General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

To Be Hero (トゥ・ビー・ヒーロー)

To Be Hero (トゥ・ビー・ヒーロー; Chinese: 凸变英雄, Túbiàn Yīngxióng) is a 2016 original comedy anime series directed and written by Li Haoling (李豪凌) and animated by STUDIO.LAN!, telling the story of a divorced toilet-seat designer who is sucked into a toilet, given the mission of saving Earth, and transformed from a handsome man into an overweight hero as the price of his new powers.¹^•² It is the first entry of the To Be Hero franchise, followed by To Be Heroine (2018) and To Be Hero X (2025).³

Key fact	Detail
Format	12-episode TV anime, about 14 minutes per episode; comedy genre⁴
Director and writer	Li Haoling (original story, scripts, storyboards, series composition)¹^•⁵
Animation	STUDIO.LAN!, with photography by Emon (絵梦); planned by Emon and Li Haoling¹
Japanese broadcast	TOKYO MX, October 5 to December 21, 2016, Wednesdays at 18:30¹
Japanese cast	Kenjiro Tsuda (Ossan), Moa Tsukino (Min-chan), Masaya Aoyama (Yamada), Tomokazu Sugita (Prince), Takeshi Maeda (alien)²
Ratings	Douban 8.5/10 from 14,479 users; bilibili 9.8/10; MyAnimeList episode average 8.8; IMDb 6.6⁴^•⁶^•⁷^•⁸
Franchise	Followed by To Be Heroine (2018) and To Be Hero X (2025), both standalone stories³

Spoilers

Premise

The protagonist, called Ossan (おっさん, "middle-aged guy"), is good-looking but sloppy, works as a toilet-seat designer, and lives with his daughter Min-chan after divorcing his wife. Min-chan is talented at both study and sports, and the two constantly clash at home. One day, while using the toilet, Ossan is sucked into the bowl and given the mission of saving Earth, becoming a hero. The price of the power is his appearance: he changes from a handsome man into a short, ugly, overweight figure. His battle to protect Earth and Min-chan, against alien invaders that arrive on schedule, forms the story.²^•⁶

The transformation inverts the usual hero formula: the power-up makes the protagonist less attractive and socially rejected rather than more. Reviewers have described the series as built on low-brow toilet humor and crude gags, but centered on a father who is willing to be hated and mocked so that his daughter stays safe.⁸

Place in the franchise

To Be Hero was followed by To Be Heroine in 2018, which shifts to a Chinese student named Futaba drawn into a dark other-dimensional world whose inhabitants summon cloth spirits called Spiclo, and by To Be Hero X in 2025, a bilibili and Aniplex co-production in which heroes derive their powers from public trust measured as a numerical value.²^•¹⁰ The three series are treated as standalone stories with no required viewing order, sharing Li Haoling's direction and thematic concerns rather than continuity.³ On databases that treat the franchise as one entry, To Be Hero occupies season 1, with 12 episodes aired October to December 2016.¹¹

Production

Li Haoling controlled the project unusually tightly for a television anime: he directed, wrote all scripts, drew storyboards, and handled series composition, and the photography work, normally outsourced, was done in-house at Emon. The animation was credited to "Studio LAN!", a joke name, because the studio was in practice one person named LAN, who did the character designs, color setting, backgrounds, and a large share of the key animation. The result was a production with minimal outsourcing.⁵ LAN also served as episode director, art setting, and general animation director, with Wang Jiefeng as animation director and Shinichi Watanabe supervising the Japanese version.¹^•²

The series was a Chinese-Japanese co-production, with country of origin listed as mainland China and Japan and dialogue in both Mandarin and Japanese.⁴

Broadcast history and versions

An earlier web version, 2B HERO 突变英雄, was produced by Shanghai Emon Animation and began updating on Chinese sites on June 19, 2015, but was ordered stopped by Chinese authorities after the first episode over inappropriate naming and other elements.⁹ The reworked series premiered in China on October 5, 2016, and ran on TOKYO MX in Japan from October 5 to December 21, 2016, in a Wednesday 18:30 slot.⁴^•¹

The Japanese voice cast paired Japanese actors with the Chinese-language track: Kenjiro Tsuda voiced Ossan, Moa Tsukino voiced Min-chan, Masaya Aoyama voiced the neighbor Yamada, Tomokazu Sugita voiced the Prince, and Takeshi Maeda voiced the alien.² In the Chinese dub, Tu Te Ha Meng voiced the protagonist Yashu (伢叔) and Shan Xin voiced Xiaomin (小敏).⁶

Reception

On Douban the series holds 8.5 out of 10 from 14,479 ratings, with 47.4 percent awarding five stars, and it ranks in the top 16 percent of comedies and top 13 percent of animated works on that platform.⁴ On bilibili it scores 9.8 from about 23,000 raters with over 100 million views for the series page.⁶ MyAnimeList episode ratings average 8.8 across the 12 episodes, with the highest-rated episodes at 9.2.⁷ The series was a finalist for the best original animation award at Japan Expo 2017.⁹

Critical reception has been divided along the same line as the premise. The Crunchyroll feature praised the distinctive visual style and the inspired animation of the toilet sequence while noting the reliance on sex jokes and toilet humor, and crediting the father-daughter relationship with genuine heart.⁵ A parental-guide review rated the show 58 percent overall, calling the animation merely okay for 2016 but finding more emotional depth in the ending, on parental sacrifice, than the synopsis suggests.⁸

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Anime and manga › Anime series, episodes, and franchises › OVAs, ONAs, and streaming-original anime

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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