Hero: 108

Hero: 108 is an animated television series on Cartoon Network and the Cartoon Network international cable network, and Kabillion OnDemand channel in the United States. The series was created by Phoenix Tarng of Gamania, co-produced by Gamania, Cartoon Network, and Taffy Entertainment.

The story is about humans and animals battling for peace in the Hidden Kingdom. The main characters, First Squad, are led by an organization called Big Green. The story was inspired by the 14th century Chinese novel, Water Margin, although in a the style of a children's show.

This series has a character sheet

Tropes used in Hero: 108 include:
  • All Your Powers Combined: A lot of characters team up for more power; a notable example would be, after making Yaksha grow he turns into a Humongous Mecha and First Squad combine their powers
    • Also Lin Chung's combiner team with the Cheetah King and Queen.
  • Abnormal Ammo: From peas to paintbrushes to tops. Basically, if it's NOT a weapon, it's used as one in this series.
  • Amazing Technicolor Wildlife:
  • Animal Gender Bender: Queen Peacock
  • Badass Boast: "I AM MIGHTY RAY!!! FEAR MY EYEBALLS!!!"
  • Big Bad: High Roller
  • Bowdlerize: High Roller's orignal design had an arrow going through one of his ears and out the other.
  • Bullet Seed: The Air Force does this with grape seeds.
  • Butt Monkey: Ape Trully most of the time but all the main characters got a chance to be one.
  • Calabash Technology: With shades of Schizo-Tech.
  • Cargo Ship: Mystique Sonia and Yaksha, especially since someone has to tell her that they love her three times in a row to become a Yaksha in the first place.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Yaksha is one.
    • The girl part is in question, since at least one Yaksha was a guy. It's creepy how no one seems to care that the guy got turned into one.
    • The spell seems to be partly voluntary. In "Peacock Castle", several people became Yakshas at once. When Sonia's looks were messed up, they all returned to normal, but Sonia's own Yaksha remained to comfort her.
  • Cooking Duel: The animals will always challenge the humans to one of these before agreeing to be allies.
  • Cool and Unusual Punishment: Some of the 'torture' methiods of the animals count as this, though others are actually pretty cruel.
  • Department of Redundancy Department:

"We don't steal useless things!"
"Yes, we only steal useful things!"

  • Damsel in Distress: Ape Trully's key role. To the point that even the characters know it; one episode has Ray complaining about how bored he is waiting for Ape Trully to get in trouble so they have to save him again.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: In one episode High Roller invents Darth Vader-esque helmet armor for his new chameleon army before putting them on parade to view his speech (or tries to, anyway). Not only is Queen Chameleon's helmet so big that the cannon on top makes it look like a spiked pickelhaube, but the enormous logo on the side is painted in a style that makes it look like a deformed (and six-armed) swastika.
  • Drop the Hammer: Deer King is skilled with a hammer, but mainly he uses it to get his subjects horns vibrating
  • Everything's Better with Monkeys
  • Everything's Worse with Bears: Bear King seems to be The Dragon.
  • Far East: Where the series takes place.
  • Fetish Fuel / Power Perversion Potential: Mystique Sonia, so very much.
  • Five-Man Band: First Squad and Second Squad
  • Fridge Horror: In the Liger episode, the Yaksha that Mystique Sonia has is burned up and she cons a tank driver into saying he loves her three time so that he turns into a Yaksha, which she treats like it is the one she always had. Do the Yaksha all have the same mind?
    • It appears the curse requires their love to be real, as when another group of people fell victim to it, they reverted back to normal when her looks got screwed up, while her Yaksha loved her anyway. And that tank driver did actually admit to loving her.
  • Fridge Logic: High Roller says all humans are enemies when he is human. So why do the animals listen to him?
  • Four-Fingered Hands
  • Fusion Dance: One of Woo the Wise's inventions can merge 6 total subjects into a hybrid.
    • High Roller can combine with Bear King normally, gaining the ability to use Bear King's body as his own, and it's suprisingly effective, letting him singlehandedly beat the stuffing out of all of First Squad with realitive ease.
  • Genre Blindness: Ape Trully takes it to an art from.
  • Green-Eyed Monster: Mystique Sonia's Yaksha has a tendency of becoming angrily jealous whenever she shows any affection to anyone else.
  • Hartman Hips: Mystique Sonia.
  • Henchmen Race
  • Huge Rider, Tiny Mount: Big Green ride on turtles with tank threads. Parrot King rides a snail for some reason.
  • Humans Are the Real Monsters: Most animals believe this thanks to High Roller
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: ______ Castle, with _____ being the animal featured in that Episode.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Lampshaded in Frog Castle. "Defeat First Squad, Frogs!" "Hop to it!" *Dope Slap* "What a stupid joke."
  • Informed Ability: Mr. No Hands is supposed to be team captain, but stays home in quite a lot of episodes.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Second Squad, especially Alpha Girl during "Turtle Cannon Competition II" She is forced to painfully take one for the team, and her team loses BECAUSE of it.
  • Just Here for Godzilla: Admit it guys, how many of you watch this show just for Mystique Sonia.
  • King Mook: The animal kings that serve High Roller.
  • Lampshade Hanging: ApeTrully gets captured by every animal faction he tries to make friends with. One episode even begins with Mighty Ray saying he's bored waiting around for ApeTrully to call them to save him.
  • Law of Chromatic Superiority: The animal leaders (examples: Elephant King is red, Deer King is red, Crocodile King is green, Snake King is blue, Bear King is brown, Eagle/Bald Eagle/Ostrich King has white chest feathers)
  • Leitmotif: Disco music is played whenever turtles are moving.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters
  • Made of Iron: Tigers, Ligers and Rhinoes are the only animals invulnerable to Mighty Ray's Eye Beams
  • Meaningful Name: ApeTrully, High Roller, Jumpy Ghostface.
  • Minion with an F In Evil: Zebra brothers when it is not the full moon. The only real boost they get with the full moon is some miscellaneous power, though.
  • Mooks
  • My Friends and Zoidberg: When the Zebras pretend to become good guys. Mr. Nohands "First Squad and you Zebras...Deploy"
  • Nice Hat: Yaksha
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: Bet you didn't know Yaksha could become a Combining Mecha or Mystique Sonia's buns could give the team super strength until the happened, did you?
  • 108
  • Pound of Flesh Twist: in "Pitched Battle of the Tank Army", summoning the Sealed Evil in a Can basically amounts to doing 100 lifts with the improvised dumbbell...and then they die in one hit each
  • Power-Up Food: Mighty Ray and Bananas.
  • Raised by Wolves: The Dog King
  • Rule of Three: "We love you Mystique Sonia!!"
  • Serious Business: Almost all the challenges are this, the most eponymous example being when they managed to recruit Jumpy Ghostface after defeating him on Jump Rope Battle
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Lin Chung is the strongest, smartest, and most creative member of Big Green. A majority of difficult obstacles are only overcome due to Lin Chung's expertise, and most episodes would not reach a conclusion if not for his skillful and/or creative solutions. In fact, most animal challenges are won solely by Lin Chung, by his direct intervention, or thanks to his advice. Often, the other members of First Squad aren't even needed once Lin Chung discovers how to achieve victory. It's no wonder that First Squad's de facto leader, Mr. No Hands, simply stays home most of the time. This would all be fine if Lin Chung was actually clearly defined as The Hero of the series, rather than focusing on the concept of there being a team of heroes.
  • Strictly Formula: ApeTrully goes to animal's castle and offers a golden present. ApeTrully gets captured and calls First Squad. First Squad beats up the animals, animals refuse to surrender unless First Squad beats them in some random competition.
  • The So-Called Coward: Sammo, supposedly so cowardly that the other whales shun him, swims right into danger when the heroes ask him to transport them. He never even flinches.
  • Space Whale Aesop: Many times. High Roller could be considered one himself. Read nothing but comics and eat only candy and you will turn into an evil emperor. Be nice to butterflies and they will save you from magic zebras.
  • Suddenly Voiced: Camel King and Golden Eye Husky; justified since Parrot King is now teaching English.
  • Talking Animals
  • The Emperor: High Roller
  • The Rival: Second Squad
  • This Is Your Premise on Drugs
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: High Roller turning First Squad into Animals.
  • Those Two Guys: Zebra Brothers
  • Transformation Name Announcement: I am Mighty Ray! Fear my eyeballs!
  • Wide-Eyed Idealist: ApeTrully thinks the answer to all problems is asking nicely.
    • Asking nicely and offering piles of gold.
      • It doesn't hurt to try, but it's never worked onscreen.
      • He used it to buy a ticket to a performance of the Panda and Giraffe King.
      • It actually DID work, sort of, in regards to winning over the bat and the hen forces in "Pitched Battle of the Airforce." They actually joined Big Green without trying to put First Squad through the standard challenge. But, to be fair, they HAD already just been beaten thoroughly in mass combat and their allies, the eagles, had just abandoned them to Big Green's forces, which severely shook their faith in High Roller.
    • In "Rabbit Castle", he also offers carrots to the rabbits.
  • The Klutz: The Zebras.
  • The Unintelligible: Jumpy Ghostface in the early episodes, and most of the time, Yaksha.
  • The Woobie: Chameleon Queen
  • The Worm That Walks: Many bugs have been shown able to become a larger being by combining.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Sure the Zebra Brothers and High Roller do the most stupid stuff, but the Air Defense Troops of Big Green actually ate the bamboo shoots that Lin Chung was using as ammo, leaving him totally defenseless. In fact, throughout the whole fight they seemed to be incredibly focused on eating the Heroes' ammo.
    • High Roller on one occasion is actually winning by a large margin, until he stops to mock his opponent, laugh, put on a puppet show, and then laugh some more. Then he gives up the key to Big Green after winning it to... conquer the moon.
  • Unexplained Recovery: In Peacock Castle, the Zebra brothers fell into a volcano. "Oh, but this is a kids' show, right? they'll crawl back out of it at the end of the episode, right?" No. The episode ended without even hinting that they could have survived. In the next episode they are fine, without even a Hand Wave to explain their resurrection.
  • Wardrobe Malfunction: a Running Gag with Woo the Wise.
  • A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Ape Trully. Although he looks kind of robotic, he's a monkey wearing his best attempt at a human disguise, because he believes his troops wouldn't take orders from a monkey -even though Big Green is all about human/animal alliances.
    • Though since this is based on a Chinese tale, it could be cause of the legend of "The Monkey Who Would be King." Or whatever it was called.
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