Harley Quinn Animated Series Review & Other Thoughts

Harley Quinn: Overall 9.2/10

Why I watched Harley Quinn.

I've been playing a lot of Multiversus recently and the character I gravitated towards ended up being Harley Quinn, she is an assassin with a combo-centric move set and something just clicked for me I guess since I've basically played nothing but her for my entire career. I also really like the character in general, the look, the talk, nothing too complicated about it, I just like her. 

I watched the Harley Quinn show on a whim, I didn't even know it existed until I saw a TikTok about it. 

Watching the show made me learn some things about myself and I had a blast watching it. Here are just some jumbled thoughts I put together that have to do with Harley Quinn.

Harley+Ivy

A large concern I had with myself while watching Harley Quinn was that I was a little concerned I was internally misogynistic because I never found the idea of 2 girls dating in a show particularly interesting before. This generated a pretty interesting thought process that I'd like to share. Whenever I watch a romance show I'm there to see how the relationships develop and I'm happy to see characters I care about succeed. But, since I've watched a lot of anime, LGBTQ+ relationships were kind of rare and if they ever did come up it was in super lewd shows like Citrus which I would just avoid since I might as well go watch hentai at that point. Basically, the LGBTQ genre for anime is oversaturated with shows that cater to sexual needs rather than interesting writing so my exposure to well-written LGBTQ shows is actually pretty small. 

Furthermore, most general romance anime I watched tended to follow a very stock standard formula that I got used to at some point. Shit like Nisekoi is a prime example, every anime from that time is basically some kind of derivation of that show. Some bland ass protagonist who looks like he was designed by a 3-year-old with a box of crayons whose parents posted his drawing to some struggling art channel on their 63rd episode of "I improve your drawings" who takes the attempt of a fucking smiley face along with 3 random lines and turns it into our male lead over the course of the 30 minutes he has until he is evicted, and then enters our 2-4 female leads who look like were all derived from the same base model only some Japanese dude in a suit took a list of character assets and shuffled them around and randomly plastered some frozen food aisle personalities onto each one of them. Repeat that formula a bunch and you start settling into comfort.

Now to address the rest of the problems in what I said, I'm fairly certain my sexual tastes don't include lesbian porn, I'm almost sure of it, I couldn't care less about it to be honest. But if that is the case then what if my heterosexuality is what makes me interested in shows with straight couples? Does that mean I'm just self-inserting myself into these bland-ass, paper-thin main characters so I can POV having a relationship with unrealistic, idealized, and harmful depictions of girls that will never exist? Well, that sure is the case with the losers that unironically liked Rent a girlfriend, Nagatoro, Uzaki, and Komi. But I wouldn't associate myself with that crowd.

After finishing Harley Quinn I can say without a doubt that the Ivy Harley relationship was handled amazingly and I loved every second of it, I was happy for them and was rooting for them from the second I saw the buds of the relationship shifting under the dirt. This really helped me overcome that particular insecurity I had. 

Popularity Bias

Moving on, I think I'm probably going to overrate this show quite a bit since I'm generally pretty biased when it comes to popularity and also my personal tastes. I'm bringing this up because I think the show is EXTREMELY underrated, I mean literally, no one talks about it and the communities online seem really small. 

Moving on, even though I'm a pretty heavy critic when it comes to most media I prefer some over others due to personal bias. I underrate Better call Saul and The Boys because I felt like my friends overrated them. Over time my opinion shifted into liking them less and less because of how popular they were in my friend group so I would keep nitpicking at their flaws instead of enjoying them for what they did well. BCS and the Boys are INCREDIBLY unique and well-written shows but compared to the things that are my favorite I won't compromise. Harley Quinn as a character personally interests me already but I also love that she pisses off DC fans and comic supremacists so she wins more points there.

Why comedy works for Western shows but not anime

Finally, I'd like to touch on the comedy aspect of Harley Quinn and how it was different for me compared to other shows I've watched, namely other anime, along with why I think anime comedy doesn't work for me.

Bottom line is, 95% of comedy anime isn't funny to me. I mean how long does it take until slapstick humor becomes uninteresting? You may argue that if the humor makes you laugh that’s all you need, but I don't really like looking at it from that kind of perspective. I think ranking shows and finding what's intellectually stimulating to YOU is the point of consuming media past simple relaxation entertainment. So I don't want to limit myself to junk food 'its good enough' entertainment, I want to find the BEST out there and experience it, and I'm gonna need to trample over some riff-raff to get there. I'll be primarily talking about anime here since that's what I primarily have experience with.

Anyways, when we really get down to it, comedic timing and other Omni-cultural concepts are always pivotal to good comedy but beyond that wordplay, puns, and culturally significant jokes are all completely lost in translation and it results in very low brow samey humor in every show. I think this is why even though I've seen hundreds of comedy anime Harley Quinn and Rick & Morty are light years ahead in the comedy aspect since I can actually understand the complex jokes they're making which improves my overall view of the series. Another detail that shouldn't be glossed over is that western comedy is different from Japanese comedy and I'm way further accustomed to one of those over the other. 

Overall Rating Breakdown 

Overall Enjoyment Factor: 10/10| I really like Harley Quinn already so I was sold from the start.

Writing: 10/10 Funny as fuck, interesting character arcs, and good dialogue/jokes. I didn't need to know DC to understand most jokes.

Animation: 7/10 I mean it's like simple I guess nothing really too special I was impressed by how consistent it was throughout the show which is good, very smooth and fluid stuff!

Music: 8/10 I was starting to jam out on those guitar riffs during the openings I can't even lie to you, most of the themes are really freaking catchy too, nothing mind-boggling but they really stuck with me afterward not gonna lie.

Overall: 9.2/10