Cartoon Hero

"Because with great nostalgia comes great responsibility." The Cartoon Hero, aka TheHeroOfTomorrow, is a part-time superhero who specializes in animation criticism.

Appearance
Tall, rather portly, brown hair and eyes, small square glasses, slightly tanned.

Signature outfit: Blue shirt, blue jeans, black sneakers, red cape.

Personality
The Hero, at first, started out as just another angry reviewer, but has softened up over the course of his review show. Now, he prefers a more analytical approach. But don't be fooled by his more docile nature...make him angry and he won't hesitate to bring you to justice, be you movie or criminal.

History
Six years ago, The Cartoon Hero was a struggling cartoonist called Justin Adams, creating what he thought would be the next comic sensation: The Cartoon Hero. A misfire from a particle cannon next door fused his molecules with his own creation, turning him into a hybrid of human and toon. Since it was due to their cannon misfiring, the U.S. government recruited him to be a special crimefighter endorsed by them. As one of the few mutated humans in the world, it was natural that he thought the job was going to be a breeze.

That was before he met Diamanda Hagan.

Due to a misfire of his TNT, the Hero blamed himself for causing Hagan's death in their first encounter, causing him to train constantly in order to gain control of his powers. But this would not be his last meeting with her, for Hagan possessed a mutant ability as well--that allowed her to rise from the dead. The details of this encounter can be read in the origin comic, which can be found here: http://darthdespario.deviantart.com/gallery/29985693

It would be almost three years before the Hero encountered Hagan again. By this point, he had started his own review show during his down time, since being a mutant meant that the government rarely required his help to fight street crime, preferring to use him to fight other mutants. This review show just finished its third season in May of 2012, and a fourth season began in August of 2012. Hagan and the Hero happened to have videos that were right next to each other in the collaboration of Land Before Time sequel reviews on the TGWTG forums--a twist of fate for the Hero, who had thought her dead up to this point. Hagan and the Hero have remained archnemeses to this day, often battling in his review show.

In said review show, the Hero encountered a movie known as Tentacolino, or in English, "In Search of the Titanic," a movie so bad that it somehow has the power to rip open the fabric of space and time. The first time this happened, the Hero managed to see into another universe, where he saw an evil version of himself, dubbed "The Cartoon Villain." Again with the aid of this movie's reality-distorting powers, the Villain managed to make his way to the Hero's universe. With the aid of Okami's celestial brush gods, the Hero managed to seal him away in a jar of dip, being partially a toon, but part of the Villain's atomic structure escaped into the Hero's mind, where it lay dormant, making him slowly forget his own abilities so that it would be a match for him in the future. This plan backfired, however, as the Hero was unable to defend himself when Hagan returned, and using the power of the Shyamalanicon, a tome of eldritch lore, she was able to break the fourth wall and shoot him dead from her fortress in Haganistan.

Once in the underworld, the Hero engaged in a battle for his soul, his memory returned to him by the brush gods, who had also been sealed away by the Villain's actions. With their aid, he was able to win against the Villain, whose body remained sealed away while his soul was trapped in the underworld forever. Using the power of Rejuvenation, the Hero was able to get back the Shyamalanicon and restore the fourth wall, preventing Hagan from killing him in this way again.

His victory was short-lived, however, as at the end of Season 3, the Hero found out that the government he'd worked for had secretly been cloning him, weaponizing him in a similar fashion to the one described by the Villain. He also found out that his friend, Agent Smith, was only one of an army of similar clones, and said Smith, #37, was killed for revealing this information. As of the end of Season 3, the Hero has cut all ties with the government, and the warehouse full of Hero clones was destroyed when the building self-destructed. However, the Hero suspected that there were reserves.

As of Season 4, two new characters appeared--a sentient security system named DENNIS (Dynamic Energized Nanotechtronic Network of Internal Security), and a time-traveling clone of the Hero from the future known only as Number Six, as he was the sixth clone to attempt time travel. Originally, he attempted to kill the Hero, but he claims that this is to prevent the apocalypse--which the Hero apparently causes in the future. However, he hesitated to do so, seeing that the Hero wasn't the villain he was led to believe he was. Since then, he has mostly become concerned with the fact that his time travel watch is no longer working as a communicator, and he can no longer travel back to his own time. Eventually, Number Six was able to confess to the Hero what this apocalypse entailed--after dropping off the radar for a few years, the Hero returned with an army of shadowy soldiers known as the Hands of Chaos, all commanded by a dark god known only as Chaos, wiping out all resistance in his path.

Eventually, the government that recruited the Hero was able to create a prototype time-travel watch, and, using what little genetic material they had left, they created nine clones of the Hero, arming them with futuristic weaponry, and sending them back in time to kill the Hero to prevent this future from happening. Six's attempt was the first to be successful, in numerical order, and even then he ended up fifty miles and several months off. Six's attempt to kill the Hero failed, but eventually Chaos learned of their plan and began to send his Hands back in time. However, by this time the Hero and Six were fighting side-by-side against them, the Hero soon becoming armed with a set of Demon Blades from the universe of the video game Muramasa. In fact, in the Christmas 2012 review of Tokyo Godfathers, the Hero confessed that he considered Six part of his family, after it was previously implied that he'd lost at least some of them, but how has not been revealed yet. Six was eventually killed by the General Hand, his soul sealed into the General's dagger. The Hero, using some quick thinking and his own teammate's dagger, was able to kill the General, but as of yet he hasn't found a way to bring his "brother" back.

Chaos was eventually summoned by the Hero, revealing that all of his toon-based abilities were the result of him being combined with a toon--and therefore, getting access to the realm of Spiral Energy, a concept introduced in Gurren Lagann. Having been touched by this realm, and being a human-toon hybrid, the Hero is able to unlock abilities no normal human could possess. However, thanks to Six's warning, the Hero was able to send Chaos to Azeroth, where he was defeated by a giant robot piloted by the Hero, the Media Hunter, TestZero, The Hardcore Kid, and Ozzie Arcane. (Note: This is a call back to The Media Hunter's Cat Soup review, except in this case all five of them combined with the robot.)  The Hero also discovered that he can access the Hammer-Spaces of all of his clones (the pocket dimension in his cape where he pulls weapons and objects from) and was able to draw the entire army of them into Azeroth with him, eventually resulting in them sacrificing themselves to restrain Chaos for the final attack. After Chaos's defeat, however, it was revealed that, thanks to his growing Spiral Energy, a mysterious council of beings is keeping an eye on the Hero. One of which had a deadly gift for him, courtesy of Count Sigeeyai.

In Season 5, this gift was revealed to be the summoned kitsune Yoko, from the anime Inukami!, which the Hero had previously given a thorough trashing. After restraining him with a magical shock collar, Yoko finally revealed herself to the Hero, and that she was in fact the Ninetails from Inukami, a fallen brush god with the ability to temporarily disrupt the Hero's own brush powers. However, thanks to some intervention from The Media Hunter and Ozzie Arcane (who had been keeping an eye on him since their Sengoku Basara review), the Hero was able to drive Yoko back. This, however, went against the plan of the rogue figure from the council, revealed to be named Ramiel. Ramiel proceeded to steal the last remaining Black Lantern ring, and resurrect the Cartoon Villain from the dead. After consuming both Yoko and an alternate-universe version of the Hero named Dr. Insanero, the Villain created a state-wide eclipse so that he could kill the Hero once and for all. However, Death was able to warn the Hero in time to contact another reviewer friend of his, Writrzblok of Way or No Way. When the Villain came knocking, the Hero was ready, hitting the Villain with dip and creating a fake sun to temporarily weaken him. At first, this was not enough--but then the Hero thought to transform the fake sun back into the real one, allowing the sunlight to break through once again. However, this was not the end of the Villain--since unlike other Black Lanterns, he had been able to consume a version of himself in Dr. Insanero, he was more solid than other Black Lanterns and had enough energy to retreat. When he did so, the first place he went was Haganistan, where he contacted Diamanda Hagan, and with her help he began building a watch to travel through time and erase the Hero from existence altogether. This would have spelled the end of the Hero were it not for help from an unlikely source--Count Sigeeyai. According to him, with the alternate timeline caused by Number Six returning to the present day, if the Villain were to interfere with the time stream any more than it already had, the fabric of reality would unravel completely. Using Sigeeyai's usual method of energy absorption--the pain of a reviewer watching bad movies--Sigeeyai was able to create another time travel watch for the Hero, one that could lock onto the Villain's watch and follow him through time. The Hero proceeded to chase the villain through several different universes until arriving at Azeroth, shortly before Chaos was destroyed. However, though the Villain attempted to interfere with the outcome, the two ended up getting trapped in a space-time void when the Hero destroyed the Villain's faulty watch. By reconciling with Yoko, he was able to remove her spirit from the Villain's body and thus remove his brush powers, thus able to dispatch the Villain with his ultimate technique, Rising Sun Strike, and escape the void, where Death was waiting to congratulate him. Yoko's whereabouts are currently unknown, but the Hero was able to obtain a ritual from Death that allowed him to bring back a single soul to the land of the living. Meanwhile, Ramiel was imprisoned by the council for his rebellious actions.

At the beginning of Season 6, Number Six was brought back to life with the ritual, but shortly thereafter, the Hero went back to Azeroth and was infected with a fragment of Ramiel's power. This infection made him become more angry and aggressive--but it was only once the infection took on a consciousness of its own that the Hero started a plan to hypnotize the world into only watching his show and no others. However, Six was there to figure out what was going on, and with DENNIS's help, he was able to construct a special dip-laced tranquilizing bullet to knock out the Hero. Facing the threat of possible death for the Hero, Six instead conducted a review of his own, of the video game Psychonauts, which allowed him to travel inside the Hero's mind and kill the infection--though there was a promise of more to come from his master. When the Hero awakened, he realized that thanks to people like Six and others who had lost their channels along with him, he was no longer truly alone.

The Cartoon Hero's Reviews has five separate categories, most of which involve animation. They are as follows:

1. The Cartoon Hero Presents/vs.: A straight-up review of a movie or TV show. If there is a Vs. in the title, it's a negative review, Presents will be positive.

2. Top Lists: A top 10 list having to do with animation. This format is also used for acknowledging his mistakes at the end of every season.

3. From Cartoons to Crap: A special set of reviews where the Hero takes on bad adaptations of animated movies or TV shows into live-action ones.

4. The Art of Gaming: The Hero's only video game review series. To qualify for this review series, the game must be good (except for that one time he reviewed Lost Magic), and meet one of three categories: 5. Cartoons That Never Made It: In which the Hero reviews a pilot or very short animated series that never got a full series, for good or for ill.
 * The game was based on a previous animated movie or TV show.
 * The game has a unique art style.
 * The game has some other idea that qualifies it as "art," which the Hero will justify. This series was created to add to the "video games as art" discussion, and it will always produce a positive review.

The Cartoon Hero's reviews can be found at http://zippcast.com/theherooftomorrow, on Dailymotion at http://www.dailymotion.com/theherooftomorrow ,on SpaceMonkeyMafiaStudios at http://spacemonkeymafiastudios.net ,and at Rosenhacker's website at http://rosenhacker.posterous.com/pages/hero.

Powers and Abilities
Cartoon Weapon Conjuration: The Cartoon Hero has power over all sorts of cartoon weapons, able to conjure up TNT to throw at his enemies as well as a giant hammer that he can smash his foes with. Celestial Brush: Through the magic of the Celestial Brush, given to him by the Celestial Brush Gods, The Cartoon Hero is able to utilize its magic and abilities so long as he can remember the god's existence.
 * T.N.T.: Summons a stick of TNT which creates an explosion of variable intensity.
 * Giant Hammer: Summons a giant hammer. So far, this has only been seen in the comic origin.
 * Anvil Storm: Produces a rain of anvils. However, this takes a longer time to work.
 * Wheel of Feet: Gives the Hero a short burst of super-speed. So far, this has only been seen in the comic.
 * ACME Smoke Bomb: Throws an ACME-style bomb that creates a smokescreen. So far, this has only been seen in the comic.
 * Falcon Punch: Exactly what it sounds like. However, if used too often it aggravates the wound Diamanda Hagan gave him when they first met.
 * Rejuvenation: Using this technique, The Cartoon Hero was able to restore the Fourth Wall after Diamanda Hagan broke it to kill him.
 * Power Slash: A simple slashing attack that does not physically cut the enemy, but has the physical effects of a slash from a sword.
 * Thunderbolt: Though this technique is truly called Thunderstorm, the Hero prefers to call it this. Either way, it summons a bolt of lightning.
 * Veil of Mist: Can temporarily slow down time for 5 seconds.