To Be Hero X

Episode 7

From the start of this arc, it was clear that someone was molding Yang Cheng into taking over E-Soul's identity. At first, it looked like it was E-Soul himself. The whole 34th anniversary suit actor competition seemed primed to find the perfect E-Soul replacement (which would allow the aging, scared hero to be set free from his mask-clad existence). Then, it looked like Shang ChaO was behind it. After all, he was a popular high school kid with money, connections, and resources that seemed far too good to be true—tailor-made to be Yang Cheng's backing. But as it turns out, both of those were red herrings. The real culprit? Local café owner and doler out of friendly wisdom: Uncle Rock.

Before I go into this any further, I wanted to say this up front. There's a difference between "hard to predict" and "out of left field." It's the mark of a good series when you can't predict where everything will go, but after the big reveal, everything makes sense. This is certainly true for this reveal in To Be Hero X.

From his little speech about the “Special Love Seat” at the end of the episode, we learn all we need to know about Uncle Rock as a supervillain. He is the chessmaster—but rather than forcing the pieces to move as he wishes directly, he changes the state of the board so the pieces will move where he wants them to of their own accord.

Everything we've seen in this arc has been purposely put in place to turn Yang Cheng into E-Soul. The suit actor competition? Uncle Rock's on the committee. The kidnapping of Little Pomelo? He hired the thugs (who used to work for him delivering supplies to the café). The framing of Yang Cheng? The impeding footage was from his café's security camera. The murder of Shang ChaO? He blackmailed one of the aforementioned thugs into doing it. The actual plan to take down E-Soul? Suggested and carried out by none other than Uncle Rock himself. Even the café and down-to-earth “Uncle Rock” persona were nothing more than a way for him to get close to Yang Cheng and whisper in his ear. But the trick is, never once did Uncle Rock force Yang Cheng to do anything. As far as the new E-Soul is concerned, everything he's done has been according to his own free will.

Of course, all this raises the question: Why bother to do all this in the first place? While there may be additional deeper motives, the surface-level one is pretty obvious. It's all about control. Uncle Rock wants a top-level superhero he has full control over. But why go through all the hassle of making a new hero from scratch and having them climb the ranks when you can usurp an already famous one? Someone like E-Soul, with 34 years of heroics to his name, is the perfect target.

This leads to the second question: Why Yang Cheng? Well, who could be easier to control? Yang Cheng is an orphan. He's been bullied, shunned, and is barely scraping through life. And on top of all this, he has a hero complex—or at the very least feels the need to pretend to be one—stemming from E-Soul rescuing him as a child. So, here you have a kid who wants to be a superhero, has no network, and is secretly jealous that everyone else seems to have what he does not—from money, to fame, to getting the girl. Give him everything he's ever wanted, then cruelly take it away, leaving nothing but the kind of fatherly love he's always longed for? He might as well be a puppet.

But to be clear, while manipulated to an extreme degree, Yang Cheng isn't innocent in this ordeal. As we see in this episode, he could have saved Shang ChaO, but he hesitated. He was so deeply jealous of the person he saw as having it all that even though Shang ChaO had been nothing but ive, part of Yang Cheng wanted him gone. And that delay in using his powers led to Shang ChaO's death.

Yet, rather than face this darkness in his own soul, Yang Cheng instead puts all the blame on the obvious scapegoat: E-Soul. And to be clear, there isn't even circumstantial evidence pointing to E-Soul. It's pure supposition based on the idea that E-Soul wouldn't want someone stealing his powers and would do any and every underhanded action to stay in the spotlight. Yang Cheng even sees killing E-Soul as his way of absolving his guilt. So in the end, he is left with the loss of an arm, trapped inside a mask, and left without the girl he loved and the hero he looked up to—and acting at the whims of the man who organized it all.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Oh sure, NOW we get a head-shot that sticks.

• My favorite misdirect? Uncle Rock was watching all the café's heavy kitchen equipment being loaded into a truck, implying he was such a good guy, he liquidated the café to get the money needed to give Yang Cheng his chance at victory.

• So why did Yang Cheng shoot Moon in the head? At the moment, I guess that it's an order from Uncle Rock. Lin Ling is the exact opposite of Yang Cheng. He is a spontaneously created hero—a complete wild card that Uncle Rock has no control over (we even see him watching Lin Ling's fight with God Eye back in episode 4). The murder of Moon may be Uncle Rock's attempt to destabilize the new up-and-coming hero and knock him out of the top hero tournament psychologically.

• At the rate we're going (3 or 4 episodes per character), we're not even going to cover all the characters, much less see the actual tournament in this series' 24-episode run.

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