Super Crooks

I was hyped when the trailer dropped. Coincidentally, I was reading a book critical analysis about superheroes before Super Crooks officially came on Netflix. Pretty fitting right? Cuz like, superheroes? supervillains? powers? The whole sad origins and everything? Ok Super Crooks had an okay- flow of the story. We start the episode with the origins of Johnny Bolt a.k.a our MC and how he came to be the "crook" villain as he is today. We then follow him getting out of this super jail and we meet his girlfriend - Kasey, and his (idiotic) villain friends. Then Kasey introduces him to Carmine and meets othersuperpowered guys. After 10 episodes, there comes a time leap. Thankfully, we didn't miss any important information but only that the gang has been busy in that time period. And I'll stop from there. Story-wise, it's easy to follow. We got the generic bad boy and his bad girl and his bad friends doing bad stuff against this really really bad guy that could literally blow your minds. And of course, a heist! It's not a villain-centered story without a grand heist. We have the scenic backdrops of America and its heavily hero-influenced environment. I have a problem with the synopsis here tho. It says that "they have to head to Spain.." In this adaptation, they went to an Island that is somewhere around Japan. I hope they fix that. Other than that, the premise is alright. Art is good. The backdrops were nice and the colors have fit the mood of the story. There's definitely a noticeable chunk of gore elements like having your guts and heads wrecked. Character designs were decent too. (But probably except the disguise Josh wore in the first heist. Just, why did he pick that?) The animation was decent. The action scenes didn't fail my standards. Sound-wise, not so much. I love the OP and ED though. The background music was my problem. I'm not saying they're bad but some scenes were lackluster because of the background music. There are times it was distracting and some just felt like it's not right. I noticed the bg music was repetitive though it's not that memorable. I can't say that the Characters are unique or "never seen before." In a world that acknowledges superpowers as normal, of course, there are always some after-effects. We have Johnny Bolt that can produce and manipulate static electricity. We have Kasey that has psychic powers. We have reckless dudes that can cut off their limbs and be in one piece later on. We have a ghost, a weather forecast, a telekinesis guy, a closeted dude that turned kinda wholesome in the end, and some old dude past his prime with his lava guns. Despite that, I love their dynamic in the show. But trust me when I say that most of these characters lacked a bit of texture. By texture, I mean no backstories or why any reason why they're like that. They focus on the "now" situation. Thankfully, the voice acting helped flesh out their personalities so props to them. My fave character is Kasey. She arguably has the strongest powers in the group. I'm glad to see her great potential in the later episodes, unlike the start. If I have to be honest, I enjoyed this show. I have seen a lot of heist-related shows and movies so this was kind of predictable but I enjoyed it nevertheless. The casts did a great job and they did not disappoint. Overall, I give this an 8. The show's not THAT bad.

MASTERPIECE!!! If you, like me, loves more realistic stories in superhero worlds (like Marvel and DC) as well as Invicible and The Boys, this is all you'll want to watch. The plotline is amazing, a villain-view of a society of heroes, but with more human and complex emotions. The super-powers and fights are dope, amazing animation and creative work, the plot twist are nice too, always making the story flow wonderfully. The character are totally amazing, every single one, our protagonist is just unique, totally impredictable, the antagonists are totally scary and leave you in a panic all the time, even without appearing. If youlike super-hero worlds adult stories, give it a chance, you will love it.

I watched this show with my friends over Discord, and the opinion was pretty unanimous. We all despised this show, and were honestly shocked that it has as high a score as it does here on MAL. This is a bad anime and a bad superhero show. Allow me to explain why. The pacing is slow, too slow. The episodes drag on and more often than not the action scenes lack momentum. The slow modern jazz that is played over most of them does not help. Though this is more of a matter of personal taste, I must say I also did not like the musicvery much at all. Most of this would be forgivable to me if I liked the characters and story. While many of the side characters have interesting gimmicks, they lack development, which is a shame since much of them have much potential. The Gladiator stood out to me as one of the more interesting characters in the show, but since most of what we know about him is told directly to us rather than shown naturally, it's hard to get invested. This is the problem with most of rouge's gallery here. The two main characters are probably the most unforgivable, but for different reasons. Johnny Bolt is a terrible human being that shows little guilt for the many wrongs he commits in the show. Despite this he gets the girl and is presented as mostly sympathetic to the audience. Kasey, said girl, has more character to her, but you wouldn't know it with how much the camera leers on her constantly. (Something that made me especially mad considering how she states she was a victim of sexual harassment.) She has the best powers in the show, and she wastes them hanging around a man who by all appearances doesn't respect her. -This next part has spoilers so beware- This mostly leads to a happy ending that feels unearned and unrealistic. It would have at least been a 5/10 if it had the guts to be as dark as some people claim it is. It's a bunch of blandly terrible people getting what they want despite all odds. -Okay spoilers over.- That's the worst thing, really. The show is boring. I can't even make it any lower because of that. I guess the one good thing I can say about it is that the animation is solid. The character designs are nice, everything moves well, and I don't remember anything standing out as looking particularly bad. Granted, there were no shots I would call amazing, either. It's competent. There are some alright gore scenes involving certain characters, but the scenes felt jarring more often than not. Go watch Tiger & Bunny instead. Skip this. It's not even worth a hate watch.

The series actually starts well. The first episode is a genuinely entertaining, funny satire on a superhero origin story. It's got the standard elements of a Mark Millar comic, including high school geeks discussing comics, but ends in spectacular fashion, with earnest Johnny inadvertently hurting (killing?) dozens of people and causing millions of dollars in damage, thus deciding to become...a villain. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there. The next episodes consist of generic supervillain capers with very little humor or ingenuity. Moreover, the entire universe (or "Millarverse" as he likes to call it) is poorly conceived. None of the abilities or battles make a lickof sense, and it's a constant source of annoyance. I kept comparing this series very unfavorably to Larry Correia's fine series "Hard Magic". While that was a gritty alternate history fantasy set in the 1930's, the abilities of the characters, like super-strength, telekenisis, telepathic suggest/control, etc. are very similar. The difference being that Correia put an exceptional amount of thought into the origin of all these powers, how they work, their limits, energy usage, etc. Meanwhile, Millar and the creators of this series didn't. Now, that would be fine if this was a superhero series aimed at little kids. But no, it's supposed to be mature and self-aware, with tons of sexual content and swearing, so presumably, it's for a more serious, older audience. And yet, it's every bit as stupid as the cheesiest Superman cartoon. Let's begin with Johnny and his buddy with the ice powers, Frostbite. They are able to create giant electrical storms across an entire city and colossal ice structures viewable across all of San Francisco. How in the hell would "Man Mountain", whose power is being really large and strong, be immune to such large amounts of electricity and ice? He would be able to absorb more than the average person, but Johnny and Frostbite should still defeat him instantly. Similarly, how is the rubber superhero immune to either the electric or ice attacks? He might be immune to physical attacks, but why wouldn't he be frozen, or still feel the elecriticy through the rubber? Again, no thought was put into it. Kasey is an interesting case. There is a character in "Hard Magic" with the exact same ability as her, except Correia understood how very easily an ability like "mind control" can become broken and boring. After all, what's to stop such a character from mind-controlling the most powerful heroes to be their slaves, or forcing them to commit suicide? Thus, there were very hard limits placed on this in the book. Even a talented telepath could only use it on one target at a time, they couldn't cause the target to do anything he would never do normally, and even then, it can be successfully resisted by a sufficiently tough, strong-willed target. No such limits exist with Kasey. We see her doing it on multiple people simultaneously, on the most powerful heroes like Praetorian and Gladiator, causing them to behave completely out of character or getting them stuck in fantasy worlds for long periods of time. It's an unbalanced, broken power. Why do they need to recruit anyone else to be part of the villain team? Just let Kasey mind-control a high-level supervisor or two and you're done. I also have a massive problem with TK McCabe. Outside of maybe Kasey, this guy should be the most powerful villain or superhero in the world, and it's not even close. He has the power of telekinesis to the point of throwing giant storage warehouses weighing hundreds of tons at fast speeds. If he can do that, why in the hell doesn't he take the largest caliber bullets in the world, the .950s, which weigh about half a pound, cause human beings to literally explode, and one-shot elephants...and fire them at least a THOUSAND times faster than that? Not only would it be completely unavoidable for even the fastest superhero, but it would have insane lethality against the most superpowered and durable of heroes. But let's even go beyond THAT. If McCabe can fling hundreds of tons of metal at high speeds with telekinesis, what's to stop him from ripping apart the internal organs of any enemy in a shower of blood? No superhero, regardless of durability, could withstand his level of force. He could kill any superpowered being as soon as he sees them. Magneto is presented as a very powerful, important character in the Marvel universe, and he's not even an infant when compared to TK McCabe's power. Yet, instead of being a living god, McCabe is a small-time thief who gets easily beaten by Gladiator, which makes no sense. The Diesel Brothers should be utterly weak and useless, at least if the series had bothered any time requirement for how long it takes them to regenerate or how much energy it takes, which they can't have infinite reserves of. Of course, this being a lazy series, neither is done. Moving on to the main group's rivals, Praetorian should actually be fairly weak as he is described. His powers are random, which means he has no clue what he will be going into battle with, or if it matches up well with his opponent. Moreover, it would mean that he has limited practice and competency with any specific power. Gladiator just has super strength, which, as presented, should be defeated by at least 4 of the villains with ease; Johnny, Frostbite, Kasey, and TK, the latter who he beats because the plot needs him to. The Bastard is nonsensical on multiple levels. In terms of powers, he can cause people's heads to explode, but his limits are never defined. How far away does he need to be, how much energy does it take, and can it be resisted at all? As usual, this lazy series never tells us anything. However, even without that, he is hardly invincible. He doesn't explode heads instantly, so there should be plenty of time for any number of superpowered individuals, including Johnny, to kill him if they're in the same room. And let's also talk about how stupid The Bastard is as a character. He's supposed to be a supervillain mastermind so smart and skilled that even the police are on his side. So why then, does he do something as utterly idiotic, reckless, and unnecessary as cause a random SWAT team member's head to explode? What was the fucking point? And regardless of his status, that will create major problems for him. It will, at the very least, be very difficult to cover up and may convince his allies that he is an unpredictable lunatic, and best jettisoned. It destroys his character in the very same episode he is introduced. I could go on and on here. Avoid this dull, idiotic series that doesn't even bother putting much effort into its world. Read Larry Correia's excellent "Hard Magic" series instead if you want a more realistic, mature story featuring superpowers. 38/100