Super Crooks Anime: The Complete Guide to Netflix’s Most Underrated Superhero Series
I nearly scrolled past Super Crooks on Netflix three times before I actually clicked on it. The thumbnail didn’t sell it well. I had no idea it was based on a Mark Millar comic, no idea it was produced by the studio behind some genuinely stunning animation, and absolutely no context for what I was about to watch.
Four episodes in I was completely hooked. By the end of the series I was genuinely frustrated that more people weren’t talking about it.
Super Crooks is one of those shows that lands in the middle of a crowded streaming landscape and gets buried through no fault of its own quality. If you have been sleeping on it or trying to figure out whether it is worth your time, this is me telling you directly that it is — and here is everything you need to know going in.
What Is Super Crooks Anime and Where Did It Come From
Super Crooks is a Netflix anime series that premiered in November 2021. It is based on the four-issue comic book miniseries of the same name by Mark Millar and artist Leinil Francis Yu, originally published by Marvel’s Icon imprint in 2012.
The anime adaptation was produced by Studio Bones — the same studio responsible for Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, My Hero Academia, and Soul Eater — in collaboration with Netflix. The series was directed by Motonobu Hori and runs for thirteen episodes.
The Super Crooks anime is set in the same universe as Millar’s Jupiter’s Legacy, which Netflix also adapted as a live-action series. You do not need to watch Jupiter’s Legacy first. Super Crooks stands completely on its own and in my opinion is the better of the two adaptations.
The premise follows Johnny Bolt, a small-time supervillain with electricity-based powers who has spent most of his career getting caught. After his girlfriend needs money urgently, he assembles a crew of fellow low-level criminals with superpowers for one massive heist in Spain — a country where superheroes have no jurisdiction.
Ocean’s Eleven with superpowers, set in the world of Mark Millar’s comics. That is Super Crooks in one sentence.
Super Crooks Anime Story: Why the Villain Perspective Works So Well
Most superhero stories, anime or otherwise, are told from the perspective of the heroes. The moral framework is usually clear. Good fights evil, evil loses, virtue is rewarded.
Super Crooks flips that entirely and the flip is what makes it interesting. By following a crew of supervillains as protagonists, the series gets to interrogate the superhero genre’s assumptions in ways that feel fresh even now.
The heroes in Super Crooks exist mostly as obstacles. They are powerful, they are respected by society, and they are largely uninterested in the messy human situations that produce people like Johnny Bolt. The show doesn’t make them cartoonishly evil — most of them are just doing their jobs — but it consistently frames the story so that you’re rooting for the people the system is set up to catch.
That moral inversion is where Super Crooks does its best work. By the time the heist sequences kick into gear you genuinely want this crew to succeed, not because they are good people necessarily but because you understand them. Their motivations are clear and human even when their methods are not.
Super Crooks Anime Characters: The Crew Worth Getting to Know
Johnny Bolt is the heart of Super Crooks. He is not a mastermind. He is not particularly clever or ruthless. He is a guy who keeps making the same mistakes because his instincts are better than his judgment and he genuinely cares about the people around him more than he cares about self-preservation. That combination makes him one of the more likeable protagonists in recent anime even though he is technically the villain of his own story.
Kasey is Johnny’s girlfriend and the emotional anchor of the series. Her situation creates the urgency that drives the plot and her relationship with Johnny gives Super Crooks its warmth. She is not just a motivation device — she has her own perspective on the world they inhabit and the show gives her room to express it.
The Bastard is the veteran supervillain who assembles the crew and whose history with both the criminal world and the superhero establishment gives Super Crooks much of its backstory texture. His arc across the series is quieter than Johnny’s but it carries the most weight by the finale.
The supporting crew members each get enough time to develop distinct personalities. The Super Crooks anime is careful about this — a heist story lives or dies on whether you care about the people executing the plan, and the show does the work of making each member of the crew feel like a person rather than a plot function.
Super Crooks Anime Animation: What Studio Bones Brings to the Table
This is where Super Crooks genuinely surprises people who come in with low expectations. Studio Bones is one of the most consistently excellent animation studios in the industry and they brought real craft to this production.
The action sequences in Super Crooks are excellent. The superpowers are visually distinct and creatively deployed. Johnny’s electricity-based abilities are used in ways that feel tactically interesting rather than just spectacular, and the powers of the various crew members interact in the heist sequences in ways that reward paying attention to what each character can actually do.
The character designs translate the Millar and Yu comic aesthetic into anime form cleanly. The European setting — much of Super Crooks takes place in Spain — gives the visual palette a different feel from most anime series and Bones uses that geography effectively.
If you want to understand how animation quality and production craft affect the experience of watching anime, the breakdown of ufotable anime at 9anime-tv.pro gives great context for reading the craft decisions a studio like Bones is making in a production like Super Crooks.
Common Mistakes People Make When Watching Super Crooks Anime
Mistake 1: Expecting a traditional superhero narrative. Super Crooks is a heist story first and a superhero story second. If you go in expecting escalating superhero battles and a clear good-versus-evil framework you will be misreading what the show is doing. Adjust your frame to Ocean’s Eleven and you will have a much better time.
Mistake 2: Watching Jupiter’s Legacy first and expecting continuity. The two shows share a universe but Super Crooks does not require or especially benefit from watching Jupiter’s Legacy beforehand. The shows have different tones, different protagonists, and very different levels of quality. Super Crooks is the stronger series and it works completely on its own terms.
Mistake 3: Dropping it after the slower setup episodes. Super Crooks takes a few episodes to assemble its crew and establish the stakes. The first three or four episodes are doing necessary groundwork. The payoff once the heist sequences begin is worth the patience and the character investment the early episodes build makes the later action land harder.
Mistake 4: Not reading the original comic after watching. The Mark Millar and Leinil Yu comic is a tight, punchy four-issue read that gives you a different perspective on the same story. The anime expands significantly on the source material but the comic’s visual storytelling is distinctive and worth experiencing alongside the adaptation.
Mistake 5: Watching it passively. Super Crooks rewards attention to the power sets and the way they interact. The heist planning sequences are setting up solutions you haven’t seen yet. If you are watching on your phone while doing something else you will miss the craft in how the pieces come together.
How to Get the Most Out of Super Crooks Anime
Step 1: Watch on Netflix in the best quality your connection supports. Netflix streams Super Crooks at up to 4K HDR on supported devices. The animation quality rewards a good screen. Studio Bones productions look significantly better on a television than on a phone.
Step 2: Watch in Japanese with subtitles for the first viewing. The English dub of Super Crooks is competent but the original Japanese voice performances are more nuanced, particularly for Johnny and The Bastard. The emotional beats in the later episodes land better in the original audio.
Step 3: Pay attention to the power set introductions. Super Crooks takes care to establish what each crew member can do early in the series. Those introductions are setting up heist solutions you will only recognise in retrospect. First-time viewers miss some of the cleverness because they don’t retain the power details. A second watch is rewarding specifically for this reason.
Step 4: Give the slower middle episodes your full attention. The Super Crooks anime uses its middle section for character development that the original comic didn’t have space for. The relationships between crew members, the backstory of The Bastard, the history between certain characters — all of it pays off in the final act.
Step 5: Read up on the broader Millarworld universe after finishing. Super Crooks exists within a larger connected universe of Mark Millar comics that Netflix has been steadily adapting. Understanding that context adds layers to some of the background details in the show and opens up a wider reading list if the tone of Super Crooks appeals to you.
Super Crooks Anime and Where It Fits in the Anime Landscape
Super Crooks occupies an interesting position. It is technically a Western comic adaptation produced as anime by a Japanese studio for a global streaming platform. That hybrid identity is part of why it got lost in the shuffle — it did not fit cleanly into the seasonal anime conversation or the Western superhero conversation, so it fell through the gap between both audiences.
That is a shame because what Super Crooks demonstrates is that the anime format works exceptionally well for superhero stories told from unconventional angles. The visual language of anime handles superpowers naturally in a way that live-action constantly struggles with, and the character-focused storytelling traditions of anime series give the crew dynamics in Super Crooks room to breathe that a film adaptation couldn’t offer.
If you enjoy anime that plays with genre conventions and finds its identity in the gap between expected frameworks, the guide to Strike Witches at 9anime-tv.pro covers a franchise doing something similar in a completely different genre — using familiar genre elements as the surface for something with more depth underneath.
Why Super Crooks Anime Deserves a Bigger Audience
The superhero genre is genuinely crowded right now. Audiences have become selective, streaming fatigue is real, and standing out requires either massive marketing spend or genuine word-of-mouth momentum. Super Crooks got neither and it deserved both.
What it gets right is the thing that matters most in any heist story: it makes you genuinely care whether the plan works. Not because the stakes are world-ending but because you understand these specific people and what success means to each of them. Johnny Bolt wanting to do one thing right for once in his life is a more compelling motivation than saving the world from a supervillain, and Super Crooks commits to that human scale throughout.
The animation is excellent. The characters are well-written. The heist structure is satisfying. The villain perspective gives the superhero genre a fresh angle that feels earned rather than gimmicky.
If you are looking for something to watch this weekend that will genuinely surprise you, Super Crooks is sitting right there on Netflix waiting. Thirteen episodes, each running around twenty-five minutes. You can finish it in a weekend and you will want to.
For more blogsto anime series that fly under the radar and deserve more attention, 9anime-tv.pro covers a wide range of titles with real depth. The blogs section is the place to start if you want to build a watchlist with intention rather than just clicking whatever the algorithm surfaces next.