AniKuro: crime, detective and heist animation, and where to watch it

Why crime and animation belong together

Crime stories and animation make a natural pair. A detective story is a puzzle, and animation is the art of controlling every detail on the screen, so a director can hide a clue in plain sight, frame a suspect in a single glance or stage a chase that would cost a fortune in live action. A heist story is a machine of moving parts, and animation lets those parts spin with split-second timing. A noir story lives on mood, and animation can paint mood directly: the exact shade of neon on wet pavement, the exact angle of a shadow across a face.

Animation also gives crime stories a freedom of tone that live action finds hard to match. The same collection can hold the slapstick of Bugs Bunny outwitting a pair of bank robbers, the elegant capers of Lupin the Third, the earnest deductions of a boy detective and the brooding rooftops of Gotham City. Caricature lets a villain be grand and a hero be larger than life. Stylisation lets a film move from comedy to tension in a single cut. That range is the heart of AniKuro, and the shelves are arranged so that you can follow a single mood or wander between them.

Crime animation also has a long history of crossing borders. Japanese studios adapted a French gentleman thief and an English consulting detective; Belgian comics became French and Canadian cartoons; an American caped crusader found his way to Shanghai; a Hungarian director filled a heist film with references to the whole history of painting. The collection celebrates those journeys, and many title pages show how a story travelled from one country to another before reaching the screen.

The AniKuro design

AniKuro follows the look of the archived anikuro.ru home page of May 2026, a dark anime site built around a full-screen spotlight. The page is near-black, a deep charcoal that lets posters and backdrops glow. A rounded charcoal header bar floats a little way in from the edges of the window, with a soft border and gently rounded corners. On the left sits the wordmark: ani written in white, beside KURO reversed out of a white box. On the right are the search box with its Filter button, three dark buttons for Recent, Top and Random, and a bookmark button for My List.

The home page opens with the spotlight, a full-width slide for one featured title at a time. A large backdrop fills the screen, softened by a gradient toward the bottom and the left. Over it sit the title in bold white letters, a few lines of the story, an outlined Watch Now button with a bookmark icon and an information icon beside it, and a row of details: a clock with the running time, two outlined badges for the format and the original language in orange and green, a calendar with the year and a folder with the main genres. Arrows at the lower right move between the slides.

Below the spotlight comes a two-column block. The wide column holds Latest Case Files, a grid of poster cards with a small badge in the top corner, followed by a View More bar. The narrow column holds Top Trending, a list of numbered thumbnails on softly glowing cards, with a link to the Top Rated shelf beside its heading. Section headings turn coral when you point at them, the accent colour of the whole site. After that come the shelves, the help pages and this guide.

How to use AniKuro

There are many doors into the collection. The spotlight at the top of the home page presents a handful of featured titles, one slide at a time, with the arrows at the lower right to move between them. The Latest Case Files grid shows the most recent titles in the collection, and the Top Trending list shows the titles that viewers around the world are looking at most. The shelves below gather titles by hero, by beat and by era, and the header offers Recent, Top and Random buttons for quick jumps.

The search box in the header understands English and Japanese titles, so you can type Lupin the Third or ルパン三世 and land on the same shelf. For series, you can add a season and an episode, such as Active Raid S2E3, to go straight to that episode. The Browse page lists every title from A to Z, and the shelf pages list everything in a collection, most popular first.

Every title page gives the story, the year, the running time or the number of episodes, the studio, the director and the voice cast. Series pages list every episode with its original air date, grouped by season. At the top of each page, the Watch Now button asks for your country and then opens JustWatch, which lists the subscription services, rental shops and free services that carry the title where you live. The Add to My List button saves the title in your browser for later.

Lupin the Third

The shelf at the very heart of AniKuro is Lupin the Third. Created by the manga artist Monkey Punch in 1967, Arsène Lupin III is the grandson of the French gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc's novels, a master of disguise with a taste for impossible treasures, fast cars and narrow escapes. He travels with the laconic gunman Daisuke Jigen, the samurai swordsman Goemon Ishikawa XIII and the glamorous, double-dealing Fujiko Mine, and he is chased from continent to continent by the tireless Inspector Koichi Zenigata of Interpol.

From 1989 to 2013, Nippon Television broadcast a new Lupin the Third special almost every year, and the shelf gathers a long run of them. Lupin the Third: The Hemingway Papers sends the gang to a Mediterranean island in search of a treasure hidden by the great novelist. Lupin the Third: Napoleon's Dictionary is a race for a book that holds the key to a fortune. Lupin the Third: From Siberia with Love plays with spy thrillers and Russian legends, and Lupin the Third: Voyage to Danger sets the gang against a secret organisation on the high seas.

The specials of the late 1990s are among the most loved. Lupin the Third: The Secret of Twilight Gemini takes the gang to Morocco in search of a jewel. Lupin the Third: Tokyo Crisis brings them home to Japan for a caper in the heart of the capital. Lupin the Third: The Columbus Files ties a treasure hunt to the voyages of Christopher Columbus, and Lupin the Third: Missed by a Dollar sends them after a hidden fortune with a wry sense of humour.

The 2000s continue the tradition with Lupin the Third: Alcatraz Connection, Lupin the Third: Return of Pycal, Lupin the Third: Operation: Return the Treasure, Lupin the Third: Swallowtail Tattoo, Lupin the Third: Seven Days Rhapsody and Lupin the 3rd: The Elusiveness of the Fog. The anniversary film Lupin the Third: Green vs Red asks what it means to be Lupin at all, as a crowd of pretenders claims the name. Lupin the Third: Blood Seal of the Eternal Mermaid, Lupin the Third: The Secret Page of Marco Polo and Lupin the Third: The Last Job round out the run, and Lupin the Third: Is Lupin Still Burning? looks back fondly at the very first series.

Two lighter entries show the playful side of the legend. Lupin the Third: Lupin Family Lineup brings together Lupin's relatives, and Lupin Shanshei is a short web parody by the comic animator FROGMAN, with episodes of a few minutes each. Together the shelf offers a whole evening, or a whole season, of elegant thefts, loyal friends and a hero who always keeps his promise to steal the prize.

How to watch the Lupin specials

The specials stand on their own, so you can start anywhere. Each one opens with the gang already in motion, introduces a treasure and a rival within minutes and wraps up with a getaway before the credits. If you want a single entry point, The Columbus Files or Voyage to Danger give a lovely sense of the whole run, with globe-trotting settings, clever reversals and a warm finale.

Watching in order of release shows how the character designs, the music and the tone shifted from the late 1980s to the 2010s. The early specials have the lush hand-painted look of the era, while the later ones move to digital colour and brighter lighting. Yuji Ohno's jazzy themes run through nearly all of them, and hearing the famous opening fanfare again and again is part of the pleasure.

City Hunter

The City Hunter shelf follows Ryo Saeba, the sweeper of Shinjuku. Created by Tsukasa Hojo in 1985, Ryo is a private detective, bodyguard and troubleshooter who takes cases from anyone who writes the letters XYZ on the message board at Shinjuku Station. He is a crack shot and a brilliant strategist, and also an incorrigible clown, kept in line by his partner Kaori Makimura and her enormous hundred-ton hammer.

The shelf gathers the films and television specials of the original run and the modern revival. City Hunter: .357 Magnum is the first theatrical film, a tale of a pianist, a conspiracy and a concert hall. City Hunter: Bay City Wars and City Hunter: Million Dollar Conspiracy were released together as a double bill, one set on a futuristic island city and the other built around a bounty on Ryo's head. City Hunter Special: The Secret Service sends Ryo to protect a visiting dignitary, and City Hunter Special: Goodbye My Sweetheart is a tender, action-packed farewell to the original era.

City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes brought Ryo back to the big screen in 2019, with the original voice cast, the famous Get Wild ending song and a Shinjuku full of modern skyscrapers and drones. It is a warm-hearted love letter to the series and a fine place to start if you are new to the character. The City Hunter films pair nicely with the Lupin the Third specials: both come from the Tokyo animation scene of the 1980s and 1990s, both mix comedy with slick action and both have unforgettable music.

Detectives

The Detectives shelf is the largest in the collection, and it ranges across countries, eras and styles. It holds great detectives and boy detectives, private eyes and newspaper reporters, animal sleuths and cartoon investigators. The common thread is the pleasure of a mystery: a crime, a set of clues, a line of suspects and a mind that sees the pattern before anyone else.

At the centre of the shelf stands the most famous detective of all. The Great Mouse Detective is Disney's 1986 retelling of Sherlock Holmes with mice, as Basil of Baker Street and his loyal companion Dr Dawson race to rescue a kidnapped toymaker from the villainous Professor Ratigan, voiced with gleeful menace by Vincent Price. Its climax inside the gears of Big Ben was one of the first uses of computer animation in a Disney feature, and it remains a joy to watch.

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century brings Holmes back to life in a future London, where Inspector Beth Lestrade of New Scotland Yard revives him to fight a cloned Professor Moriarty and Watson returns as a loyal android. Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes sends the cat and mouse to Baker Street to help with a jewel theft, and Sherlock Gnomes gives the detective a garden setting and a cheerful cast of garden ornaments. Holmes also appears, in spirit, in the Japanese Calico Cat Holmes and the Lord of the Haunted Castle, a cosy mystery about a hapless detective and his very clever cat.

The American side of the shelf includes Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the 1988 landmark that mixes live action and animation in a 1940s Los Angeles noir about a private eye, a framed cartoon rabbit and a plot against the city's streetcars. It is one of the great crime comedies of any kind, with Bob Hoskins as the weary detective Eddie Valiant and a crowd of cartoon stars from every studio. Hoodwinked! retells Little Red Riding Hood as a police investigation with four competing witness statements, and Mater Private Eye gives the friendly tow truck from Cars a detective adventure of his own.

Boy detectives of Japan

Japan has a special love for young detectives, and two of its most famous series appear on the shelf. Detective Conan, known in some countries as Case Closed, follows Shinichi Kudo, a high-school detective shrunk into the body of a small child by a mysterious poison. Taking the name Conan Edogawa, he solves cases from behind the scenes while hunting the Black Organization that shrank him. The franchise has run on television since 1996 and produces a new cinema film every spring.

The shelf gathers a set of Conan specials and spin-offs. Detective Conan: Black History is a recap special that sets out the long story of the Black Organization, a handy guide for anyone joining the series late. Detective Conan: Conan vs. Kid - Shark & Jewel pits Conan against his great rival, the Kaito Kid, a phantom thief in a white suit and top hat. Detective Conan Magic File collects short original stories, and Detective Conan: Love Story at Police Headquarters ~Wedding Eve~ follows the romantic lives of the Tokyo police officers who work alongside Conan.

The Police Academy arc tells the backstory of the undercover agent Rei Furuya, one of the most popular characters in the franchise, in Police Academy Arc Wild Police Story CASE. Furuya Rei. Detective Conan: Amuro Secret Call is a short special that follows him in his cover as a café waiter, and Detective Conan vs. Wooo is a playful crossover with a television mascot.

The Kindaichi Case Files follow Hajime Kindaichi, a lazy high-school student who happens to be the grandson of the great fictional detective Kosuke Kindaichi and who turns into a brilliant investigator whenever a murder takes place near him, which is often. Kindaichi Case Files: Death God Hospital Murder Case and Kindaichi Case Files: The Third Opera House Murders are classic locked-room puzzles, and Kindaichi Case Files Returns: The File of Inspector Akechi turns the spotlight on Hajime's elegant rival in the police. These stories play fair with the viewer: every clue is on the screen, and the solution is always there to be found.

For younger viewers, Butt Detective the Movie: The Curry Incident and Butt Detective the Movie: Shiriarty follow a gentleman detective with a very unusual face, a huge hit with Japanese children and a gentle, funny first mystery for the whole family. Osamu Tezuka's Last Mystery of the 20th Century brings together characters created by the god of manga for a New Year's Eve puzzle, and Yuukan Club follows a group of wealthy school friends who solve crimes for fun.

Reporters and investigators

Newspaper reporters make fine detectives, and the shelf holds two of the most famous. Tintin, the young Belgian reporter created by Hergé, has his own shelf, described below. Reporter Blues is an Italian and Japanese series from 1991 in which a reporter named Blues chases scoops and gangsters through a stylish 1930s New York, created by Marco and Gi Pagot and directed by Kenji Kodama of City Hunter fame. Its jazz-age settings and gentle humour make it a lovely companion to the Lupin specials.

Some of the most interesting investigations on the shelf take place in invented worlds. ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Dept. - Regards returns to a kingdom of thirteen territories and its inspection department, a story of quiet intrigue and fine pastries. YATAGARASU, a 2024 series set in a world of shapeshifting crows, follows a court drama of plots and suspicions around an heir to the throne. Top Secret: The Revelation imagines a future police unit that reads the memories of the dead to solve crimes, and Five Numbers! is a short puzzle about four prisoners and a cat in an isolated prison.

Phantom thieves and heists

The Phantom thieves shelf is for anyone who roots for the crook. A heist story is a celebration of cleverness: a team assembles, a plan unfolds, something goes wrong, and a second, secret plan saves the day. Animation is perfect for this, and the shelf gathers capers from Japan, Europe and Hollywood alongside the whole Lupin the Third run.

The standout European title is Ruben Brandt, Collector, a 2018 Hungarian film by Milorad Krstić. A psychotherapist troubled by nightmares drawn from famous paintings leads four of his patients, all expert thieves, on a spree through the great museums of the world to steal the thirteen works that haunt him. Every frame is packed with references to art history, from Botticelli to Warhol, and the film moves with the pace of a spy thriller. It is one of the most inventive animated features of its decade.

Denmark contributes the beloved Olsen Gang, a trio of small-time crooks whose leader, Egon Olsen, emerges from prison at the start of every adventure with a brilliant new plan. Olsen Gang Gets Polished sends them to steal a famous quill pen on behalf of the prime minister's office, and The Olsen Gang in Deep Trouble continues the fun. Italy adds Christmas Thieves, in which two burglars are mistaken for babysitters, and the Czech and Hungarian shorts on the shelf add a touch of Central European whimsy.

Hollywood's modern heist comedies appear too. The Bad Guys: The Series tells how Mr. Wolf and his crew of animal outlaws got into the bad-guy business in the first place, and The Bad Guys: A Very Bad Holiday and The Bad Guys: Little Lies and Alibis are festive and parole-day specials. The Nut Job follows a squirrel who plans a heist on a nut shop that happens to be the front for a human bank robbery, and Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers turns the classic chipmunks into detectives in a Los Angeles full of cartoon characters from every era.

Japan's phantom thieves have their own charm. Phantom Thief Reinya follows a girl who works at a convenience store by day and becomes a masked thief by night, and the Kaito Kid appears as Conan's great rival in the Shark & Jewel special. The Pink Panther cartoons Pink in the Clink and The Pink Package Plot send the elegant cat on reluctant missions for burglars, and the Inspector cartoons French Freud and Carte Blanched follow a bumbling French policeman modelled on Inspector Clouseau.

Noir and style

Film noir was born in the Hollywood crime films of the 1940s, with their hard-boiled detectives, dangerous dames, rain-slick streets and shadowy stairways. Animation took to the style at once, and the collection holds noir in many shades. Criminal Tango is a short 1985 film that reimagines film noir in a stark animated style, and Logorama, the Oscar-winning French short of 2009, stages a police chase in a city built entirely from corporate logos.

A Detective Story, part of The Animatrix collection, is a black-and-white tale of a private eye hired to find a mysterious hacker, drawn in the style of a 1940s thriller. Garfield's Babes and Bullets is a television special in which the lazy cat daydreams that he is a hard-boiled private eye in a monochrome city, and How to Be a Detective sends Goofy on a surreal whodunnit as Johnny Eyeball, Private Eye. These titles show how the language of noir became a playground for animators of every kind.

Japanese animation has its own noir tradition, most clearly in Noir, a 2001 series from the studio Bee Train. Two women, the Corsican assassin Mireille Bouquet and the mysterious Kirika Yumura, team up to uncover the secret of their shared past, travelling from Paris to the Italian countryside under the eye of an ancient society known as Les Soldats. Yuki Kajiura's haunting score is one of the most admired in anime, and the series set the template for many stylish thrillers that followed.

Gotham

The Gotham shelf gathers the Batman animated films, one of the richest traditions in Western animation. Batman is a detective at heart, the World's Greatest Detective in the words of the comics, and his stories are full of clues, masks, riddles and secret identities. The animated films have given the character some of his finest moments.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm is the jewel of the shelf. Released in 1993 as a feature spin-off of Batman: The Animated Series, it tells of a mysterious vigilante who is hunting down Gotham's crime bosses and of the lost love of Bruce Wayne's youth. Kevin Conroy's voice as Batman and Mark Hamill's as the Joker became definitive for a generation, and the film's art deco city, dark red skies and orchestral score by Shirley Walker remain a high point of superhero animation. Batman & Mr. Freeze: SubZero and Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman continue in the same style.

From 2008, Warner Bros. began a line of animated films for older viewers, many of them adapted from celebrated comics. Batman: Gotham Knight is an anthology of six stories by Japanese studios including Production I.G, Studio 4°C and Madhouse, a lovely bridge between the Gotham and Japanese shelves. Batman: Year One adapts Frank Miller's story of Bruce Wayne's first year in the cape and Jim Gordon's first year on the Gotham police force. Batman: Under the Red Hood follows a new vigilante who takes on the city's gangs with his own methods.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 1 and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Part 2 adapt Miller's famous story of an older Bruce Wayne who returns to the streets of a future Gotham. Batman: The Long Halloween, Part One and Batman: The Long Halloween, Part Two adapt the celebrated mystery by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, in which a killer strikes on a holiday each month and Batman, Jim Gordon and district attorney Harvey Dent race to catch them. Batman: Hush is another mystery, in which a bandaged villain uses Batman's whole rogues' gallery to strike at him.

The shelf also holds lighter adventures. Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a fun crossover, and Batman: Soul of the Dragon is a 1970s martial-arts adventure. Catwoman: Hunted is an anime-style caper in which the cat burglar tries to steal a priceless jewel and finds herself pursued by Interpol, and DC Showcase: Catwoman is a short in which she tracks a mysterious cargo. Gotham Girls is a Flash web series about Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Batgirl and friends, and The Bat Man of Shanghai reimagines Batman, Catwoman and Bane in 1930s Shanghai in a striking graphic style.

Where to start in Gotham

For a first visit, Mask of the Phantasm is the natural choice: it is self-contained, moving and beautifully made. Year One and The Long Halloween form a satisfying pair about the early days of Batman and Jim Gordon, and The Dark Knight Returns is the grand finale of the legend. Gotham Knight is a good choice for anime fans who want to see how Japanese studios imagined the city.

Several of the later Gotham films are made for older teenagers and adults, with intense action. The title pages give the running time and the story, and the official services show age ratings for each film in your country. Families with younger children will find the older Batman films, Gotham Girls and the Batman vs Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover a friendlier fit, alongside the family detectives on the Detectives shelf.

Police

The Police shelf rides along with patrol officers, special units and cartoon cops. It holds some of the warmest series in the collection, because police stories in animation are often as much about friendship and teamwork as about crime.

You're Under Arrest is the classic of the shelf. Created by Kosuke Fujishima, the artist behind Ah! My Goddess, it follows two young officers of the Bokuto police station in Tokyo: Natsumi Tsujimoto, a spirited motorbike rider with enormous strength, and Miyuki Kobayakawa, a quiet mechanical genius who drives a souped-up Honda Today. Their patrols through the streets of Tokyo mix comedy, car chases and everyday kindness. You're Under Arrest: The Motion Picture raises the stakes with a plot against the city, and the film is a lovely showcase for the precise mechanical animation of the 1990s.

MiniPato is a set of short parodies of the Patlabor franchise, written by Mamoru Oshii and drawn in a paper-puppet style, and a witty glimpse of the world of police robots. Active Raid follows Unit 8, a special police squad in powered suits that tackles crimes in a future Tokyo, with plenty of bureaucratic comedy between the action scenes. Wild 7: Biker Knights adapts Mikiya Mochizuki's manga about a police team of former criminals on motorbikes.

KochiKame, one of the longest-running manga of all time, follows Kankichi Ryotsu, a lazy, greedy and lovable police officer at a neighbourhood police box in Tokyo. KochiKame: The Movie teams him with an FBI agent to track a terrorist, and KochiKame the Movie 2: UFO Attack! The Great Tornado Strategy!! is a madcap adventure. The same spirit of comedy runs through the German Derrick - Die Pflicht ruft!, a cartoon parody of a famous Munich police drama, and the American Funky Cops, about two disco-loving San Francisco detectives of the 1970s.

Western television cops appear too. The Dick Tracy Show brought Chester Gould's square-jawed detective to television in 1961 with a squad of comic assistants. RoboCop: The Animated Series and RoboCop: Alpha Commando are Saturday-morning versions of the cyborg police officer of Old Detroit. The Hungarian Captain of the Forest follows a wise forest ranger who keeps order among the animals, and the classic Droopy cartoon Dumb-Hounded introduces the unflappable basset hound as a police dog who is always one step ahead of an escaped wolf.

Delinquents and undercover heroines

Japan has a long tradition of school delinquent stories, and the shelf includes some of their most striking heroines. Sukeban Deka, created by Shinji Wada, follows Saki Asamiya, a tough schoolgirl recruited as an undercover police agent, armed with a steel yo-yo stamped with the badge of the police. The 1991 video series and film adapt the manga with style, and the title pages for both are on the Police shelf.

Kenka Banchou Otome: Girl Beats Boys follows Hinako, who takes her twin brother's place at an all-boys school full of the toughest delinquents in the country, and Salaryman Kintaro tells of a former biker gang leader who puts on a suit and brings his street-fighter's sense of honour to the corporate world. These are stories about loyalty and courage, and they bring a lighter touch to the shelf.

Spies and agents

The Spies and agents shelf holds secret agents, assassins, negotiators and underworld hotels. It is the most stylish shelf in the collection, full of fine suits, hidden weapons and double lives.

Princess Principal Crown Handler: Chapter 2, Princess Principal Crown Handler: Chapter 3 and Princess Principal Crown Handler: Chapter 4 continue the story of Princess Principal, a steampunk spy series set in an alternate London divided by a wall. A team of schoolgirl spies works for the Commonwealth, led by the princess herself and the cool agent Ange, who claims to be a spy from the Moon. The films are packed with elegant action and intricate plots.

Hotel Inhumans is a 2025 series about a hotel for assassins, where the concierges Ikuro and Sara provide the finest service to guests with dangerous jobs. Tesla Note follows the ninja Botan and the spy Kuruma as they hunt for crystals that hold the secret inventions of Nikola Tesla. Yugo The Negotiator follows a man whose only weapon is his voice, travelling to Pakistan and Russia to bring hostages home. Eden of The East Compilation: Air Communication reworks the celebrated 2009 series about a young man with a phone that can grant almost any wish.

From the West, The Man Called Flintstone is a 1966 spy spoof in which Fred Flintstone stands in for a secret agent who looks just like him, and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld follows two outlaws through the criminal side of a galaxy far away. Trese, from the Philippines, follows Alexandra Trese as she keeps the peace between the criminal underworld of Manila and the supernatural creatures of Filipino folklore, a unique blend of detective story and myth.

Tintin

The Tintin shelf follows the young reporter created by the Belgian artist Hergé in 1929, one of the greatest investigators in comics. With his faithful white dog Snowy, the hot-tempered Captain Haddock, the absent-minded Professor Calculus and the bumbling detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin uncovers smugglers, forgers and conspiracies from Scotland to the Andes.

The 1991 television series by the French studio Ellipse and the Canadian studio Nelvana adapted the albums with great care, keeping Hergé's clear line and colours. The shelf gathers several of its stories as films. Cigars of the Pharaoh begins in Egypt with an eccentric archaeologist and leads to an international smuggling ring. The Blue Lotus continues the story in Shanghai, one of Hergé's most admired works, with a moving friendship between Tintin and a young Chinese boy named Chang. The Black Island follows a gang of forgers to a Scottish island with a legendary beast, King Ottokar's Sceptre uncovers a plot against the throne of a small Balkan kingdom, and The Calculus Affair sends Tintin and Haddock to rescue the professor from rival spies.

Tintin and the Lake of Sharks is an original 1972 feature by Belvision in which Professor Calculus's new invention attracts the attention of a criminal mastermind. The Adventures of Tintin, Steven Spielberg's 2011 motion-capture film, combines three albums into a breathless treasure hunt, with a chase through a Moroccan port that is one of the great action sequences in animation.

Crime animation from Europe

European animation brings its own flavour of crime story. Alongside Tintin and Ruben Brandt, the collection holds the Swedish detective Agaton Sax in Agaton Sax and the Bykoebing Village Festival, a 1976 adventure in which the great detective and Inspector Lispington of Scotland Yard chase two villains who have escaped from a London jail. The Danish Olsen Gang films, the German Derrick parody, the Hungarian Captain of the Forest and the French Logorama complete a varied European corner.

Regular Rabbit is a 2022 short about a perfectly ordinary rabbit whose good name falls victim to a tide of rumours, a sharp modern fable about truth and reputation. These European titles are often short, and they make a good break between longer films.

Classic cartoon crooks

The Classic cartoon crooks shelf gathers gangster and detective shorts from the golden age of Hollywood animation, when the studios loved to parody the crime films of Warner Bros. and the radio detectives of the day. These cartoons are short, fast and very funny, and they are a delight to discover one after another.

Bugs Bunny meets gangsters again and again. In Racketeer Rabbit, two hoodlums modelled on Edward G. Robinson and Peter Lorre find Bugs settled in their hideout. In Bugs and Thugs, he hails a taxi that turns out to be a getaway car, and in Bugsy and Mugsy he turns two gangsters against each other. Baby Buggy Bunny features a bank robber who disguises himself as a baby, A Hare Grows in Manhattan recalls Bugs's youth in the tenements of New York, and The Unmentionables spoofs the television series The Untouchables, with Bugs as the federal agent Elegant Ness.

Other classic characters join in. Daffy Duck plays a detective in Deduce, You Say, a Sherlock Holmes parody, and meets a bank robber in The Stupor Salesman. Thugs with Dirty Mugs is a gangster parody of 1939, and The Hole Idea imagines a portable hole that turns a thief into an unstoppable menace. Catty Cornered sends Sylvester to rescue Tweety from a gangster, and The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries turns the pair into a whole detective series with Granny as the head of her own agency.

The earliest cartoons on the shelf go back to the dawn of sound. The Cuckoo Murder Case of 1930 sends Flip the Frog to investigate the shooting of a cuckoo in a spooky mansion, Big Man from the North casts Bosko as a Mountie who must get his man, and The Bum Bandit features Bimbo as a masked train robber who meets his match in Betty Boop. Who Killed Cock Robin?, a Silly Symphony of 1935, stages a courtroom trial in the woods, and Who Killed Who?, a Tex Avery cartoon of 1943, is a gleeful spoof of haunted-house murder mysteries.

Disney's crooks are just as memorable. In Donald's Crime, Donald Duck borrows from his nephews' piggy bank and imagines himself a hardened criminal, a funny little film noir about a guilty conscience. Bunco Busters features Woody Woodpecker against the con man Buzz Buzzard, Bunny and Claude: We Rob Carrot Patches is a 1968 parody of the outlaw films of the day, and Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves is one of the lavish two-reel Popeye specials, with a desert bandit and his gang.

Crime stories for the whole family

Many titles on AniKuro are perfect for families. Detective stories teach children to observe, reason and question, and the lighter heist stories celebrate teamwork and cleverness. It's a Mystery, Charlie Brown follows Snoopy as he dons a deerstalker to find Woodstock's missing nest. Inspector Gadget's Last Case brings back the bumbling cyborg detective and his clever niece Penny, and An American Tail: The Mystery of the Night Monster sends Fievel Mousekewitz on a newspaper investigation in New York.

The Scooby-Doo gang are the best-known family detectives of all, and the shelf includes four of their adventures. Scooby-Doo! Pirates Ahoy! takes them on a mystery cruise, Scooby-Doo! and the Monster of Mexico sends them south of the border, Scooby-Doo! and the Samurai Sword takes them to Japan, and Scooby-Doo! Mask of the Blue Falcon visits a comic convention. Every Scooby-Doo mystery follows a comforting pattern of clues, chases and unmaskings, and children love to guess the culprit before the gang does.

Families can also enjoy The Great Mouse Detective, Hoodwinked!, The Bad Guys, Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers, Sherlock Gnomes, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes and the Butt Detective films, along with the Tintin adventures and the classic cartoons. The title pages give the running time and the story, and the official services show an age rating for each title in your country.

Crime animation through the eras

The collection is also arranged by era. The Before 1980 shelf gathers the cartoon gangsters and detectives of Hollywood's golden age, the Dick Tracy Show, the Pink Panther and Inspector cartoons, the first Tintin feature and the early European shorts. These films are full of energy and invention, and they show how quickly animators learned to borrow the language of crime cinema.

The 1980 to 1999 shelf covers the golden age of the Lupin the Third specials and the City Hunter films, You're Under Arrest, the Kindaichi and Sukeban Deka video releases, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Great Mouse Detective, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and the Tintin television adaptations. It was an era of lush hand-drawn animation, jazzy soundtracks and big, confident storytelling.

The Since 2000 shelf holds the later Lupin specials, Noir, the Batman films for older viewers, the Detective Conan specials, Ruben Brandt, Collector, Princess Principal, Hotel Inhumans, Tesla Note, Trese, The Bad Guys and many more. Digital animation brought new colours and new ways of staging action, and streaming brought stories from the Philippines, Hungary and beyond to a worldwide audience.

The Top rated shelf gathers the titles with the highest scores from viewers, a good starting point when you want a sure thing. It includes favourites such as Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, The Dark Knight Returns, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century and Hotel Inhumans.

Routes through the collection

If you enjoy elegant capers, start with a Lupin the Third special such as The Columbus Files, move on to City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes, then try Ruben Brandt, Collector and Catwoman: Hunted. The four share a love of stylish thefts, sly humour and memorable music, and they show how the heist story travels between Japan, Europe and Hollywood.

If you love a good puzzle, begin with The Great Mouse Detective, then try a Kindaichi Case Files special, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century and Batman: The Long Halloween. Each one lays out its clues with care, and each rewards close attention. The Detective Conan specials are a good next step for anyone ready to start the long main series.

If you want atmosphere above all, try Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Noir, A Detective Story and Criminal Tango. These are films of shadows and music, where the mood of the city matters as much as the plot. Watch them late in the evening with the lights down for the full effect.

If you want to laugh, try the classic cartoon crooks, the Pink Panther shorts, KochiKame, Funky Cops, The Bad Guys and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Crime comedy is one of animation's oldest and happiest traditions, and these titles show it at its best.

If you want an evening of action, try Active Raid, Tesla Note, Hotel Inhumans, Batman: Under the Red Hood and the Princess Principal films. These are fast, confident stories with plenty of chases, fights and reversals, and they show how far animated action has come.

Japanese crime animation, a short history

Crime stories have been part of Japanese animation from its early television years. The first Lupin the Third series of 1971, with direction by Masaaki Osumi and later by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, brought a grown-up sense of style to television animation. The second series of 1977 and the films that followed made Lupin a national icon, and the yearly specials from 1989 kept him on screen for another quarter of a century.

The 1980s brought City Hunter and a wave of action series set in the modern city, with Tokyo's neon, cars and nightclubs as their backdrop. Video releases allowed studios to try tougher stories for older audiences, and the 1990s added You're Under Arrest, Kindaichi and Detective Conan, which made the locked-room mystery a staple of Japanese television. The 2000s and 2010s brought stylish thrillers such as Noir, Eden of the East and Princess Principal, and the 2020s have added Tesla Note, YATAGARASU and Hotel Inhumans.

Throughout that history, Japanese crime animation has kept a fondness for Europe and America. Lupin comes from a French novel, Conan takes his name from Arthur Conan Doyle, and many series are set in Paris, London, New York or invented European cities. That exchange runs both ways, and the Batman anthology Gotham Knight, made by Japanese studios for an American hero, is a fine example of the conversation between the two traditions.

Western crime animation, a short history

In the West, crime animation begins with the cartoon gangsters and detectives of the 1930s and 1940s. The Warner Bros. studio was famous for its live-action gangster films, and its animators happily parodied them with Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and a gallery of cartoon hoodlums. Disney, MGM and Walter Lantz joined in, and the radio detectives of the day inspired countless spoofs.

Television brought Dick Tracy, the Pink Panther and Inspector Gadget, and the late 1980s brought two landmarks: The Great Mouse Detective, which helped begin the Disney renaissance, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which married animation to film noir. The 1990s brought Batman: The Animated Series and Mask of the Phantasm, which showed that American television animation could be dark, adult and beautiful.

The twenty-first century added the direct-to-video Batman films, the Pixar short Mater Private Eye, the DreamWorks Bad Guys, the Oscar-winning Logorama and the Hungarian masterpiece Ruben Brandt, Collector. Streaming services brought new series such as Trese from the Philippines and Star Wars: Tales of the Underworld to a worldwide audience.

Watching crime animation today

Most of the titles on AniKuro are available on official services somewhere in the world, and the Watch Now button on each title page shows where. Anime subscription services carry many Lupin the Third, City Hunter and Detective Conan titles, often with a choice of Japanese audio with subtitles or an English dub. General streaming services carry the Batman films, the DreamWorks and Disney titles and many of the modern series. Digital shops rent and sell most of the films, and some services offer classic cartoons free with adverts.

Availability changes from country to country and from month to month, which is why Watch Now asks for your country first. JustWatch then lists every official option in one place, with labels for subscription, rental, purchase and free viewing, so you can pick the one that suits you. If a title is available on a service you already use, it will appear at the top of the list.

The older titles on the shelf were made for square television screens, so they appear with bars at the sides on a modern widescreen set. That is how they were meant to be seen, and many have been restored from the original film with cleaner colours and sharper lines. The classic cartoon shorts are best enjoyed a few at a time, as they were in cinemas, where they played before the main feature.

Subtitles, dubs and titles

Japanese titles on AniKuro are listed under their best-known English names, with the Japanese title on each page. Lupin the Third appears in English as Lupin the Third or Lupin the 3rd, depending on the release, and Detective Conan is also known as Case Closed. The search box understands every version, as well as the Japanese titles, so you can type whichever name you know.

Many Japanese titles offer both subtitles and an English dub. The Lupin specials and City Hunter films have had several English dubs over the years, and fans often have strong opinions about their favourites. The Subtitles and dubs guide explains how to switch between them in the player.

Saving and sharing

My List is the simplest way to plan a long run through a shelf. Press Add to My List on any title page, or open the bookmark button in the header to see your saved titles. For series, you can tick episodes as you watch, and My List keeps your place. The list lives in your browser, works at once and can be exported to a small file for another device.

The shelves are also easy to share. Every collection has its own address, so you can send a friend a link to the Lupin the Third shelf, the Gotham films or the classic cartoon crooks. Each title page has a short, clear summary that makes a good introduction for someone new to the story.

How the collection is chosen

Every title on AniKuro was chosen by hand. The editors began with animation labelled as crime, mystery or thriller in The Movie Database, added titles tagged with themes such as detectives, thieves, heists, police, spies and gangsters, and then read the story of each candidate to check that it belongs on a crime shelf. Titles that lean toward horror or adult themes were set aside, so the collection stays focused on detection, capers, style and suspense.

The result is a collection that suits a wide audience, from families watching Scooby-Doo and The Great Mouse Detective to adults exploring Noir, The Long Halloween and Ruben Brandt, Collector. Posters, stories and production details come from The Movie Database, and the collection is refreshed as new titles appear. The About page explains more.

All the shelves

The full list of shelves lives on the collections page. All case files holds every title, Series gathers the television series and Films gathers the features, specials and shorts. The themed shelves are Lupin the Third, City Hunter, Detectives, Phantom thieves, Gotham, Police, Spies and agents, Tintin and Classic cartoon crooks.

The help pages

Short help pages answer everyday questions. The how to watch guide walks through the steps from a title to the screen, and a short history of crime animation sets the scene. Lupin the Third on AniKuro, Detectives on AniKuro, Gotham on AniKuro and Police and spies suggest first titles on the main shelves.

For practical questions, Subtitles and dubs covers languages, Finding a title covers search, My List covers saving titles and Apps and devices covers phones, tablets and televisions. Free crime animation explains legal ways to watch at zero cost, Where AniKuro titles stream describes the official services behind the guide and Streaming safely offers a short checklist. The official AniKuro site describes how to recognise AniKuro, and Is AniKuro working? offers quick fixes when a page misbehaves.

Questions