Many years ago, animals and humans lived together in joyful harmony. But then, a wicked trickster called High Roller fooled the animals into thinking humans were their enemies. Chaos reigned until an army of 108 heroes called Big Green banded together to defend the humans and end the war. The story is loosely based off of the 14th century Chinese novel, Water Margin, although in the style of a children's show.
This series has a character sheet.
Tropes associated with Hero 108:
- All There in the Manual: A page on the show's now defunct official website (archived here
) explains things that aren't brought up in any of the episodes, for instance:- The reason ApeTrully never reveals his identity and keeps trying to befriend the animals with gold despite failing multiple times is because Monkeys tend to hold onto their ideas so hard that they won't accept anything else. To quote: "Certainly the Humans would trust him by now, but once a Monkey gets an idea in his head, it’s hard to replace it with a new one!"
- Woo The Wise was supposedly a hermit before he joined Big Green.
- The reason why Mr. No Hands is frequently absent from missions is because he's not a strong fighter.
- 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 .
- The titular hero 108 is comprised of all 107 heroes of Big Green.
- 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.
- Always in Class One: Extremely evident. In spite of the title implying a very large cast, nearly all the action is centered around the five members of the "First Squad".
- Amazing Technicolor Population: Some of the humans' odd skin colors.
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: Many of the animals featured in the series have a wide variety of colors, usually quite vibrant.
- Animal Gender-Bender: Peacock Queen. The term "peacock" is used to refer to the male peafowls with "peahen" being the female equivalent.
- Animorphism: The Spirit Cave that turns all who enter into their spirit animal. Lin Chung is a panther, Mighty Ray is a boar and Mystique Sonia is a swan.
- Badass Boast: Almost whenever Mighty Ray eats a banana and charges his lightning attack, he will exclaim: "I AM MIGHTY RAY!!! FEAR MY EYEBALLS!!!"
- Bamboo Technology: Many weapons and contraptions utilize natural materials; for instance, Calabash tanks are mostly produced from calabashes rather than constructed with metal and similar materials.
- Bears Are Bad News: Bearstomp (a.k.a. Bear King). He's on High Roller's side, serving as both a powerful force and a bodyguard.
- Big Bad: High Roller is the main villain in the first season, until Twin Masters receives the role instead beginning with the second season.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: The insects from the second season range from human-sized and up.
- Bowdlerize: High Roller's original design had an arrow going through one of his ears and out the other. This was changed to the arrow being attached to his hat/wig/crown instead
- Bullet Seed: Characters from the show, usually flying ones like the Air Force and the eagles, tend to utilize grape seeds as bullets.
- Butt-Monkey: ApeTrully frequently finds himself on the receiving end of the animal rulers he tries to befriend. To name a few things, he was sat on by a panda, stamped and made "property" of the Rhino King, forced into being an art model for the camels (twice), forced to jump rope while carrying a giant carrot, subjected to the cats' chilli powder firecrackers...
- Boss Subtitles: Season two gives us one for every new member of Big Green. The subtitles consist of the characters' name in both English and Chinese, as well as their designated number.
- The Collector: The Slug King loves to collect humans and animals alike, at least until he's convinced otherwise.
- Cooking Duel: During season 1, animals almost always challenge the humans to one of these before agreeing to be allies.
- Cool and Unusual Punishment: Some of the 'torture' methods of the animals count as this, though others are actually pretty cruel. Case in point, the first episode had ApeTrully, Mighty Ray, and Mystique Sonia forced to jump rope with heavy carrots on their backs.
- Covered in Gunge: The Slug Army covers people in slime as means of maintaining their collection of humans and animals.
- Create Your Own Villain: Lin Chung is responsible for the creation of Twin Masters due to travelling to the past and accidentally imbuing Yang Tu with chaotic emergy.
- Disc-One Final Boss: High Roller is the Big Bad of the show, until Season 2 shows that he answers to TwinMasters.
- Distressed Dude: Apetrully's key role, to the point where even the characters know it; one episode has Mighty Ray complaining about how bored he is waiting for Apetrully to get in trouble so they have to save him again.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- In "Pitched Battle of the Tank Army", High Roller invents a 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 Chameleon Queen'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.
- In "Crocodile Castle", it's shown that the only way to meet the Crocodile King is to match 3 yoyo icons on a slot machine. The fact that there's an entire array of slot machines being used by many people at once all while they're all rigged so that they never match 3 yoyo icons is deeply reminiscent of gambling and casinos, together with ApeTrully spending a fortune and his own energy just to win the slot machine game.
- Easily Impressed: Exaggerated in the episode Shark Castle where everyone is blown away by Lin Chung's Accidental Art despite him constantly trying to explain that it wasn't intentional.
- Eating the Enemy:
- In Pitched Battle of the Navies, a Blob Monster made of soil arrives via a meteorite and begins to suck up all the islands near as well anyone who tries to get near. When First Squad goes to confront it, it nearly sucks them and Sammo the Whale up and very nearly eats up Mighty Ray. Fortunately First Squad is able to break away. From a safe distance, they then bat one of Mighty Ray's eyes into the beast and fry it into a fine dust statue.
- In Pitched Battle of the Air Force, Mighty Ray decides to use Woo the Wise's Crystal Cube to mess around with the defeated High Roller, Zebra Brothers, Bearstomp, and Bald Eagles. While it's funny at first, the beast he ends up creating is very dangerous. Woo the Wise warns him to stop his nonsense, but before he can reverse it, High Roller eats the device, meaning First Squad has to deal with a giant chimeric monster. The monster manages to capture Jumpy, Sonia, and Might Ray as they are fighting the Air Force. The three free themselves in the middle of the fight though and try battering up his body parts, only to get caught by the tentacle from High Roller's mouth part and swallowed. Luckily, they're freed when Lin Chung and the Air Force use a rocket to blow the monster apart.
- In The Ghost Ship the massive Lantern Fish King uses his Mind Control powers to hypnotize Stingray King and Octopus King into his mouth. Later, he captures Commander Apetrully and inside him the hypnotized Octopus and Stingray King try to throw Apetrully into his stomach acids. Fortunately, Lady Green and Lin Chung are able to save him.
- Enemy Mine: On occasion, Big Green has had to team up with their enemies against a common foe.
- In "Gladiators", First Squad and Bearstomp team up against the Minotaur so they can escape his gladiator ring.
- In the series finale "The Bronze Giant", both Big Green and HighRoller's forces have to work together to bring down Twin Masters.
- Evil Counterpart: Infinitum is one to Woo the Wise, being a rival inventor who teams up with HighRoller in his starring episode. By the end however, he becomes Woo's friend instead.
- Evil vs. Evil: The Zebra Brothers vs the Soldiers of Darkness in "Parrot Castle II". Mostly because the Soldiers captured Parrot King and Rabbit King, whom the Zebra Brothers are trying to capture too.
- Eye Pop: Mighty Rays Magic Eyes aren't part of his body so they'll occasionally pop out of his head when he's hit.
- Eye Scream: Of sorts since Mighty Ray's original eyes were turned to stone and had to be replaced so he could see again. However, since this is a children's show they don't dwell on how horrifying it would be to have your eyes petrified.
- Far East: Where the series takes place. It has a very clear Chinese influence, from the style of music to elements that were taken from Chinese lore (such as the bagua, seen in "Groundhog Castle"). The most apparent element are the Chinese Soap Berries, which are explicitly referred to as such by Woo the Wise, and minor usage of the Chinese language.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: In "Pitched Battle of the Air Force Part 2", Mighty Ray reluctantly decides to undo the creation of the "Twelve-Eyed Striped Dumbat" when Woo tells him off, only for the creature to steal the Crystal Cube from him. Right as Mighty Ray starts speaking, Mystique Sonia and Jumpy Ghostface stop laughing and the latter is looking up, indicating that the "doors" hiding HighRoller's face opened off-screen and that he was getting ready to take action before Mighty Ray could do anything.
- Fusion Dance:
- One of Woo the Wise's inventions can merge different subjects into a hybrid. It initially helps to eliminate a threat that turns out to not be real (but not before Mighty Ray messes with it a little), followed by Mighty Ray playing with the device for the second time and creating a brand new threat in the process.
- High Roller can combine with Bear King normally, gaining the ability to use Bear King's body as his own, and it's surprisingly effective, letting him single-handedly beat the stuffing out of all of First Squad with relative ease.
- The tablets of Qi-Gong when broken allow the user to combine anyone into any composite they want. The end result will resemble a wooden puppet with a spinning head to switch between faces.
- Gender Bender: The unintended result of a spell meant to turn First Squad into bad guys loyal to High Roller in the second season.
- Giant Spider: The Spider Army are, as the name implies, an army of giant spiders.
- Grand Theft Me: High Roller steals Lin Chung's body in "About Faces" in order to infiltrate Big Green, leaving his own body behind with Lin Chung in it.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Mystique Sonia's Yaksha has a tendency of becoming angrily jealous whenever she shows any affection to anyone else.
- Head Pet: Yaksha is frequently worn like a hat by Mystique Sonia and, on a couple of occasions, Mighty Ray.
- Heroes "R" Us: The eponymous 108 is an organization of heroes, with everyone having their own special schitck.
- Hope Spot: A couple of the animal leaders actually accepted ApeTrully’s golden presents, making it seem like everything will go well, only for the alliance to fall through because he accidentally insulted them (“Pandaffe Castle”) or they never intended to form an alliance (“Lion Castle”).
- 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 were led to believe that humans were malicious thanks to High Roller.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: In a majority of episodes from season one, the episodes would be titled ______ Castle, with _____ being the animal featured in that episode.
- Improbable Weapon User: See Abnormal Ammo. Jumpy’s jump rope is the most commonly-used examples, but characters have also fought with everything from paper noisemakers to conch shells.
- Incredibly Lame Pun: Lampshaded in Frog Castle, where one of the zebras makes a frog-related pun.Sparky White: Defeat First Squad, Frogs!
Sparky Black: Hop to it!
(Sparky White punches his brother in the stomach)
Sparky White: What a stupid joke. - Informed Ability: Mr. No Hands is supposed to be team captain, but stays home in quite a lot of episodes.
- Ironic Fear: The Commander of the Soldiers of Darkness is afraid of the dark.
- Ki Manipulation: Lin Chung gets the ability to channel purple Harmonic energy in the second season. It also serves as a shield for himself and those around him.
- Kill and Replace: The Leeches' modus operandi with their ability to shape-shift into whoever they touch.
- Killed Off for Real:
- Mystique Sonia loses her Yaksha in Liger Castle, wherein he gets burned and disintegrates into ash. He quickly gets replaced by another Yaksha.
- In the Series Finale, Twin Masters is defeated and destroyed for good.
- Killer Yoyo:
- Surprisingly for a series where anything and everything is a weapon, the crocodiles avert this by using their yo-yos exclusively as toys.
- Played straight with the tigers, who wield diabolos (Chinese yo-yos) for fighting.
- King Mook: Many animals in the series have a king and/or queen, who in turn are serving HighRoller.
- Knight of Cerebus: Unlike High Roller, Twin Masters are not treated as comical villains.
- 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 of 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).
- Ironically, some of the leaders have the real life coloration of their species (Panda King, Giraffe King, Tiger King), while their subjects look like they came out of a crayon box.
- Leitmotif: Disco music is played whenever turtles are moving.
- Llama Loogie: In "Camel Castle", the camels attack by spitting saliva that smells so foul that it knocks people out.
- Made of Iron: Tigers, ligers and rhinos are the only animals invulnerable to Mighty Ray's Eye Beams.
- Making a Splash: Seahorse Prince and his subjects by themselves serve as high-power water rifles. First Squad gets water added to their powers when using them for a period of time.
- Martial Arts and Crafts: So many conflicts come down to jumping rope, or volleyball, or hackey sacking, or things like that.
- Meaningful Name: Some of the characters have names describing them, such as Apetrully (he is an ape truly), High Roller (a high ruler), and Jumpy Ghostface (he's a rabbit and his face looks like a skull).
- Meaningless Villain Victory: 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.
- 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.
- Misanthrope Supreme: High Roller is stated to deeply despise humans, even going as far as attacking them using the animals of Hidden Kingdom. Ironically, he's a human himself.
- Mooks: All the rulers have subjects that usually do the fighting for them, although on occasion the rulers will join the fray as well.
- Morphic Resonance: When impersonating the leeches eyes are green and oozing black tears. Interestingly enough they have no eyes of their own in natural form.
- My Friends... and Zoidberg: When the Zebras pretend to become good guys.Mr. Nohands: "First Squad and you Zebras...deploy".
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Soldiers... [dramatic music, zoom in] of Darkness.
- 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 they happened, did you?
- Bet you didn't know that Lin Chung acquires some purple energy power in season 2.
- Bet you didn't know that purple energy power can do whatever the plot needs it to.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Mighty Ray at one point plays with Woo's Crystal Cube, which can fuse multiple entities into one, and uses it on HighRoller and his troops to try and get a laugh out of the monstrosities he makes. He ends up making a really dangerous creature that gets loose and starts attacking.
- The reason why Twin Masters are at large and a threat is because Lin Chung unwittingly created them after travelling to the past. Although this is downplayed since the alternative would be letting his past self run amock and conquer Hidden Kingdom.
- No-Harm Requirement: In the episode Cheetah Castle II, the Cocky Aliens are able to take over the minds of Lin Chung's squad. Not wanting to hurt his friends, Lin Chung instead uses his hat to fake getting blasted by them. The appropriately named Cocky Aliens then exit his friends and body and jump on his "carcass" thinking they've won, only to get caught by Lin Chung, kicked 100 times by him and his cheetah comrades, and turned into fruit.
- Non-Lethal Warfare: Even though this is supposed to be a war, no one is killed along with both heroes and villains using non-lethal weapons and ammo like grapes. Even when getting hit by cannonballs, bamboo shoots, or Alpha Girl's spiked club no one dies. This could be because it's a kid show and they believe in giving them a second chance. This was played straight up until the heroes and villains teamed up to kill Twin Masters.
- Order Versus Chaos: The underlying motif of the conflict in season two between Twin Masters and Lin Chung.
- Phlebotinum Overdose:
- In "Lion Castle", Mystique Sonia ate too many of her magic bean buns and ended up becoming really fat and out of shape.
- Mighty Ray’s hatred of bananas came when he ate a bunch of them and tried to take on High Roller. He lost control and electrocuted himself, with ApeTrully saying he was lucky not to be permanently blinded.
- Playing with Fire:
- The Liger King and his subjects can breathe fire.
- Firefly King and his subjects are able to shoot beams of fire and create fire tornadoes.
- Power-Up Food: Mighty Ray's lightning eye blasts are charged by eating bananas. Mystique Sonia is capable of growing magical bean buns that enhance strength.
- Proud Peacock: The Peacock Queen is proud of her beauty and has the power to hypnotize (almost) everyone around her to obey her. When Mystique Sonia doesn't get hypnotized by the queen due to admiring her own beauty, the queen challenges her to a beauty contest. However, Sonia's Yaksha makes her realize that true beauty is on the inside.
- Raised by Wolves: The Dog King was raised by dogs after getting separated from his family.
- Recurring Boss: Thanks to being exceptionally loyal to HighRoller, the Bald Eagles receive SEVEN focus episodes before they join Big Green.
- Rubber Man: When transformed, the leeches have the ability to stretch and contort their body and limbs in any way they like.
- Rule of Cool: Being a cartoon, many animals have ridiculous abilities in lieu of or in combination with their ridiculous weapons. A couple of examples are the lions, able to use their manes as bolas, and the pigs, who can use vibrations by wagging their tails to destroy things and give people vertigo. And being an action-heavy cartoon, this is all for the sake of awesome and creative fight scenes.
- Rule of Three: Mystique Sonia has a curse on her that turns those who tell her they love her 3 times into a Yaksha.
- Screams Like a Little Girl: The Commander of the Soldiers of Darkness utters high-pitched screams when met with darkness.
- Serious Business: Almost all the challenges are this, the most eponymous example being when they managed to recruit Jumpy Ghostface after defeating him in Jump Rope Battle.
- Shown Their Work: Despite being zebras, the Zebra Brothers are occasionally called donkeys and even make donkey noises. In real life, zebras and donkeys are closely related, so this element is not out of place.
- 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.
- Spider Tank: The Arachno Tanks; they're even shaped like the Calabash tanks. Their cannonballs are balls of web and they have greater maneuverability with feet instead of treads.
- 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 to offer a golden present, he 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. They break this formula in the second season when things get a little more serious.
- Suddenly Speaking: Camel King, Golden Eye Husky and a few other animal kings; justified since Parrot King is now teaching English.
- Super-Speed: The cheetahs naturally but also surprisingly the sloths, for their heavy coats serve as weighted training.
- Swallowed Whole:
- In "Pitched Battle of the Tank Army Part 2", HighRoller tells Chameleon Queen to swallow First Squad when they can't show him something more dazzling than her image projection ability. Luckily, Lin Chung shows up just in time and stops it from happening.
- In "Turtle Cannon Competition 3", Chameleon Queen (who has teamed up with Second Squad) proceeds to capture Commander ApeTrully in this manner so they can force First Squad to accept their challenge.
- HighRoller, of all people, manages to do this one time; while he's fused with Bearstomp, the Zebra Brothers and several Bald Eagles in "Pitched Battle of the Air Force Part 2", he uses Bearstomp's retractable arm to grab Mighty Ray, Sonia and Jumpy. Because said arm is coming from his mouth, this inevitably leads to him straight up swallowing them once he pulls them in.
- Talking Animals: Justified. The Parrots learned to speak from the humans and as such, taught various other animals to speak the human language as well, when we first see a lot of the animal rulers they can only speak in animal, but since the Parrot King was recruited a lot of the previous recruits have learned to speak human, such as Jumpy Ghostface or Golden Eye Husky. A couple who could speak from the beginning like Cat King, Cheetah King, and Cheetah Queen were told to have been taught by Parrot King prior to the series.
- The Dog Bites Back: The Zebra brothers seem more willing to strike back at High Roller, since season 2.
- And High Roller is willing to seize more power to overthrow Twin Masters.
- The Emperor: High Roller. He governs many animal kings and queens, though he eventually loses almost all of them as they ally with Big Green instead throughout the series.
- The Rival: Second Squad often competes with First Squad, badly wanting to prove that they're the better team.
- Those Two Guys: Zebra Brothers make frequent appearances to cause trouble, being the heralds of HighRoller. At one point, they even bring along a puppet in the image of their master to use in his stead.
- Title Drop: In "The Bronze Giant". It's a Humongous Mecha named Hero: 108.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Apetrully thinks the answer to all problems is asking nicely and offering piles of gold. Unfortunately, it almost never works. In "Rabbit Castle", he also offers carrots to the rabbits - this also doesn't work because they already have enough carrots.
- The Unintelligible: Jumpy Ghostface in the early episodes only makes rabbit noises, before gaining the ability to speak English to a limited degree. Yaksha likewise only makes noises, but unlike Jumpy doesn't learn to speak any words.
- 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. The only reason they even end up winning is when Mighty Ray and Mystique Sonia get involved.
- 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; his clothes have a tendency to fold upwards at random.
- A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing: Apetrully. 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.
- Yin-Yang Bomb: An interesting example used by both the villain and the The Hero, Twin Masters and Lin Chung respectively. Twin Masters uses chaos energy that is red and blue whereas Lin Chung utilizes harmonic energy that is purple.
