Kora
“Ah… with that, it ends. Too bad my youth wasn’t more like that… Okay! Now that I’ve seen my favorite manga to the end, it’s about time I end myself!”
Undead Unluck is an odd show. Actually, that seems to be underselling it. It is delightfully off-kilter. Due to its zany promotional poster, I’d looked up a few basic details, but it’s hard to say whether that prepared me for the truly madcap nature of this show’s world. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s what you’d get if you put Durarara!! and Soul Eater in a slap chop and went to town (and also didn’t clean up the blood afterwards). All in all, this is definitely going into my rotation as one of the shows to watch this season, but I won’t deny having one particular issue with one of its characters, even if it comes with the territory of having such off-the-wall characters. Still, I’m excited to see where this one goes. Undead Unluck hits a balance of grim but wacky humor that few series can properly balance, and infuses that energy into all its inventive set-pieces to create a truly off-kilter experience.
Our main character is a young but worn-out woman named Fuuko Izumo, who drains the luck of anyone she physically comes into contact with, resulting in lethal misfortune. I almost called her a girl, as she has an arrested-development quality, which is understandable due to her circumstances. The show starts as she finishes reading her favorite manga, and prepares to kill herself. Given the nature of how she has had to isolate herself, she has become tired of the isolation and fear that comes with it. However, as she prepares to jump from an overpass, an odd man confronts her, and promptly gets himself stabbed and squashed by a train. This man, as his disembodied head explains, is undead and interested in finding a way to kill himself. He hopes that by exploring Fuuko’s powers, he can find a way to properly end himself. Now, I will add that, while I find the comedic and potentially dramatic chemistry between the characters to be captivating, there is one element that I’m not fond of. Fuuko is well-endowed, which isn’t a problem in its own right, but the undead man, whom Fuuko nicknames Andy, has no problem groping her without permission to test the limits of her abilities. It’s technically in keeping with his character, as he’s evidently been alive for ages and is entirely irreverent to societal norms (When his body gets destroyed, he doesn’t regenerate clothes, and is largely apathetic to their absence). Still, this makes him difficult to warm up to, even with the anime’s manic tone.
I mentioned Soul Eater in the beginning, and the character designs capture the same charm present in early sections of that story. When I first saw the poster for the show, I checked whether it was the same mangaka, but it, potentially fortunately, wasn’t. This is a co-production between TMS Entertainment and David Production, with the former handling the production and planning, and the latter handling the animation. Given their involvement in adapting Jojo, having David Production manage the ludicrous visual comedy/violence makes perfect sense. The only series by them that I previously finished was 2.43: Seiin High School Boys Volleyball Team, but I wasn’t fully satisfied with the end result. Still, I’m pleased with the energy this partnership has brought to adapting what I can only assume is a vibrantly creative manga. The way the censorship bar flutters with the physics of a loincloth is hilarious and brilliant. If there is one non-complaint I’d like to raise, that creativity led me to think my monitor was having issues for a few seconds. When Fuuko is reading her favorite manga, the visuals of the characters have a significantly lowered framerate. That, and the fact that Fuuko voices both characters who appear, makes for a pair of genius audio and visual cues. Still, this is one of the first scenes in the show, and if the snow wasn’t moving at a normal framerate, I might have disconnected my monitor to see if there was an issue. This show is going straight into the to-watch pile for the coming season. I’m surprised I’ve never heard of this one, since it’s been in Shonen Jump for well over 3 years. I guess my ear really hasn’t been to the rail, as far as manga is concerned. This sounds like it could turn out to be a delightful time if this early setup is a good indicator of what is to come.
Before I wrap up, a few Notes and Nitpicks:
- Many years ago, Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw described the character of Alex Mercer as being able to “shoot blood out of his wrists at jet engine velocity and fly like emo Peter Pan.” This had already reentered my consciousness recently, due to a recent online Death Battle match-up involving that character, but I didn’t expect to encounter an anime character where nothing about that description is even remotely hyperbolic. That is Andy’s primary way of getting across town.
- I don’t pay enough attention to Japanese VA’s, but it’s worth highlighting how diverse Yuichi Nakamura is. From deadpan characters like the titular Nozaki from Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun or Takaya Abe from Big Windup! to suave characters like Satoru Gojo in Jujutsu Kaisen to finally bombastic and over the top characters like Andy, he nails them all.
- Moe Kahara does a great job as Fuuko, and it’s impressive how she holds her own when she’s paired with an industry veteran going full bombast. I’d previously encountered her in The Executioner and Her Way of Life, where she voiced Akari, a character who could sometimes annoy me, but also deliver top tier pathos when needed.
- It just occurred to me that Soul Eater also had a character that was immortal, Free. I wonder if this mangaka took inspiration. Evidently the mangaka for Soul Eater, Atsushi Ohkubo, served as the character designer for this season’s KamiErabi, but while that did make my shortlist to check out, I was busy when that aired, and couldn’t take the time to check it out.
Undead Unluck’s premiere is the type of episode that turns things up to max, without losing sight of the characters beneath the antics. While I find Andy’s flippancy towards Akari’s personal space to be frustrating, to put it mildly, I’m hopeful the show won’t lean on that behavior too much going forward, and it plays a small role here. I don’t know where this show is going, but I’m currently eager to find out.
Score: 4/5
Great
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