILARY: Is it weird if I say that child Nice contorting and exploding was my favorite part of the sequence? Also, I tracked down the Suspiria dance scene on YouTube and am simultaneously horrified and intrigued. I see the parallels.
Matroyshka doll
ADAM: If the previous episode teased Nice as a villain, this one (as always) revealed the full picture wasn’t quite as simple. Sure, Nice is a faker, and has been willing to hurt others in order to get ahead from the start. But we learn in this arc that his love for Smile, the superhero who inspired him to become a hero himself, is very real. Even his boss, Shand, is revealed to be driven by revenge for his child, Yang Cheng’s late friend Shang Chao. That’s relatable! He isn’t an angel, but at least he isn’t Rock.
Nice is a Matroyshka doll of a character: beneath his perfection lies mess, and beneath the mess lie his childhood dreams that still linger after all this time. That is, until the events of this arc killed those dreams as well as his childhood idol, Smile. Did Nice’s breakdown at the end of this arc satisfy you?
HILARY: Nice tried to do the right thing, but he didn’t really. All he did was yank on the marionette strings and tug himself in the direction of Dragon Boy. The true right choice would’ve been to toss that Fear vial away and join Smile against Dragon Boy in an old-fashioned 2v1 brawl.
It makes me think back to Nice’s suicide in the first episode. If Smile’s death was the catalyst, the trigger might have been his realization that he could not cut his marionette strings on his own. Maybe he thought death was the only release from his pain and lack of autonomy.
Smile!
HILARY: We only saw Smile for two episodes, but I really liked him! He reminds me of All Might from My Hero Academia. The two always have smiles on their faces to reassure the public that everything is fine. I’ve seen some theories online as to who his daughter might be and how this all ties together
ADAM: When we first met Smile in the scene where he was beaten up by Bowa, I thought that he was too squeaky-clean to be trustworthy. From what we saw in this arc, though, he’s a humble dude. Other heroes become traumatized or are caught up in the trappings of fame. Smile instead does his best to help people without letting it go to his head. It’s no surprise that X trusts him enough to hang out together in civilian mode.
Of course, that just makes his corruption at Nice’s hands and later gruesome death courtesy of Dragon Boy even worse. Smile doesn’t get the luxury of a heartfelt goodbye speech. Instead he is transformed into a villain and then punched so hard that he explodes into flesh particles. I didn’t find his smile upon death much of a salve, either. You’re telling me that he was smiling the whole time he was drugged by Fear?! That’s like something out of Chainsaw Man.
Since you mentioned that Smile has a daughter, I wanted to remind our readership that To Be Hero X still has a complex about families! Not only is Smile a regretful dad, but it’s heavily implied that Dragon Boy himself was abused by his parents (or at least by his guardians.) The world of To Be Hero X is governed by other laws than just the Hero Competition. Fathers are killed by or for their sons and daughters in an endless cycle.
Villain hero
HILARY: I know I said I was satisfied with Dragon Boy’s backstory, but I can’t help but feel curious as to why his mom treated him that way. Was she training him to be a hero? Was she trying to “toughen” him up as an experiment? Was it actually his mom who said those words or someone pretending to be his mom? Who was that other person with her?
Dragon Boy is the most villain-like hero that we’ve seen so far, at least in terms of appearance. His transformation isn’t unlike how we’ve seen Fear transform the other heroes. He’s someone who makes it his mission to get rid of trash, whoever he deems to be unworthy or useless, and has no qualms about using underhanded tricks to get what he wants. I’m even less sympathetic towards him than E-Soul, because at least Yang Cheng was manipulated into making bad choices by Rock.
ADAM: Of all the top 10 heroes that we’ve met so far, Dragon Boy to me is the simplest. Every other character that we’ve met so far has had some extenuating circumstance: Lin Ling filled another hero’s role, Yang Cheng dedicated his life to destroy and inherit the role of a man he hated, Loli earned power but lost everybody she cared about, and so on. Dragon Boy by comparison was hurt as a child, and so he lashes out at others to hurt them too. Just like you’d expect from his powers. It’s sad really.
What I found most interesting about Dragon Boy on reflection is how his arc parallels Lin Ling’s. There’s that great moment in the first arc where Lin Ling does the impossible and takes out God Eye despite being “vulnerable.” We see the same thing here, except that Dragon Boy weaponizes crowds and plays the underdog so that he can use their trust value to kill people.
Garbage goes in the garbage bin
ADAM: Even now, at the end of this first season of To Be Hero X, the staff are still taking genre standards we take for granted and twisting them. Can you trust the crowd to recognize “good?” What if there are no “good” actors in this scenario? You could argue the real “hero” in this sequence ends up being X, and there’s still so much we don’t know about him.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel bad for Dragon Boy, because he ends up right back where he started. As a child his guardians trapped him in the water under ice; now as an adult, the #1 superhero literally crumpled him up like paper and threw him in the river. There’s genuine pathos there I’d love to see explored should he return in the next two episodes (or next season?)
HILARY: Not to mention the fact that X crumpled him into a wad of paper like “useless trash,” the very thing that Dragon Boy relishes destroying. That’s just putting salt in the wound.
To Be Hero X takes a cynical and arguably realistic view of what being a hero is. People see what they want to see, and it requires critical thinking on their part to decide if what they’re seeing is really the truth. That takes time, though, which is hard to come by when something is happening right in front of your eyes. The spectators saw Dragon Boy take down the scary Fear-infected Smile which, to them, meant good defeating evil. Then they saw Nice taking down the “hero” and now Nice is the bad guy. There’s no time to go any deeper than that.
Ah, X
HILARY: Ah, X. His civilian side is so relatable. He doesn’t want to do overtime; he probably doesn’t even get paid for overtime. He’d rather stay at home and sleep all day. So far he’s kept himself removed from the political side of things. But that last scene of him meeting Rock’s gaze through the monitor as he stands over Smile’s body seems to suggest otherwise.
We both wondered about the 3D aspect of the donghua since the director had stated that the rest of the series would use 2D animation. But we’ve been fooled! We got 3D animation again thanks to X’s snap, but they probably animated it early on and later added it in. I’ll be honest, the style shift jolted me out of the story this time. But I really enjoyed that sequence of X falling off the building, melting between abstract art styles within two seconds. The animators were flexing there.
ADAM: Yeah, that was cool! I agree that the 3D sequence in this episode felt superfluous to me. I’d prefer if they used the time and resources they spent on those sequences to polish up the 2D animation. At least these two episodes were reasonably well animated compared to some preceding arcs. Still, I have to say that X impresses every time he takes the field. They keep finding new and scary ways for him to humiliate his opponents without hurting them.
What I find most intriguing about X so far is the separation between his civilian and hero persona. He hints in this episode that while he’s an easygoing guy off duty, that isn’t necessarily true when he’s on shift. What’s going on there? My guess is that he copes with civilian trust value warping his personality by setting a firm boundary between work and home life. If that’s the case, I’m glad he’s taking it seriously, but also worried about what might happen if the barrier comes down and he succumbs to the influence. Maybe that’s the kind of event that creates hero-monsters like Zero.
Ahu ready for next week
HILARY: With two episodes remaining, I’m not entirely sure what X’s motivation is to stay in the ranking competition. All of the other heroes so far, maybe with the exception of Dragon Boy, have some kind of relationship with another person who motivates them and/or is the reason for them being on a certain trajectory in their hero journey. I don’t quite get that sense from X because, like you said, he keeps a clear boundary between his private and professional lives. I’m not quite convinced that Smile’s death would set him on a path to overthrow the hero agencies or to exact revenge but maybe I’m wrong.
ADAM: We’ll have to see. At this point in the game, I’m convinced that To Be Hero X will need a second season to wrap up its remaining plot threads. But I am curious to see if Rock and X’s rivalry (or Shand’s need for revenge?) wraps back around to Lin Ling’s storyline before the final episode. There’s gotta be a reason for E-Soul killing Moon in cold blood, after all.
That said, we have far more important matters to consider: we’re finally seeing Ahu next week! At long last, our boy is here.
HILARY: I can’t believe they gave Ahu ONE episode. And X ONE episode.
ADAM: How dare they treat Ahu this way?! Well, I’m sure the wait will be worth it.
HILARY: According to next week’s preview, we’re going to see another art style change, as well as X and Ahu’s first meeting and how they got to know each other. Nice makes an appearance too! To think we thought we’d seen the last of Nice in Episode 1. He’s already hit rock bottom, literally and emotionally, so how much further can he fall?
ADAM: To conclude: Dragon Boy? More like Garbage Boy imho. Great arc though.
To Be Hero X airs in the United States via Crunchyroll.
