This week, we play around with the dub and wonder why we should care.
1. The great dub debate
For episode three of Super Crooks, I decided to watch the English dub instead of the subtitled version. It’s good! It’s fine. Honestly, it’s fine. The voices fit the characters, the acting is appropriate, and the differences between the English lines and the wording in the subtitles make sense. There’s only so much the actors can do with clunky dialogue and action-scene noises but they do their best. Some of the lines actually make more sense in English than their translated subtitle counterparts and seem to have more life in them. So I think I may switch over to the English version from here on out.
2. Attack on San Francisco
Episode three is comprised entirely of a chase scene that leads to the ending, in which a pivotal character shows up. (More on that later.) Our main villain, Johnny Bolt, and his gang of forgettable sidekicks are fleeing after a jewel heist goes wrong. Or, actually, ten jewel heists. They don’t manage to make their escape from the last store before the police show up and the chase is on. The San Francisco Police Department enlists two “heroes” to help them chase down Johnny’s gang. They’re pursued by a cop with single-minded vigor (excessive single-minded vigor, considering that Johnny and his gang didn’t kill anyone and the jewels are probably insured). The first “hero” to show up looks like a Titan from Attack on Titans. He’s easily dispatched by a little electrocution and a lot of bad luck, but not before wrecking a fair amount of San Francisco’s housing in sequences that look pretty decent on a computer monitor but aren’t exactly state-of-the-art CGI.
3. The Roly Poly guy
After the mountain man, Rubber Ball shows up. The episode is called “Man Mountain,” but the actual character himself is only around for a minute or two. Johnny and his friends spend more screentime fighting Rubber Ball, a guy who is, literally, a rubber ball. He … bounces. That’s his thing. He’s also obnoxious. He stops to chat with fans and take selfies, a fact that the villains comment on as if it’s the worst thing he could possibly do. And yeah, it’s obnoxious, but the criticism doesn’t come with an ounce of self-reflection on the part of Johnny or the others as they destroy the city around them, damaging property and possibly harming civilians. The Rubber Ball doesn’t stop to think about this, either, and that seems to be the entire point of him. He’s an awful hero so that the audience really understands that in this world, heroes are just as bad as villains. Like, we get it, but the point-of-view villains aren’t exactly great, either? So the message is diluted into a confusing mess where every character is awful and you’re not really rooting for anyone.
4. Talking while chasing
This episode continues the tendency Super Crooks has of rehashing plot information via awkward dialogue. In this one, it’s made even more awkward because the characters are literally biking around San Francisco being chased by cops! But they stop to chat, anyway, because the audience needs to be reminded of the “Network,” a shadowy villain mafia organization, and because the sidekicks need to crack jokes. (The joke about Kismet’s grandmother dying of toxoplasmosis is dumb but I’ll admit I chuckled. He’s the only one of Johnny’s sidekicks that I remember when he’s offscreen because he seems sullen and cranky while having a fun English voice and an interesting power. The rest of the gang are basically X-Men extras and I have a hard enough time remembering the main mutants, let alone the third-string characters.)
Since the entire episode is a chase scene, the dialogue that is included is just so awkward. Rubber Ball blames his obnoxious behavior on the fact that he was dumped by his girlfriend, becoming yet another male character in this show who blames women for his own behavior. It’s also just an unnecessary bit of character development for a character who isn’t going to stick around and just … awkward.
5. About that ending
The end of the episode finds Johnny and the gang getting away with their heist and the destruction of a large amount of San Francisco. Or so they think. Just as the villains are crossing the bridge to their getaway helicopter, they’re whisked away. The Praetorian shows up, and that’s it. Literally, the episode ends. But without having read the comics or anything else to support this character’s inclusion in the Millarworld, the impact falls flat. Why should I care that this particular guy is the one who catches them? I’m sure I’ll find out in the next episode but without enough foreshadowing to make me understand what it is about him that’s special or why I should care, there’s no hook. The next episode is called “The Praetorian,” though, so I’m sure we’ll find out.
