Greetings, and thanks for visiting Anime Rants. In Summer 2024, Warner Bros Japan (in collaboration with several other producers) released Suicide Squad Isekai, one of the few Japanese animated productions taking place in the DC Universe. It starts similar to the movie Suicide Squad, but the characters are sent to a fantasy isekai.

It should be noted that I have consumed very little DC media, and thus do not consider myself a true fan at this point. As such, I didn’t have strong expectations for this anime either way. I tried to enter the show with an open mind. Now, let’s see how this anime fared according to Mono’s measurement system.

Note: I’m trying to speed up my efforts to write reviews for the shows I watched in 2024. In the name of swift progress, this review will be a bit shorter than usual.

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Story

Score: 6/10 “Fine”

After she was caught by an extremely skilled katana-wielding woman, Harley Quinn was separated from her beloved boyfriend, the Joker. She and four other “supervillains” were sent on a mission by Amanda Waller: to explore the fantasy world opened by ARGUS. The others are, of course, Clayface, King Shark, Peacemaker, and Deadshot. Their reward will be reduced prison sentences. If the criminals don’t do everything Amanda says, or if they fail to report back by a certain time, the bombs planted in their necks will explode.

Suicide Squad Isekai doesn’t try to be insightful or profound. It’s a fun, sometimes humorous action series – and nothing more. There was a slightly interesting theme brought up: the idea that society’s labels of good and evil are arbitrary, and the systems in charge can be more crooked than the ones classified as criminals. However, this theme wasn’t discussed in any depth or with any consistency. To restate, this anime is pretty shallow – but at least it’s self-aware and can still be a lot of fun.

The weaknesses in the story category include: inconsistent pacing, failure to explore interesting themes, weak world-building, and a dull, basic story overall. There was a certain plot twist revealed in the final episode that was decently executed as far I as could tell. That said, the surprise felt completely random and did little to improve the over-arching story. Many have called this anime a cash-grab, and when the show brings such subpar story writing, it becomes more difficult to argue otherwise.

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Visuals

Score: 6/10 “Fine”

The quality of art and animation is extremely inconsistent. There are several scenes that look spectacular and others that look worse than average. The way characters are drawn is beautiful and I love the color pallet. Also, the CGI elements are generally not bad. Honestly, I think the visuals are perfectly adequate for a short action/adventure anime that doesn’t take itself too seriously. However, due to the variance in quality, I couldn’t give the visuals a high score. I expected better from Wit studio.

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Audio

Score: 8/10 “Excellent”

As usual, I watched this anime in Japanese and have not yet tried the English Dub. But the Japanese voice-acting is top-quality. There are veteran seiyuus that I adore such as Jun Fukuyama (Clayface), Kujira (Amanda Waller) and Takehito Koyasu (Peacemaker). Anna Nagase is a newer VA who did an amazing job playing Harley Quinn. She also played Riko Amanai in Jujutsu Kaisen S2 and Ushio Kofune in Summertime Rendering. Though his role was limited, I enjoyed hearing Yuuichiro Umehara as the Joker.

Besides voice-acting, the music was also great. It was composed by Kenichiro Suehiro, who also wrote soundtracks for Re: Zero, Fire Force, Golden Kamuy, and more. Suicide Squad Isekai‘s opening song is a chaotic, kick-ass piece of istrumental music that feels like a jazzy superhero theme. It’s called “Another World” by Tomoyasu Hotei. The ending song is “Go Getters” by Mori Calliope. I didn’t like it at first due to the unusual style and the bizarre visuals featured in the ED. However, the song by itself grew on me over time and now I quite like it.

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Characters

Score: 5/10 “Mediocre”

True DC fans would probably give this category an even lower score because of the show’s portrayals of Harley Quinn, Joker, and others. But since I’ve had extremely limited exposure to the DC franchise, and have no emotional attachment to it at present, I couldn’t care less how these characters compare to other versions. Personally, I loved this iteration of Harley. I also thought the Joker was fine, though I do acknowledge that he sharply departs from some of the most traditional Joker attributes. (One difference is that this Joker seems to be keenly aware of the injustices and limitations of society, while the usual Joker is too insane and chaotic to give a rat’s ass.)

This probably deserves more discussion, but I’m not here to talk about the Joker. All I know is that I enjoyed the design and voice of anime Joker. Back to the topic, though the characters had great designs and voice actors, they were not well-written. Development for the DC characters was surface-level only. Furthermore, the original characters – such as Fione – felt unoriginal and typefied. Writing like this is especially disappointing when there are characters I genuinely liked and wanted to understand more about. That’s how I felt about Harley, Clayface, and a few others.

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Personal Enjoyment

Score: 7/10 “Good”

When I first watched this in Summer 2025, I had a lot of fun. I rated my personal enjoyment 8/10 at the time. However, I had more trouble paying attention when I re-watched parts of it in 2025, and I noticed more instances of poor animation. So, 7/10 is probably closer to accurate. Anyway, the aspects I most enjoyed were the voice-acting, the music, some of the visuals, some of the humor, and the character of Harley. There were also several entertaining action scenes. I would have liked this series even better if it had a stronger plot, better character development, and exploration of interesting themes and topics.

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Overall Score

Score: 6.4 out of 10

The overall score is the average or mean of the five category scores explored above. By coincidence, my score for this series is the same as the one on MyAnimeList.net (as of October 2025) – a whopping 6.4. According to my metric, a 6/10 doesn’t necessarily mean the anime is bad, but it means it’s probably not worth your time unless there’s a particular niche reason why you want to watch it. (For instance, you want to see an anime version of the Joker, or you’re a big fan of Harley Quinn in any version.)

If MAL is any indication, reception for Suicide Squad Isekai wasn’t great. I have not looked into whether it was technically a commercial success or not, but I would be surprised if it brought in much revenue. Although it’s adequate as a light-hearted action anime, Suicide Suqad Isekai defintiely suffered from weak writing. In addition, if you’re a passionate DC fan, you probably won’t like the versions of these characters. Keep that in mind if you decide to watch the series. Sayonara until next time~

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~Thanks for Reading~

Written by 7Mononoke at Anime Rants