Find your tribe in a Sea of Creativity
Seriously, I can't stress this enough - go and fucking watch his latest show (and previous ones).
To those saying that itās okay to call To Be Hero X āanimeā because the Chinese equivalent term ādonghuaā (åØē») literally also means āanimationā donāt get the point.
Would you call your English breakfast tea āchaiā even though āchaiā is just the Hindi word for tea? Or any bread ānaanā even though naan also just means ābreadā? CafĆ© au lait and cafĆ© con leche both literally mean ācoffee with milkā in their respective languages, but their traditional preparation method and taste is very different. Thereās also American comics vs Filipino komiks.
But most of all, would you call your Japanese anime ācartoonā even though thatās the actual English word for animated shows?
You wonāt.
So when you borrow a term from another language to describe one thing, youāre actually saying that that thing comes from a particular country or culture.
Calling To Be Hero X an āanimeā is like saying itās from Japan.
āOh chill, Miya, itās not that seriousāā But it is.
Itās bad enough that a lot of people already think that the show is from Japan and donāt bother to watch it in the original audio, but itās even worse when you see the sinophobic comments online about peopleās resistance to the original version despite learning it is from China (insisting the jp dub is better even though they canāt understand Japanese).
Calling TBHX an anime would be acquiescing to the erasure of the Chinese background of the show and saying that itās actually Japanese when itās not. (And if you just pause for a second to think about it, that is such a fucked-up thing, considering what Japan did to China in WW2. But letās not delve too deeply into that.)
āBut some people call ATLA an anime even though itās not from Japanāā
Yeah, but the USA-Japan relationship is very different from the Japan-China relationship. You cannot compare these two. I can go at length about the geopolitical implications, but to keep it simple, just think of it this way: Calling a donghua an anime would be similar to whitewashing.
But even without considering the āseriousā context, TBHX animation isnāt even like that of a typical anime. Have you ever seen an anime that blends 3D and 2D animation so seamlessly and ambitiously like TBHX does?
3D animation is kinda a staple in donghua. There are so many great 3D donghua out there. Recently, the 3D donghua Nezha 2 even beat Inside Out and The Lion King for highest-grossing animated film of all time. And even before TBHX, there were already many other donghua that mix the 3D and 2D mediums (e.g. You Yao, No Doubt in Us, etc.).
So to say, TBHX animation style is distinctly Chinese. You cannot call it an anime.
i wonder if x is so different from everyone else in the hero industry is because he has 0 affiliation to any companies. i firmly believe this makes him have much more freedom than the rest, plus there's no manager on his ear yapping their gums out on this-and-that.
x's freedom is shown a lot of times in trailers, endings, and the opening by him being in his "citizen" persona āĀ which we have seen no one have unlike him ā a work life that is outside of his hero work that makes him have a separate identity as people there, possibly, only knows him as the 'chill guy who takes all the sugar in the office' than the cool omnipotent hero x.
that doesn't make him obviously free from his responsibilities. he has two jobs where one he can slip away when it's dusk, and the other one he has to work for almost 24/7 that has no time in or out unlike the office job he has. of course, there's other heroes but he's top 1. expectations still weigh on him.
he's enigmatic because no one owns him. think of him like an indie artist with no label company and with the freedom to do anything except they're also stuck in the same system with how the work can take over their lives and the audience views them.
i speak on this in my opinion and belief, how x does every move it's like art itself.
can i just say I FUCKING KNEW IT
from the 2nd nice pv that they released i was like, this is not giving ur classic 2 boys chasing after a girl vibe I KNEW IT I KNEW IT
THIS BITCH COMES IN SAYING THE MOST NEGLECTED SPOUSE SHIT IN THE FUCKING WORLD
clocks that it's not the og nice AND THEN TEARS IN HIS DAMN EYES ASKS WHERE THE REAL NICE IS
WHAT NORMAL PERSON SAYS "only I most understood/knew his punch" WHAT THE FUCK
AND THEN FUCKING FLASH BACK YALL?????
fucking looks all content to die once he learnt that nice is dead dude my guy
THE DAMN REFLECTION IN THE EYE IM GOING TO GO INSANE
and we're going to get at least another ep with their backstory cuz none of the stuff in the pv was in this ep
li haoling count ur days this man just cannot stop himself from adding in doomed yaoi can he
wreck and nice as satosugu ā¹ļø
from this jjk scene!