(For instance, the villains, while dangerous, are always just barely beatable, with some help from the plucky hero.)

He's not the plucky hero.

Perhaps I was also wrong about him being a plucky hero.

It was funny, smart, fresh and managed to feel like the plucky, accidental hero.

Instead of a plucky, curious hero of the imagination, he's a melancholy fellow who complains, in a duet with Horton, that he's "alone in the universe."

But the formula and drivel are much the same: cackling villains from outer space versus plucky heroes or superheroes defending civilized life on Earth.

This underdog is a mouse: Spencer, the plucky hero of a new musical from Vital Children's Theater.

Instead of a plucky young hero, the game starred Cloud: a bitter, aloof antihero with a dark and mysterious past.

Like the plucky young hero of one of his most famous children's books, "In the Night Kitchen," Maurice Sendak is about to plunge into a new and, he hopes, nourishing experience.

Later, she describes Mitsu as being a typical 'plucky young manga hero' who improves at his work, but is also noted for his talking to his upper-class clients.