Through the blog posts there are already examples and reasons for an art style change mentioned. Usually not everything is applied at once. The creators and producers tend to only use an art style change on specially occasions. Reasons can be a flashback or past occurrences, to show the characters thoughts and feelings or to separate spaces and universes. What if all of these possibilities are combined? What if the art style changes themselves are a part of the story themselves?
Arguably in the animated Spiderman movies from Sony the art style changes are a part of the story as well. However, they are only used to show separate spaces or universes.
“To be hero X” is an animated series from bilibili and Aniplex. The premise of the world of “To be hero X” is that everyone can be a hero as long as people believe they can be. The more followers a hero has, the stronger their abilities. The abilities themselves are limited to what their believers think they can do or want them to do. Therefore, the life of a hero in this world is limited to their image. The series has 24 episodes. There is no clear main character, but multiple important characters. Some of them get multiple episodes for their stories others get less.
The first episode establishes 3D animation with 2D elements as it’s main art style. This art style remains the dominant one through all of Lin Lings story. Still even the first episode switches between three times between art styles. One switch is for a flashback, another one for a tragic background story of a villain and the last one happens somewhere between reality, a flashback and fantasy.
The second episode includes again multiple style changes. At this point it is clear that each character has a different art style when the viewer dives into their mind or background story, giving the characters another level of personality. All 4 episodes dedicated to Lin Ling stay in a similar fashion.
In episode 5 the main character gets switched to Yang Chen, which at a first watch was slightly confusing, since there was no indication that there would be a new main character now. The art style is in the same 3D animation as before and in flashbacks a change might occur.
With episode 8 however the biggest switch happens. The whole animation style changes to 2D anime animation. During all 3 episodes of Lucky Cyans story there are no art style changes, but also no flashbacks since her whole life is shown. If you follow the story closely the viewers might realize that everything of Lucky Cyan is already playing in the past. In the two stories before Lucky Cyan was mentioned as an already established hero while in her story arc her beginnings were shown. With later episodes the style changes reemerge.
Up until episode 22 the same main 2D animation style is kept, which indicated that all of the stories play in the same timeline. The episode marks also the first real appearance of the mysterious hero X. Fitting to that it is the first time we briefly return to the 3D animation style only to switch in a short period of time between even more styles. It is indicated that X knows of these changes and that in his case they are linked to his powers.
In episode 23 the main style changes again. This time it is still 2D but a lot blockier and less round than before. The reason for this could be the main character who is a dog.
In the last episode X is the main focus, and the style is back to 3D. Since Xs powers are linked to changing art styles there are a lot of switches. Sometimes these switches are even combined. Once X transformed his art style to pixel art, where he can only run along the walls while everything else stays 3D. Whenever he snaps his fingers the art style changes, making the changes more than just a tool to create contrast.
In the case of “To be hero X” the style changes have multiple use cases. They show thoughts, personality, time and a narrative device. For now there is only one season available, which leaves many questions according to the art style and story open. But it is the first series I have seen, where style changes are used this heavily.
