Super Crooks - A Millarverse Supervillain Heist Series

Based on the comic book of the same name by Mark Millar, this anime adaptation will be directed by Motonobu Hori (Carole & Tuesday) for Netflix and animated by Studio BONES.

Edited by XMenMutant22 on Jun 15th 2021 at 4:21:18 AM

Ahead of Netflix's TUDUM event, their Japanese counterpart released a trailer for the upcoming series (no subs). It also revealed its release date: November 25, 2021.

Now a proper subbed trailer, with an updated description:

Damn this looks pretty good.

Should be fun.

I just saw that trailer and it looks like exactly the kind of anime I like. But then I saw it’s connected to Mark Millar, so now I’m conflicted.

Netflix has unveiled the opening for this series:

The series is officially out now!

Here's it's ending credits:

Okay, I’ve started watching this. Planning to do maybe an episode every one or two days, unless I find myself with a huge chunk of free time.

Episode one is the origin story, and from the get go you see Johnny does not have greatest upbringing. So yeah he’s got the disposition to be one of them super crooks. Trying to make his superhero debut near a pool when he has electricity-based powers was already an awful idea, but man the disaster dominoes don’t stop at him electrocuting a bunch of folks. Laughed so hard when the pigs fell into the pool. Pretty good start, episode 2 should be a blast.

Finished episode 3 just now, and I love that it was basically an extended car-chase sequence. They didn’t skimp on showing the myriad ways superpowers can be used, and I hope the rest of the season gets as much budget. Not too keen on the superheroes already being shown to be assholes too, but we’ll see. The card-dealer hero seems like bad news for the Johnny’s gang.

@, Hodor: Hey Miller's stuff doesn't need to be that bad. Plus adaptations of his work tends to be great partly since often the ideas are good...execution bad.

Up to episode 10. The fights have been fun to watch but the story is kind of iffy. I’m not sure how the crooks managed to engineer an entire zombie apocalypse overnight, I guess I’ll just assume Carmine had prepared for it beforehand. The big heist is also poorly planned— they didn’t even know where the thing they wanted to nab was. And they waste a lot of time during the operation. I know they’re a bunch of ragtag villains but you’d think they’d have more urgency in getting what they need and leaving superhero HQ pronto.

And Count Orlok had to be a goof so the Bastard can kill him off. Expected, but a rather underwhelming way to have the heist fail.

Now… I suspect these guys will want to get back at the Network. So after stealing from the heroes, the next step is stealing from the villains.

Minor nitpick: too many boring Flying Brick powersets. Seriously. Why’d they have to put all the abilities into Praetorian

Finished the entire thing.

I’m not sure how Johnny convinced everyone to buy into his plan. I didn’t get the impression he became tight buds with everyone there, and he didn’t seem to have told them how the heist was gonna go.

The second heist itself was fairly boring. The Bastard’s vault is almost comical in how booby-trapped it is. And everything goes swimmingly for Johnny and his crew. Except that part where Gladiator lets Praetorian kick everyone’s asses before he intervened. That was funny.

All in all, a decent watch. Not anything remarkable but it gets the job done.

Edited by fillerdude on Dec 8th 2021 at 7:04:35 AM

I enjoyed the first two acts, ngl. I read the comic (it's a quick four issues) before starting episode 10, and the time jump was so...abrupt? The third act is a faithful adaptation of the comic plus the gun-ninjas and the Hollywood Hacking but I didn't think they got to know each other well enough in the second act to be as buddy-buddy as they are in the third, especially after five years. The comic kinda read like they knew each better than that: a legit gang, not just some guys who did one failed job together five years ago, especially with carried-over lines like "We never kill".

Also that Johnny comes up with the rough caper plan (entirely off screen) as he does in the comic, but the anime never shows him as the kind of person predisposed to making such plans.

Still, it's enjoyable enough. I don't know what the live-action version of this will add. More heists?

Edited by Synchronicity on Dec 8th 2021 at 7:16:41 AM

Yeah, that’s the thing, a lot of the things they do in the third heist aren’t established in the previous arc.

It's weird, because the third act is pretty much lifted straight from the page, character dynamics included (but in Japan). All they had to do was write the second one to fit it. It might have been nice to have the team come pre-assembled (or assembled much faster) and trade an episode or so of Frostbite and co. being dumbasses for at least one more heist to establish how they work.

Ugh, that episode was so pointless. Johnny does dumb stuff again, but instead of ruminating on the consequences of his actions it gets glossed over by a timeskip.

I do think the third heist is fine in a vacuum. I especially like that Johnny managed to bring in Gladiator.

I do agree that the third act could have done with a better transition, but it didn't bother me too much. Overall I enjoyed Super Crooks a lot. My sleep hit of the year considering how out of left field it came to me. Which is really funny because Jupiter Ascending is terrible but Super Crooks takes place in the same universe as it.

A question: how come Gladiator could still use his powers in the Bastard's underground vault? I thought superpowers were being suppressed there.

I just assumed that rather than using superpowers, he was really really jacked and in a much better mental/emotional state than his opponent.

Just got around to watching it. I enjoyed it and the intro was catchy.

Just finished this. Fun show, though I have to agree that the last third of the show doesn't fit that well with the first two as far character dynamics and character competencies are concerned.

Edited by CheapMarzipan on Jan 15th 2022 at 1:08:50 PM

Which is weird considering that was the part adapted from the source if i'm not mistaken.

Yep. I think comic book readers have said that while the third act is true to the source, it doesn’t make sense in the context of what happened in the show itself.

Huh guess they didn't change it enough to fit the events of the show proper.

Just watched the first episode of this.

....wow. Like, it was obvious things were going to go badly off the rails, considering this is a kid with electric powers (that he hasn't fully mastered yet) debuting over a damned swimming pool, but the truck of dead pigs was still out of left field.

Like, there's Disaster Dominoes, and there there's what happened to Johnny.

Edit: And now episode 2 is down.

They got a little greedy. I look forward to seeing how things go pear shaped now.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Feb 19th 2022 at 3:06:45 AM