To Be Hero – 10

The Gist: Yamada, Data-link, Older Prince and yes, even Min-chan are all destroyed by the Evil Emperor as Old Man looks on, unable to fight. As Min-chan’s book about Old Man being a hero falls to the ground, the question must be asked: will he rise to the cliche or will he fall to this crushing turn of events?

Verdict: I’m not sure what else To Be Hero could have done with itself by this point? This week followed the poop humor path (young prince fires urine balls at the emperor and older prince’s toilet simulates urinating on various characters) and the super evil villain kills everyone while the hero is down cliche, neither of which is very interesting…

Unfortunately, the animation was sub par too.

To Be Hero has some great highs but, over all, the characters are by the numbers when it comes to emotional connections and plot developments to invest in. What isn’t generic is poop and urine and anal related. If that’s fine with you, you may enjoy the moments between the tightly scripted humor sections. Otherwise, save yourself!

To Be Hero – 09

Trying to commit suicide with a fish earns best scene this week. Maybe the only humor in the whole episode…

The Gist: Lots of poop jokes knit Old Man and the Space Princes’ various antics at the dinner table together. Or not, depending on your tolerance for poop jokes.

However, the ultimate result is everyone accidentally drinks to water of despair and wants to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Min-chan, the only person not to drink the water, discovers an old notebook in her box of treasures and it contains childish drawings of each weirdo currently making her life crazy — including her father, who is a super hero in the drawing.

Then Space Emperor arrives through the roof. Roll credits…

Verdict: The needle of quality swings wildly again for To Be Hero and, even though the reveal of Min’s book adds some interesting mystery to the show, I can’t even be charitable. Way way wayyyyyy too much of the episode was dedicated to poop and characters acting stupidly. The older of the Space Princes even drinks his own trap while talking about it because… Plot I guess?

Watching To Be Hero is maddening. Some episodes are tightly scripted laugh factories. Some episodes have heart amidst crude and inept characters. Yet some episodes are just gross, pointless wastes of time. In it’s own way, this means there’s something for everyone, but also something to annoy anyone trying to watch the whole thing. At this point, my rating is shifting down to a 5 from the average 7 just because I do not actually enjoy (or even want) to watch a significant portion of TBH’s run time.

To Be Hero – 08

The Gist: Big Prince unleashes his plot to defeat Earth by winning Min-chan’s heart. This starts with a refreshing water mellon, which leads Min-chan down a string of anime conventions where each male archetype has been replaced with a mellon. It’s delicious nonsense and it’s barely a fraction of the episode.

The lion’s share of narrative is dedicated to the Great Emperor’s backstory, which involves many female archetype love interests dying on him, a sham-marrage, the origin of his sons, and the reasons why he’s trying to destroy all romance in the universe. It is non-stop hilarious.

Meanwhile, Team Old Man is about to unleash its plot to prevent everyone in the world from using the toilet at a single moment such that Old Man can return to his parallel earth.

“Shut Up and watch the Flashback!” – the Emperor’s Minions

Verdict: To Be Hero nails a near perfect score for absurd humor and punchy, dialog. It’s crisp, moves briskly, and never strays into poop humor.

Mind you, it doesn’t really move the story along in a meaningful way but I’m not sure there’s a story to move along in the first place? Old Man was barely even in the episode and his arc from last week, attempting to get back to HIS Earth, may not even be a real thing.

Don’t care. Too busy laughing!

To Be Hero – 07

“Those wonderful memories are mine!” – Old Man

The Gist: Old Man is confronted with the fact that he isn’t the ‘Old Man’ of this Earth but, rather, a parallel Earth and the Hero Agency just sent him to the wrong place. Except this may not be the case, since we quickly learn that the Old Man doppleganger is, in fact, Prince’s older Brother, hatching a plot to destroy the world.

Too bad Old Man is busy dealing with the recently revived snake lady, who’s plugging into Perv has created a FemiPerv variant. Uh… that’s about it.

“That’s a terrifyingly delusional plot twist, but it makes sense for some reason” – Old Man

Verdict: As always, Old Man’s dialog is the strongest aspect of To Be Hero. When it’s not poop humor, the dry absurdity of his lines, and his casual dissection of how idiotic the world of hero shows is around him, genuinely bring out the lolz.

The rest of the show, not so much…

To Be Hero – 06

The Gist: despite its obsession with toilet humor. episode 6 nails its satire of mid season twists this week. Prince’s attacker turns out to be a spurned lover and a double surprise backstory for why he came to invade earth. The lover, a barbed tail like creature that anchors to the butt of a ‘battery’ that looks like a girl, immediately forms a second loop to this show’s love triangle (because Yamata gives her CPR… without knowing the ‘girl’s’ mouth is actually her anus)

Prince has fully rotated into the hero camp and Old Man has accepted him, even the point of accepting Prince’s love for Min-chan.

Then Prince’s bother shows up as the new villain, only to immediately be cliff-hanger over shadowed by an Old Man look alike showing up at his apartment door. Dun dun duunnnnn

 

Verdict: The dialog was snappy, entertaining, and not as purely gross as it could be. Yes, there were some butt-sucking jokes, but they were much less drawn out than I expected. That said, this fell way short of To Be Hero’s strongest performance.

To Be Hero – 05

“I’m a superhero, y’know? What’s with this treatment??” – Old Man

The Gist: Old Man flashbacks show us how the stress of his career slowly ate away his marriage and turned him from a loving husband to an empty womanizer. Returning to the present to find Prince has been choking him all night, we get a string of potty-humor before Min-chan arrives in need of a plumber.

The tub faucet is leaking and, as an extension of their rivalry, Old Man and Prince compete to fix it. Prince actually tries to drink the whole water supply, while Old Man just uses plumber’s tape, which Min-chan identifies as a lazy fix like her own father would make…

It’s a whistful experience for Old Man. Looping back, this leak was the turning point in his marriage — when he stopped caring — and Min-chan was right there in the tub when it happened. This causes Old Man to reveal his family connection to Prince, which seems like a bad idea but Prince has already transitioned to a quasi-good guy.

Then Prince’s father sends more aliens after him, one of which appears to be standing right outside the apartment…

“This guy’s quite good at Japanese even though he’s an alien…” – Old Man

Verdict: The looping backstory element was nicely done, with decent emotional resonance. Some of the humor was good too, usually Old Man’s responses to the absurd world around him.

However, Perv’s ‘naughty’ jokes are bland, and the obvious attempts to make non-sexual scenes look like sex scenes don’t add anything to the show. I’m not sure why it’s supposed to be funny to see Prince holding the tub faucet down while Old Man tighten’s the washers, with water ‘jacking’ over his face? I’m not sure why a younger viewer would want to watch the non-naughty parts of the show?

To Be Hero – 04

Fortunately, our Hero is completely invulnerable…

The Gist: after a moment of surprise, Old Man discovers that his can not be harmed for more than a moment. Not even by blood loss, which does occur when he is ‘penetrated’ by Prince.

Things get boring fast, so Old Man picks his nose, which leads Price to believe boogers are Old Man‘s weakness. So Prince eats one and makes a giant booger ball but, before the showdown can happen, Old Man’s little girl shows up and beats ‘the perv‘ to a pulp.

…which reminds Prince of how his mother used to beat him, and how much he felt loved back then. Roll Credits!

Yes… that is a giant ball of snot the Alien Prince is holding…

Verdict: This week would probably appeal to an 8 year old. The opening gag (where Prince keeps stabbing into Old Man yelling “but I put it in you from behind” type lines that Old Man calls out as creepy sex references) seem tailor made for that audience. However, the whole gross section devoted to eating/smearing boogers, seems fit for an even younger audience. Who knows who the child abuse gags were meant for…

Like the second episode, which spent more time being gross than funny or intelligent, episode 4 fell totally flat. I mean I get it. The aliens are dumb and dumbfounded by our world, and the humor doesn’t hold its punches but watching people get covered in animated bodily excretions isn’t appealing to me.

Shrug? Given the bipolar nature (and shorter episode length) of this series, I’m happy to tune in next week but man are the review scores going to be all over the place!

To Be Hero – 03

It is as we feared, we are all male and can not fight the female ‘globers’

The Gist: The aliens have studied humans and believe the race is divided into two types. The male type has tiny globes that are useless and the female type has a broader range of globe sizes, that indicate their innate power. Unfortunately, the Aliens discover they are all male and nosebleed/boners guarantee they can not dominate our world.

Not only is the diagrammatic scene that explains all this hilarious, details like the the alien king growing an ever more absurdly tall boner while chastising his men for panic, had me in stitches.

To overcome this challenge, the aliens create the perfect love weapon… and the result is a guy with an emoji’ head who drives a rapping yellow muscle car called BumbleZ… who’s arms and legs are too short to attack Old Man and is quickly defeated.

“I’m Earth’s hero but you got a fancy CG transformation scene?!”

Verdict: The dialog was slower and less base than last week and it all worked very well.

From timing, to 4th wall breaking gags, to cynical views on what people find attractive, this week was pure comedy gold. More than that, it snuck a slightly thoughtful moment of drama in at the end AND cliff-hangered us with the evil emperor putting his hands right through Old Man’s chest.

To Be Hero – 02

The Gist: Old Man is trapped living next door with his nudist neighbor… but the alien threat keeps on coming. This week a chicken man and a pink bearded muscle man are undone in comical, but extremely quickly spoken dialog. Yet by the end, sadly, Old Man is still trapped in a fat perv’s body…

So this week followed the pilot’s template. The humor is odd and well timed, for example the cutting of Old Man and the Pink Bearded alien makes it look like they are about to confront each other at the door, only to be at the wrong addresses, which causes the pink alien to kill himself accidentally in embarrassment… humor is hard to talk about!

To be Hero’s humor at it’s finest

Oji’s Verdict: The back story of chickens being an alien race and the repeated jokes about the nudist’s family leaving him were all cute but good gracious dialog zipped by at break neck speed. I’m not sure that really helped and, in all honesty, the ‘potty humor’ aspect isn’t very… sophisticated.

To Be Hero – 01 (First Impressions)

The Gist: Old Man is a slob and only good at picky up easy floozies, which upsets his only daughter tremendously. Also, he is a toilet seat designer.

One night, after running into his creepy flasher neighbor and suddenly realizing he needed to take a dump, old man is sucked into the sewer and meets a fem version of Mario Mario, who informs Old Man that he will now be a super hero and must stop an alien invasion tomorrow.

Unfortunately, being a super hero means Old Man now looks like a giant fat slob and whatever he wants to say comes out  inappropes. Chaos and laughter ensues…

You will probably like To Be Hero if you enjoyed One Punch Man and don’t mind an 11 minute long, slightly vulgar version alternative. The dialog is quick and packed with humor, as are the visuals, and the goofy setup of the show prevents it from simply feeling like a OPM knock off.

You may not enjoy To Be Hero if unlikeable protagonists and creepy characters aren’t your thing. Generally, no one is especially wholesome in this show. Additionally, while the visuals deliver humor and some action pretty well, this is not an especially pretty show and I do not expect OPM quality fighting.

Oji’s Verdict: TBH moves quick and had my chuckling throughout its short run time. I also found it unpredictable and have no idea where it will go from here, which is a major hook for me as a reviewer.

Considering how much I enjoyed OPM and was disappointed by Mob Psycho’s first 6 episodes, this seems right up my alley. If you’ve given it a look and feel otherwise, or want to engage in healthy a shouting duel about this vs Mob Psycho, join me in the comments below!