To Be Hero X Ep 12 Review: Hatred & Jealousy

The 2nd episode and also the final one for Queen’s arc this season for To Be Hero X is here. I feel a bit bad for Queen since she deserve much more screentime than this to flesh out her character. But what’s done is done. However, Queen has the hands-down best fight scene in the entire series until now. While I’m not the biggest fan of cat-fighting, it sure is a spectacle when two beautiful women duke it out in epic proportions.

We started the episode with Queen still in depression mode. And the media is hammering her about the loss she suffered against X. To put the event into the timeline, this is shortly before Cyan’s rush to the orphanage. The press blame Cyan for Queen’s failure, so she decided to do something to help her kouhai. I really like this segment since it helped connecting the arcs together. It’s also great to see that Queen was a mature senior that really looks after Cyan. The reporter dude is still sus as hell though, so there’s that.

Afterwards, Bowa just basically rushed Queen right before the next Hero Tournament. Her reasoning is that Queen’s “father” was the reporter dude and she basically got a leg up in hero-ing thanks to him. Nepotism – so to speak. It’s kinda a stupid reason but you can see Bowa was being consumed by negative emotions to the point that her eyes turn black and red. And you know what that means, she’s using not just Trust Value but also negative emotion, probably fear. And what comes next is perhaps the studio’s most back-breaking animation yet.

The fight scene between Queen and Bowa was out of this world – like seeing two Super Saiyans with supernatural power and weapons go at it. The scale was insane and frankly, it baffles me that civilians actually got killed during the fight even though it took place in a super remote location. The speed and impact depicted in the fight was superb, remind me a lot of Boros from One Punch Man, and some MHA fights. Queen with one swing of her spear cut through several steel containers, Bowa with her super speed that can slam Queen through multiple walls and swing a ridiculous weapon that seemingly has no limit. Then Queen show off her power by summoning giant leance of light for some explosive shot. To be fair, I wish they did a better job explaining Queen’s ability – because so far, she hasn’t really “use” that ability to its fullest. The entire fight is a high-speed, high-impact fight but there is not much power utilization from both sides. Bowa’s power seems to just be…superhuman strength, speed, reflexes etc… While Queen has the power to “impose rules” on things, but she didn’t really use it to so anything super interesting.

Furthermore, this fight lasted insanely long. I think it’s almost half the episode! The two girls keep beating each other up brutally. I really like long fights, but I would prefer it not to get in the way of character development. We spent a lot of time with other people’s issue rather than focusing on Queen in this arc, and we only get 2 episode for her too. Kinda feel like she deserves more.

At the end of the episode, we saw that Queen and Cyan set out on a vacation. But of course, there is no rest for the wicked, as there is no rest for heroes. The two encountered a giant beast on the way – and it is none other than Big Johnny from the Johnnies. However, the next arc seems to be focusing on Queen’s young admirer, the mecha musume Loli. Let’s wait and find out!

=Aaron=
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