What if a bunch of cool My Hero Academia villains banded together for a heist like the Lupin the 3rd gang? And they were opposed by various heroes who were huge arseholes, like The Boys? And, uh, occasionally they had Akira-like motorcycles? The answer to these questions is the same: You’d get Super Crooks, a new anime series based on Mark Millar and Leinil Francis Yu’s comic book Supercrooks (yes, with no space), which has debuted its first trailer.
It doesn’t look bad, but it all feels eerily familiar despite its Western source material:
Studio Bones animates the immensely popular superhero anime My Hero Academia, so I suppose the immense similarity between the two is somewhat inevitable. However, I’m also getting real Cowboy Bebop vibes from the overall style, which shouldn’t be hugely surprising given that the anime show Studio Bones was formed by the makers of Bebop. Or maybe I’m specifically getting Spike Spiegel and his tumultuous relationship with Julia from Super Crooks’ two leads, Johnny Bolt and Casey, changed from the comic’s Johnny Lightning and Kasey for some reason.
I don’t know what else the anime has changed from the original comics (which were published under Marvel’s Icon imprint) but here’s the official synopsis: “Luck’s never been on their side, but this crew of small-time crooks with super powers recruited by none other than Johnny Bolt are rolling the dice on one last heist. Their target: A ruthless super-powered crime boss. What can go wrong?”
Additionally, the original comic was also only four issues, Super Crooks the anime series is made up of 13 30-minute episodes, so the show has a lot of time to fill. Clearly, Netflix is really excited by the Super Crooks premise — so much so that back in June it announced a live-action series, inexplicably titled Supercrooks this time, to replace the cancelled Jupiter’s Legacy… also based on a Mark Millar comic, albeit a longer and more successful one.
So get ready for Super Crooks-mania, I guess, when Netflix’s anime series premieres on November 25. The voice cast includes My Hero Academia’s Kenjiro Tsuda as Johnny Bolt, the legendary Maaya Sakamoto as Kasey, Hiroshi Yanaka as Christopher Matts, Yasushi Kimura as Carmine/The Heat, Pierre Taki as the Gladiator, Junichi Suwabe as Josh/The Ghost, Hisao Egawa as Salamander, Eiji Takemoto as TK McCabe, Tetsu Inada as Roddy Diesel, Subaru Kimura as Sammy Diesel, Wataru Hatano as the Praetorian, and KENN as Forecast.
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