Suicide Squad Isekai isn’t as bad as I expected it to be, but it isn’t good either.
Let me preface this article by saying that I am very biased when it comes to DC’s Suicide Squad series. Particularly, regarding the character of Harley Quinn.
I legitimately can’t stand her. I’ve never liked Harley Quinn in anything her character has been in. Even as a young boy watching Batman: The Animated Series (where she first debuted), I hated her with a passion. The idea of the Joker having a love interest was stupid enough, but the obnoxious New York Jewish accent really hammered it home for me. If I had to choose between hearing her shrill voice saying “MISTAH J” and listening to nails on a chalkboard, I’d choose the nails on the chalkboard every time. By the time Harley was appearing in the comics in the early 2000’s, that voice was already ingrained into my head, and all of her dialogue bubbles carried her shrill voice. More recent versions of her have attempted to turn her into some sort of bastion of female empowerment, which is equally annoying. I could, and eventually will, write an entire article on why I hate Harley Quinn, but the AJnet Anime Club isn’t the place for that.
I’m also guilty of not really following the DCEU. Like, at all. I haven’t seen a single movie that’s officially considered part of the DCEU. The last DC movie I saw was The Dark Knight Rises, which isn’t part of the DCEU.
I am however fairly familiar with most of the DC characters and I’ve read at least some of the Suicide Squad comics, so I’m not going into Suicide Squad Isekai completely ignorant of what the Suicide Squad is or who the characters are.
I’ll cut right to the chase here: Suicide Squad Isekai isn’t a good series.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly not the worst thing I’ve ever watched. But just because something’s not bad doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good.
The biggest problem with Suicide Squad Isekai is that it’s just too generic. There’s absolutely nothing special about it that sets it apart from other isekai. I wouldn’t care so much if this were just generic isekai #216 based off of generic light novel #5,063. But it’s not. It’s a series made by Wit Studio (who produced hits like Attack on Titan, Spy x Family, and Vinland Saga) using established DC Comics characters, and as such should be held to a higher standard than your average isekai.
One of my biggest peeves with media in general is wasted potential. There’s nothing worse than having a good concept ruined by mediocre writing or a boring story, and that’s what seems to have happened with Suicide Squad Isekai. It’s a good concept that was squandered with a boring and generic story.
The premise of the series is relatively simple. Amanda Waller and ARGUS have opened a portal to an alternate universe (which is never named) and want to secure resources inside the new world. To do this, Waller puts together a team of supervillains, including Harley Quinn, Deadshot, Clayface, Peacemaker, and King Shark. To ensure the team cooperates and carries out the mission, bombs are placed in each member’s neck and will detonate if they don’t receive a signal every 36 hours.
This is the first issue I have with the series. Do we really need yet another Suicide Squad origin story? Most audiences are at the very least familiar with the general idea that the Suicide Squad are a team of supervillains being forced to work for the government. Anyone watching this is most likely going to already know who the Suicide Squad are. There are plenty of other ways to set up the story without resorting to another origin story for an already established franchise.
The alternate universe isn’t anything special, it’s your standard fantasy world with magic, dragons, knights, elves, and orcs. This isn’t necessarily bad, there’s still a lot that could have been done by throwing DC supervillains into even the most basic of fantasy world settings, especially considering that the only person on the team who has actual superpowers is Clayface. Deadshot and Peacemaker have guns, but this isn’t enough to turn battles into one-sided slaughters like the battles in Gate: Thus, the JSDF Fought There. Guns might not work so well against larger opponents like dragons or orcs, forcing the team to have to work together and use their wits at least some of the time.
Instead, the setting is completely wasted on a sub par plot. After intervening in a battle between two armies, the Suicide Squad is taken prisoner and brought before Queen Aldora, the ruler of the alternate world. Aldora orders the group to be thrown into prison, where they encounter ARGUS agent Rick Flag. Flag explains that they were the second team to be sent by Waller. The first team managed to deactivate their bombs and went rogue, starting a rebellion amongst parts of the population. Flag convinces the queen to allow the group to help her army fight the rogue supervillains, which include Katana, Ratcatcher, the Thinker, Killer Croc, and Enchantress.
Most of the battles revolve around fighting the other supervillains. The isekai element was all but wasted here. You have established characters in a new setting interacting with new characters, there’s already plenty of material to work with here. I’m not watching Suicide Squad Isekai to see DC characters go up against other DC characters, I can get that from the countless other titles that DC has put out over the years. This is an isekai, I want to see DC characters going up against fantasy creatures. Why is Harley having a sword fight with Katana? This is a goddamn isekai, Harley should be having a sword fight with the Queen’s best knight. I’ll even overlook the obvious issue of her being able to wield a sword competently against Katana because of the later reveal (which I won’t spoil).
To be fair, the series does give us a little bit of this, though it’s nowhere near enough. The team slaughters a bunch of beast soldiers upon arriving in the alternate world, and during their imprisonment they get into a brawl with orcish prisoners and wipe the floor with them. Later they also take on a dragon. But for the most part, the main foes are either DC villains or being controlled by DC villains.
I suspect that this had to do with the writers wanting to give the Suicide Squad actual enemies who would present a real challenge, but it was completely unnecessary. None of the characters aside from Clayface have any real power. Harley is nimble and agile, Deadshot and Peacemaker are just weapons experts, and King Shark is basically just a giant shark person. Even Clayface isn’t really that powerful, all he can do is shapeshift. This particular iteration of the Suicide Squad was actually the perfect choice to throw into an isekai world. The dragon fight showcases this pretty well. It’s not a complete mismatch for either side. You could have even had Deadshot run out of ammo and demonstrate his prowess with a bow, maybe even throwing in a little reference to Green Arrow. Peacemaker could be forced to resort to hand-to-hand combat. The series didn’t need more supervillains, it needed more creativity and more focus on the fantasy world element.
There was one strong point to the series though, and that was the animation.
I actually really liked the animation. I’m always skeptical when American properties get turned into anime, most of the time we end up with crap like Rick and Morty: The Anime (an article on this is coming soon). Sometimes you get lucky and get something on par with Avengers Confidential: Black Widow and Punisher, which was animated by Madhouse (the same studio that produced Death Note). More often than not though, attempts to convert western animation into anime don’t work. Lackluster story aside, the animation in Suicide Squad Isekai was surprisingly good, from the character designs to the fight choreography. Though I definitely question the choice to make Clayface look like Michael Jackson a la “Smooth Criminal” (or Muzan from Demon Slayer, since this is the AJnet Anime Club after all). I also thought anime Joker looked kind of neat:
Harley calling Joker “Puddin-chan” was funnier than it had any right to be, and I’m ashamed to say that it made me crack a smile every single damn time.
I also appreciated the silly reference to the Joker movie at the beginning of the first episode:
All in all though, the strong animation and these goofy little things weren’t enough to make Suicide Squad Isekai a good series.
I went into this series with very low expectations, and while it exceeded those low expectations it still wasn’t good. It’s just a generic isekai that happens to include DC Comics characters, and the isekai element doesn’t even get utilized enough to make it fun. I guess if you’re a fan of DC Comics and not too familiar with the isekai genre you might enjoy this series, but I personally just can’t get behind it.
I give Suicide Squad Isekai a 4/10.