Nice, Lin Ling and the overanalysis of their parallels

With episode 23 seemingly wrapping up Nice's arc for now. I wanted to talk about something that had been on my mind for a while with Nice and Lin Ling's character. Originally this post was an analysis of one of To be Hero X's themes (which was lies and deception) but after stewing on the parallels between Nice and lin ling, I wanted to focus on just those two. And so, here's an overanalysis on how the show portrays to two of them and how these parallels are uniquely intertwined.

To preface this, to discuss the parallels between Nice and Lin Ling, theres three things that will need discussing. The character of Lin Ling, the character of Nice, and finally the idea of 'Nice', the perfect hero. I need to say these three things from a discussion stand point just to better understand everything.

So an overview of each point:

Lin Ling: Wants to be a hero Never got the opportunity till Fate handed him the role of nice Plays the role of Nice Gets on decently well with Miss J and Moon Antagonistic (not by choice) to Wreck No relationship with Shang De Breaks free of the role to become his own person

Nice: Wants to be a hero Got the opportunity and was hired to be a hero Plays the role assigned Distant to Miss J and Moon Close to Wreck Subservient and dependent relationship with Shang De Becomes consumed by the role, the goaland the lies

The 'Nice' idea: The perfect hero Adored by all Respectful Deeply in love with Moon Archnemesis to Wreck Public thinks he does nothing wrong

These are the basic ideas of each character and so it allows me to discuss things. Firstly, I want to say this: have you ever noticed how Lin Ling actually fits the role of 'Nice' better than actual Nice. Like Lin Ling shares more things with the idea of Nice, basically having a better but not really romantic (until maybe the very end of episode 4) relationship with Moon, whereas Wreck for once actually is the nemesis of nice emotionally.

The parallels get even more interesting in that Lin Ling never does anything evil. He's allowed to actually be a hero whereas Nice had to do evil things and disobey the perfect hero facade. Lin Ling's facade is that he's not Nice, Nice's facade is that hes not the perfect hero people think he is. This is best represented with Enlightener who is designed to attack the 2 core facets of Nice. The character, and the idea.

In episode 1, Enlightener tries to target and attack the perfect hero idea. The perfect hero 'Nice' is in love with Moon but Nice is not. Lin Ling, embodying more of 'Nice' than nice, is telling the truth the entire time. And so when this goes on and Enlightener fails, its basically proving how Lin Ling is more 'Nice' than Nice. He is the perfect hero people think Nice is. However, episode 4 is when Enlightener as god eye attacks the character of Nice.

So Lin Ling, throughout the 4 episodes, always lives in the shadow of the fact he has actually taken over the life of an actual person. Whike the ideal hero role came easy to him, the role of Nice the person did not and thats always affected him. Episode 2 with Wreck, episode 3 when talking to Firm man and now episode 4 with god eye. The fact Lin Ling lies about this is the one, none ideal hero thing about him, and so when that gets removed, Lin Ling can fully embrace the perfect hero archetype. He fully takes the perfect hero 'Nice' and makes him his own.

This is in contrast to Nice the person who never fully embraced the heroic title as his own. He always lived in dependence of Shang De and hating the assigned role and lies. Every action Nice takes is to destroy and remove Nice further and further away from the idea of 'Nice' and this can be seen numerous times in the show. He will kill innocent people, belittle and look down on others and simply do everything against the idea people think he is.

And no point further proves this than the smile incident, the culmination of everything that Nice wanted, being stripped. He wanted to be a hero, but he killed someone what was actually everything that 'Nice' stood for and it broke him. But he didn't realise just how broken he was until Ahu got into the top 10 and now Shang De tells him he is nothing. Which let me circle back to that.

Throughout Nice's arc, one could say Nice grew more fearful and afraid of everything to the point that a small spec of fear put the fear of god into him. Pair this with Lin Ling who started out a bit fearful but grew so fearless that he'd face down a villain while severely weakened. It parallels hiw Lin Ling became the fearless hero while Nice just became a broken husk of an idea which woukd get adopted by someone who coukd embody the idea better.

And my last point that I noticed is how just interesting things are seen from both Nice and Lin Ling's perspective in terns of relationships. From Lin Ling's perspective, everyone he met were people that Nice could kind of be normal around, his day to day. Wreck being Nice's close friend, Muss J and Moon being colleagues. Stuff like that.

But in Nice's arc, we never see mention of Moon or Wreck. Miss J gets mentioned once and never again. The only person Nice is close to is Shang De, abd thats bevause at this point Shang De has practically consumed everything in Nice's life, destroying him. And because of this, when the one relationship he had been dependant on is gone, Nice breaks.

Which leads us to the scebe in episode 23 where Nice is stood on the building, before he becomes distant and Lin Ling takes the space of where Nice once stood in terns of screen position.

This is my over analysis done.