To Be Hero X

Episode 23

Here we are at the penultimate episode, and in it, we finally get our introduction to the final top 10 hero, Ahu. Unlike the other top heroes, Ahu hasn't shown up in anyone else's arc. Yet, ironically, both he and X (and the Black Suits Organization) are the first characters we were ever introduced to back in the original 2023 To Be Hero X - Concept Movie trailer. In fact, this episode presents the events of the trailer from Ahu's viewpoint, rather than X's, which feels like it brings everything full circle.

On the one hand, Ahu's origin story is a rather straightforward tale of a headstrong young girl, Xin Ya, who tries to stop the forced gentrification of her neighborhood. Basically, the Treeman group (Nice's agency) is trying to scam and bully the elderly population out of their homes, bulldoze the buildings, and build new apartments. Xin Ya, knowing she can't stop them on her own, enlists the help of her childhood hero, the former circus dog Ahu. Along the way, Ahu can become a superhero for the sake of Xin Ya—with a little bit of help from the world's greatest hero. It's good stuff, but it's on a world-building level where things get really interesting.

This episode is a concrete reminder that not all beliefs are equal in the Trust system. Ahu is a normal dog. However, with a bit of training and the belief of many of the children who came to the circus, he became hyper-intelligent. And thanks to the impression he left on so many, he retains his abilities even though he no longer works at the circus. While that explains what he's capable of for the majority of the episode, in the climax, things change considerably.

Two factors give Ahu the power boost he needs to defeat the final Black Suits Organization clone. The first is Xin Ya's fanatical belief in Ahu. She truly believes he is a dog that can do anything. Full stop. There is great power in such belief; however, there is a caveat to accessing it: you have to believe in yourself first. When Ahu can let go of the deep-seated fear that he truly is nothing more than a glorified clown and embrace the dream of becoming the hero Xin Ya believes him to be, he's no longer a human-like dog, but a superhuman-like dog, which in turn allows him to save Xin Ya and defeat the villain.

This is similar to what we saw back with Firm Man's origin story. He was a normal man, a firefighter, who managed to hold up part of a collapsing building with only his want to save a little girl and that girl's fanatical belief that he could do so. With Trust, while quantity is important, quality is seemingly more so.

This episode also serves as the capstone to Nice's story by giving us the final piece of the puzzle surrounding his suicide back in the first episode. Simply put, Nice's death was not caused by a single factor but rather by a myriad of them. There was his inability to climb into the top 10 after the Ruins Incident, his guilt for his role in Smile's death, the OCD induced by his powers, and Shand basically abandoning him as a failure. On top of this was the deep-seated fear that all he had done in the name of being a hero—both good and evil—was for nothing. All together, this led to a psychotic break—and then all it took was the frustrated words of a random civilian for him to end it all.

Yet, all that said, there was one possible other factor. At the moment Nice encounters Lin Ling, we get a change in animation—and with it, the sound of a snap. There are two ways of interpreting this. The first is that X is directly interfering with what is going on—that he, possibly out of a need for revenge for what was done to Smile, used his powers to alter reality in such a way that Nice would feel compelled to kill himself.

The other possibility is that it is simply used as a transition between scenes, giving an audible note showing the passing of time and the change in animation styles. After all, there is no sign of X in this scene—both in this episode and the first one.

But then there's the fact that not every change in animation style over the course of this series has been accompanied by a snap. Sometimes there is one, sometimes there isn't—this is true even within this episode alone. So, does the snap sound effect imply X's meddling with what we see on screen, or is it just a bit of artistic flair the creators inconsistently use? I honestly don't know. Maybe we'll find out in the season finale next week with our only episode centered around X.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• After these last few episodes, I'm dying to see Loli and Ahu's reaction to Lin Ling announcing to the world that Nice is already dead back in episode 4.

• I love how Hiroyuki Sawano writes his insert songs so that parts can be chopped up, and edited together so that they fit the pacing and emotion of a scene and still feel natural.

• If Dragon Boy took Smile's place in the Top 10, I wonder who Ahu knocked out. And along those lines, it's interesting that both E-Soul and Firm Man stayed in the 9 and 10 spot respectively while Ahu jumped to 8. My guess is that whoever fell out of the top 10 lost the majority of their fans to Ahu directly which caused this to happen.

• I'm sure X doesn't give two shits that Ahu stole credit for beating up the Black Suits Organization—in fact, given that he doesn't want to be the top hero anymore, he's probably happy about it.

To Be Hero X is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.