⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This article contains details from the first four episodes of To Be Hero X, including the death of a recurring character. Reader discretion is advised.
If you’ve never heard of the “fridging” or Disposable Woman trope before, it’s when a female character is killed. Not because her own story came to a natural conclusion, but to hurt the man who loves her and motivate him to avenge her. She doesn’t get a goodbye or any meaningful character development or screen time. Her death is nothing more than a plot device.
Moon from To Be Hero X is a recent example of these tropes. What makes her arc so frustrating is that the show took the time to flesh her out as a character, then sacrificed her anyway.
Who Is Moon?
To Be Hero X is a Chinese donghua (animated series) set in a world where superheroes get their powers from public trust. The more people believe in you, the stronger you become. It’s a clever system, and it has a dark side: the public doesn’t just determine a hero’s power set. It shapes their entire life.
Moon (real name Xiao Yueqing) started out as a travel blogger. Her fans loved watching her explore the world, and that love manifested as a superpower. She got a portal gun that could take her anywhere she wanted to go. Freedom was literally in her hands.
Then Nice saved her life during a villain attack. Their fans decided they were meant to be together. And because the Trust system runs on public belief, that wish didn’t stay a feeling, it changed her power. Her portal gun stopped taking her wherever she chose. It only took her to wherever Nice was.
She never agreed to any of it. She never loved Nice. She was under contract and trapped in a fake relationship for three years. Her entire identity now revolved around being someone else’s accessory. Moon’s ability to move through the world was redirected to orbit a man she didn’t even want to be with.
That is the world Moon lives in before the story even begins.
Moon Tries to Escape Her Fate
Episode 2 of To Be Hero X is Moon’s episode and it’s genuinely a good episode. We see her history in a loose, hand-drawn animation style that’s warmer and more personal than the rest of the series.
We understand that she is not a supporting character who exists to make Nice look heroic. She is a person who had something she loved, watched it get taken away, and has been furious about it ever since.
By the end of the episode, she gets out. Lin Ling, the new Nice, helps Moon fake her death. Nice gives a public eulogy asking fans to pray for her freedom, and the Trust system responds: her portal gun works as it did before she met the original Nice. She can go anywhere.
She disappears to a tropical island. It felt like a happy ending, or at least the beginning of one.
It wasn’t because she left her teleportation gun behind. Whether by accident or an unconscious desire, Moon ended up on a deserted island with no way to leave.
She tried to reach the outside world multiple times and failed. Eventually, she stopped trying. By the end of episode 4, she’s just sitting on a rock, wishing for someone to come find her. Or she’s just resigned herself to a lonely existence.
And then Lin Ling walks through a portal.
A Hopeful Moment Turns Into a Tragedy
When Lin Ling appears on the island with Moon’s portal gun, something shifts in her immediately. She smiles at him. Instead of being hostile or distant, she’s genuinely happy to see Lin Ling again.
For the first time since she “escaped,” the possibility of a normal life returns again.
She doesn’t get time to think about the possibilities.
She’s shot in the head almost immediately after reuniting with Lin Ling.
The timing is not accidental. The story puts hope back in her hands and takes it away in the same breath. Her reunion with Lin Ling isn’t for her. It’s for the viewers and for Lin to get hit with a surprise gut punch.
This was foreshadowed earlier in episode 4. When the Enlightener claims he kidnapped Moon and threatened to kill her, Lin Ling wasted no time trying to save her. He willingly admitted to being a fake hero, lost his powers and the public’s trust in the hope it would be enough to save her life.
Lin Ling’s love for Moon is so pure and genuine, the public decides to embrace him. He earns the hero name “The Commoner.” Moon’s death doesn’t close her story. It opens Lin’s.
Couldn’t To Be Hero X Find Another Way to End Moon’s Story?
To Be Hero X is a good show. The writing is sharp. The Trust system is fascinating. Lin Ling is a compelling protagonist. And Moon’s death is an interesting way to end the show’s first story arc. It’s shocking, it hurts. It does exactly what it’s supposed to do.
Which is part of the problem.
To be fair, the show’s first big story arc is told in reverse chronological order. The first four episodes are actually the story’s ending, not its beginning. Moon’s death is the conclusion, not a mid-series shock that shifts attention back to a male lead.
There’s also the fact that Moon isn’t the whole show. Later arcs introduce female characters with their own stories and agency. To Be Hero X seems to be interested in these characters, and there’s room for the show to grow.
At the same time, there were other ways to end Moon’s story. Lin Ling could have given Moon her portal gun back so she could leave the island. She could have traveled to a city where she went by a new identity. There were other directions to go in wrapping up Moon’s story.
If the writers felt like they had to kill Moon off, at least give her an episode where she decides to sacrifice herself because she thinks it’s the right thing to do. Give her some agency instead of making her a victim.
I’m not saying that writers can never kill off a female character in their story. But it’s worth examining the “why” behind the decision and whether it’s being made solely because the writer doesn’t know how to move the male character forward.
To Be Hero X is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
