Super Crooks

Episodes 7-8

Super Crooks is such a weird show, you guys. A lot of this has to do with the pacing issues that come part and parcel with so many Netflix Originals these days, but some of my gripes come from the specific, odd choices that this anime keeps making, time and again. What's more, they're all very particular quibbles I have regarding the nitty-gritty aspects of writing and producing a show. If you zoomed way out and just took stock of Super Crooks as a general concept, it's perfectly functional, albeit nothing special. It's when you get down to the finer points that the questions start popping up.

Let's get the big stuff out of the way, first. As a pair of episodes, The Supermax and The Legion of Heroes suffers from almost exactly the same pitfalls that the last set did: Episode 7, like Episode 5, is essentially another exposition dump episode, with all of the characters gathering together in a different meeting location to make weak banter while Heat gives them the general idea of what their heist is going to be. The only difference is that TK is with the crew now, although there is still one final member who takes all episode to show up and insert himself into the ensemble, though he doesn't need a prison break or anything. The trains just aren't running. After that is Episode 8, which gets us to The Big Heist, finally…but we'll get to that in a minute.

Before we do, I just have to ask: What the hell is with Super Crook's complete inability to structure its episodes in a reasonable way? I don't need 80s sitcom levels of predictable formula or anything, but c'mon y'all, we're 8 episodes into this season and it still barely feels like we're getting the story out of its first act. One of the biggest reasons for this is how much time the show spends on flashbacks and side stories that just feel like complete wastes of time, even when they're ostensibly related to the plot. First we get the flashback to when Johnny and TK met in Supermax, which legitimately is pointless, accomplishing nothing that couldn't be explained in a line or two of dialogue. Then there's the lengthy aside to The Bastard's retirement party, which I'm sure is meant to remind us that this show does indeed have a main antagonist that is supposed to be really threatening and all, except…it doesn't do that. It just feels like filler, both because the scene is such an awkward fit in an episode that already feels like it is padding for time, and because The Bastard is just such a lame villain. And that's saying something, considering that Johnny Bolt is our main character.

After all of this goes down, Episode 8 begins with a flashback to Kasey's first meeting with The Heat, and I didn't even realize that this was supposed to be a flashback until a random background character referred to the pink-haired punk girl on screen as “Kasey”. Usually, when an episode opens with a flashback of a character meeting their future mentor and being offered a job that “only they can do”, you expect the rest of the episode to cut back and forth between that story and the current one, which in this case happens to be the gang attempting to break into the Legion of Heroes' HQ to steal a fancy magic helmet. Since Kasey is, at this point, the only character in this show that even feels like more than a one-note cardboard cutout, I was excited for Super Crooks to give us more time to spend with the anti-heroine.

Instead, we get one more flashback that is clumsily jammed into the middle of the episode, which shows us how Johnny first found out about Kasey's powers after they finished their first robbery together, for…some reason? The only possible reason the show could have for including this sequence is the moment where Kasey is shocked that Johnny isn't afraid of her powers, and I'm sorry, that is not enough to explain why the hell these two are a couple. They have absolutely zero chemistry, mostly because whatever Kasey has to offer is completely negated by Johnny's complete lack of interesting motivations or a recognizable personality.

I just don't get it. Even though it took half the damned season for Super Crooks to establish its own premise, “A gang of oddball crooks tries to break into the headquarters of the world's most famous superheroes” is a setup that should practically write itself! Why, then, does the show feel so lifeless and stilted? At this point, I'm just counting down the days until we get another one of those bonkers fight scenes, like the Diesel Bros bloody brawl against Gladiator. Until then, it's going to take everything I have to keep from spending every episode scrolling through my social media feed, or doing dishes, or responding to emails. Yeah, it's one of those anime.

Rating:

Odds and Ends

•The new member of the crew is Forecast. He can control the weather, which has seemed like a fairly useless power so far, though I'm sure it's because the show is waiting to have him kill a bunch of fools with a lightning storm, or something.

• There was one part of this pair of episodes that made me smile, which is when TK and Forecast travel to Pittsburg and use TK's telekinesis raise a dead hero called “Necromancer” from his grave, along with a horde of corpses that are made to look like zombies. The multiple “Romero” and “Dawn of the Dead” namedrops are appropriate, given the setting, and we even get cameos from Barbara and Johnny, the siblings from Night of the Living Dead. It's cute.

• …although, the fake zombie invasion is such a spectacle that it makes me seriously question the nature of TK's powers. If he is this powerful, why in God's name did he get immediately caught after trying and failing to steal one car from some random garage?

• Some strange Sub vs. Dub observations this week: At the end of Episode 7, when The Bastard blows up that guard's head, the subtitles have his friend telling TB, “That was the wrong one”. In the dub, the guy asks, “That wasn't you back there, was it?”, which is a completely insane thing to ask the one guy in the world who can blow up people's heads with his mind. Then, at the beginning of Episode 8, when young Kasey scrambles her victims brains, the sub has her explaining, “They're not dead, but they're basket cases now.” In the dub, she says “…but they'll never walk again” instead, which is a very different end result. It's not the first time that the dub has flatly contracted or completely reinterpreted the sub script, and it's really odd whenever it happens.

Super Crooks is currently streaming on Netflix.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.