Netflix Super Crooks Are A Mature College Of My Hero
My Hero Academia and Super Crooks each have a take on the possibilities of a world where superpowers exist. This may not be as ideal as you might think.
A world with superpowers sounds like fun at first, but there are a lot of unintended consequences to living in such a world. People who want powers usually think how cool it would be if they had theft or overspeed. They usually don’t think about the moral, political, economic, or societal implications of bringing superhumans into reality. Fortunately, there are plenty of comic book and manga artist writers helping flesh out this idea. Their concepts are part of what makes works like My hero university and Super crooks so fascinating.
My hero university and Super crooks both present superhuman society quite realistically, but there is a key difference between the two. As the titles suggest, MHA focuses on the hero point of view, while Super crooks focuses on the villains point of view. These alternate perspectives not only dramatically change the structure of the narrative, but also allow everyone to explore their common themes and concepts in different ways.
A big difference between MHA and Super crooks is their target audience. MHA is intended for school-aged boys, so the writer should exercise restraint with what they can show. Super crooks, on the other hand, is rated R, so he has no qualms about showing dismemberments, exploding heads, and even explicit sex scenes. The difference in censorship changes the way each of these series presents its moral dilemmas.
Super crooks’ Johnny Bolt’s story shares notable similarities with that of another character from MHA – Sweet criminal. Both started out wanting to be heroes, but failed because something went horribly wrong. They switched careers for villainy because they thought it was their best option available.
Super crooks, however, shows a much sadder side to the meanness where the characters are forced into it. In the series, Johnny Bolt comes out of prison in dire need of money, but since no one wants to hire an ex-con, he has to steal to make ends meet. Gentle, on the other hand, will only commit minor crimes and get away with it easily if he gets caught. In MHA‘s In this case, acts of wickedness seem more to be a matter of choice than necessity. One could argue that MHA villains like Toga or Shigaraki are inclined to commit evil acts by nature, but that too is a matter of choice.
It should be noted that there are villains in Super crooks who commit sports crimes. One of these criminals, The Heat, sees his heists as an art form and tries to carry them out with the proper style and grace. That said, Johnny and most of his villain cohorts make it clear that they steal because they have to, not because they want to.
From Super crooks makes villains his protagonists, he also paints heroes, who become antagonistic forces by default, in a much harsher light. In MHA, the goal of heroes against villains is to apprehend them while minimizing collateral damage. However, in Super crooks, the heroes do not take into account the material damage or the well-being of the villains; rather, they strive to impose absolute justice by any means necessary. Heroes in MHA can get rough, but the excessive force with which Super crooks the heroes will even deal with minor infractions makes the MHA hero look like saints.
Super crooks also presents its heroes as much more corruptible. It’s not just a matter of heroes being glory hogs either; this aspect of the hero’s life is also in MHA. On top of that, some of the heroes just work for the bad guys; The Praetorian is associated with The Bastard, and The Gladiator sides with Johnny when he is blackmailed with evidence of his affair. Same MHA the worst heroes like Endeavor or Lady Nagant will at least try to do the right thing or fix their mistakes; none of them went as far as the heroes of Super crooks.
MHA and Super crooks, for all their similarities, present the superhero tale in a very different way. Neither of them refuses to address the darker aspects of the hero business, but Super crooks is really able to go in depth thanks to his higher rating and focus on the bad guys point of view. As fun as superpowers may seem, they can easily get annoying.
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