Getting Jiggy With It | Moral Ethics Of Being Omnipotent - Super Crooks

Superhero animes, well, they're the new thing now. After the advent of Marvel movies and My Hero Academia fame, people these days have gotten very tired of Disney and Warner milking their franchises for dollars sake. At the time of the early and mid 2000s, many comic book writers came up with their own works that scrutinized and criticized the overall superhero genre.

They wouldn't make it to the TV screen, till the Boys did. This year we also got Invincible which was an adulterated, hyper-violent superhero story. That was far more mature and was a big hit for Amazon. It took a while for Netflix, I mean Mark Millar has his work adapted since Kingsman and Kickass.

Imagine if the studio that worked on Space Dandy, and My Hero Academia created a show that was based on one of Millar's most popular stories; Super Crooks. Well, here we are now.

Based on the serialization by Mark Millar and Leinil Yu, the comic books take place in a fictional version of our world where superheroes and supervillains co-exist. Except nothing is like your regular comic books from the golden age. There are a lot of grey areas, the kind where superheroes actually kill villains, even superheroes committing atrocities bad enough to pull up a large scandal.

There's no plot armor for human beings that always get saved, they can be fodder for the narrative as much as victims for the heroes own causes. In comes supervillains, not all of them seem to be evil. They just want to live their lives to the fullest. What happens? Superheroes have conquered the world mostly, and supervillains become nothing but target practice for the majority of them.

Feeling the weight of their oppression within the modern era, a particular group of villains has concocted a plan to rob just to get under their skin and show them what for.

The comic revolves around a crook who missed his wedding because he had to spend 5 years in prison time for robbing a bank. Until a mentor of his fiance shows up, asking for their help as its life and death situation. He tasks both of them, along with a ragtag team to steal nearly 1bn dollars worth of the biggest villain's fortune.

Shenanigans ensue and the team relies on the wise assertiveness of one Johnny Bolt to do the job. As his time in prison has helped him gather much-needed info to pull the heist.

It has all the trademark of Millar's crass humor and pedantic nature of its world. People curse one another, limbs and body parts get chopped off, and heroes abuse their powers to a maniacal extent.

Preface Section:

I can't say that I've liked the anime entirely, that maybe has something to do with its first half. The first 6 episodes have a different narrative, that is supposed to introduce the characters and flesh them out. Kind of a bad idea since this portion of the story carries the high stakes the latter part does, so I was a bit disinterested. Which is a shame, it also feels stretched, and the good stuff that comes later on, is short-lasting. Not a fan of them adding references like Call of Duty, American snacks, and such, that's just a typical Hollywood thing to do and was not appreciative of it being in an anime.

With all that being said. Despite my gripes, I really did find ways to enjoy the show. There's this charm it imbues with this scintillating sex-appeal and macabre level of absurdity. You have a character like Kasey, who's really hot. But you also have these twin brothers that has X-Men level of healing powers and regenerate in seconds every time they get chopped to pieces.

The heroes represent social media consumerism, they're everywhere and they dictate right and wrong by their iron grip. A society that adores them has dogmatized these somewhat big hypocrites and put them in ignorant situations where they can also abuse their powers.

The world of Supercrooks is tied to Jupiter's Ascending, which has an interesting mythos to the superhero origins, but they also become this interesting dichotomy between villains, whom are treated like absolute scums and are on the bottom line of the totem pole. Doing whatever they can to survive out, that also includes weeding out the weak.

So for the crewmembers of the heist, it takes good character judgement and trust to have a better success rate. Being the unique bunch that they are, they use their wits, experiences, know-how, and persistent need to one-up heroes to pull this off.

I like how Studio Bones applied the same pedigree of humor and swagger they are familiar with from their other works, like Space Dandy. The anime takes time to embrace the mature storytelling and brilliant character dramas, before coming to the adrenaline surging last few episodes.

Could have done more, but it was nice to see Bones understanding how American comics work, especially the kind that Millar makes. This was fun, though it clearly made some messy decisions with its storytelling.

Love the satirical parts like Union of Justice logo pop in the TV like they are 80's commercials.

I mean, with the creative liberty they have, they could really knocked this one out of the park. But it is good enough. Animes like this prove that not everything has to be trash-fest like the Marvel shows that Madhouse used to work on.