English Dub Season Review: Suicide Squad Isekai Season One

As we wait for James Gunn to kick off his new DC Universe movies, the seizuring body of Warner Brothers Discovery has played around with a lot of weird and experimental ideas. In this case, throwing around the superpowered misfits of Task Force X into an Isekai anime, AKA being sent to a fantasy world. And in true Task Force X fashion, it’s actually the result of Amanda Waller and the US Government trying to colonize another world and take their resources. Plus, as the most popular and well known versions of this team come from the live action movies, there’s some clear influence from that on this series, most notably in the line up of characters involved. So, on paper, this sounds like it could be at the very least a pretty fun ride! Well, maybe if you want to just enjoy the crazy visuals and simply love seeing supervillains in an anime art style and bumming around a realm of dragons, knights, and magic. But unfortunately, it’s kind of my job to think about and write hundreds of words regarding all ten episodes of this series, so this was sadly not a fun experience for me. And now I’ll tell you why!

To start with, while the premise and combo of concepts is a cool sounding one, it really just ends up doing both sides a disservice. On the Suicide Squad side of things, the characters involved (Harley Quinn, Peacemaker, King Shark, etc.) do retain many of the personality traits that we all know and love them for, but mostly on a pretty shallow level of adaptation. King Shark, at least the version they’re adapting, is a simple but effective character, but others like Deadshot and Peacemaker have shown to have much more going on that is simply not present here. Even Harley, by far the most popular of the main group, only gets slight acknowledgement of her personality beyond being a crazy brawler girl, with some nod to her psychology knowledge. And as for the Isekai side, it basically limits that to being in a standard fantasy world and its usual accouterments. Even as someone who has long since grown sick and tired of the genre as a whole, there’s so many tropes I actually would’ve been amused to see touched on if they had. So, the show basically ends up feeling rather half baked on both ends.

But was there ANYTHING to like about this show? Well yeah, I’d say so, especially if you’re a fan of either the Suicide Squad or Isekais, it’s just that it doesn’t seem very interested in doing more with those components than the bare minimum. The thing is, and I know this may be hard to wrap your head around, most people don’t think about shows and movies and other media they consume the same way critics do. They often just watch it if it looks or sounds like something they’d like and then like or not based on if it lives up to their standards. So, do you like the Suicide Squad from the movies? And do you like Isekai anime? Then you will most likely enjoy this show and then move on with your life when you’ve finished it. Like I don’t mean to undercut my role here in recommending things but it is ultimately up to you if you want to check it out, so go forth and do so if it suits you! I just wish it was anywhere near as interested in being something that says something more like The Suicide Squad movie from James Gunn. But alas.