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Elephant out of the room, yes, it looks fantastic. Everyone agrees that not only do the 3D and 2D styles look good in their own right, BeDream transitions between the two beautifully, potentially leading the way for a new artistic genre, but To Be Hero X has... some issues. Most notable out of the gate, the pacing.

While only four episodes in, when it comes to emotional beats, everything moves way to fast. Things happen, characters physically respond, but as far as motivations or emotional reactions beyond the most basic level we don't see any character development. When it comes to shows, imagining being able ... to sit down and talk with the characters, know what they would want to say or do given the chance, means the writers have done a good job at fleshing out the characters. The viewer can imagine a character existing beyond the camera. In To Be Hero X's case, the characters are barely able to maintain their existence even on screen, with close to zero believable motivations or reactions these characters are not given the chance to be themselves, ironically much like the main theme of the show. Rather the inhabitants of this world are hurriedly posed as needed in order to narratively rush from point A to point B, skipping anything that would give someone a reason to care about anyone. While I'm fine with monster of the week type stories, hell, Cowboy Bepop did it, and that definitely manages to write compelling characters, here it just feels cheap, with little direction beyond finding the next story beat to try to make you forget that despite a character dyeing a scene or two ago and that miraculously no one seems to care.

To Be Hero X reminds me a bit of Go! Go! Loser Ranger, a great premise bogged down by poor writing and little to no though put into culminating a greater narrative arc. In Go! Go! Loser Ranger's case, between rushed story elements and little to no sequential storytelling, it was pretty apparent the writers had given up on creating a cohesive narrative and were simply trying to cover the source material as quickly as possible, ignoring answering some of the frankly interesting questions IT raised.

Despite all of this, I am very interested to see how they manage to introduce the entire cast they've heavily d in the opening. If Lin Ling isn't even the true main character (to my knowledge being listed as a ed character until recently) the choice to frontline him for at least the first four episodes without so much as a cameo from the top nine is a... choice?

I guess the three episode rule is turning into seven for this show.