Undead Unluck

The start is strong with solid visual elements laying the foundation of the dark, yet comedic tone of this story-driven series. There are more than a few instances throughout the season where some animation and story-telling choices were questionable. However, it doesn’t take away from the overall experience, and can even add to the enjoyment depending on your own perspective.

For those caught up on the manga, having that knowledge further enhances the viewing experience. The series itself is very interesting and worth talking about. With some fine-tuning of the story-boarding for any future seasons that get cleared, the anime can be included in the conversation ... more in the future.

What do you get when you combine a girl who causes people to die simply from them touching her skin, and an undead who can regenerate from being destroyed.
You get Undead Unluck.

Touching Fuuko's skin is like a scene in Final Destination. It causes fatal bad luck like your plane crashing, or getting hit by a train, or struck by lightning, or even hit by a meteor.
Andy the undead is looking for a way to finally end his life and Fuuko's curse may be the best way to do that.

The world is full of "Negators". People with abilities who negate the basic rules of reality.

The plot ... starts off with a basic goal, but eventually the anime evolves into a much bigger end-of-the-world plot (Ragnarok).
With different super powered organizations trying to either stop it or make it happen.

The anime started out interesting. I thought it would be more of a personal journey between Fuuko and Andy. Im not really a fan of end of the world plots. I much prefer smaller plots. This anime escalated way too quickly and out of nowhere.

As for the characters they are just your typical anime characters. Nothing special about them (except the super powers). Alot of them share the same sad back story of: my parents got killed by my powers when they first activated. They gave like 3 characters this same back story like seriously..?

The fights are not really that interesting either. Its your typical anime fight with no actual choreography that goes on for way too long. The biggest factor to this anime's length is due to how dragged out the fights are.

Despite how serious the plot tries to take itslef its actually quiet boring. Ive seen 21 episodes and it still doesnt feel like anything happened. Or that there were real character development despite the amount of characters.
And maybe thats the problem. Maybe there's just too many characters.

Undead Unluck had eye-catching setting about the world and character abilities; the idea of "deniers" was really refreshing. Although not every plot withstood scrutiny, it was at least interesting and innovative, in the sense that it challenged the viewers' "common sense" - the day-to-day concepts in our lives can be created, revised, and denied.

The storytelling followed a very typical shonen style. The main characters continuously level up in battles, learning to better cooperate and utilize their abilities, while also getting trustworthy teammates (with tragic backstories). Even the occasional sexual harassment jokes are so typical (in a bad way) - but fortunately, it gradually shifted away ... from such jokes and moved towards proper world and character building.

The anime adaption left me with mixed feelings. There were highlights in the beginning, but were soon buried in numerous disappointing moments spanning two seasons. The pacing was inconsistent - sometimes a story was rushed, while sometimes the plot moved unbearably slow with tons of flashbacks, repeated scenes, and recaps. There were excessive amount of narration, and they were often disjointed from the visuals. (Yes, those narrations existed in manga as well - but a good adaption is supposed to make adjustments according to the medium!)

I would still recommend watching it, just for the story; having a lower expectation would likely make it more pleasant to watch.

This show would be much better without Andy groping Fuuko so much. The power system is great and the main character's use of his power is so interesting and so is him and Fuuko's dynamic I just wish she wasn't played for 'Jokes' as much, especially when those jokes are at the expense of her body. I get that its a common shonen trope but come on give Fuuko more agency as a character rather than her just being used constantly. I've heard that it gets better I just don't think it should've been this bad in the first place. Other than that Shen is ... my goat.

When I heard about one of my favorite Shounen Jump Manga being adapted into anime I was worried about it being bad quality, but nothing prepared me for a show being ruined by slow pacing.

I really want people to get into Undead Unluck because I love the characters and the worldbuilding, but this adaptation is making it so hard for me, I am lagging several episodes behind because watching one episode feels like torture (and not the kind they do in “‘Tis time for torture, princess”).

The reason for that is that someone decided that one anime episode must adapt exactly two chapters of the ... weekly manga (even less, the first episode is based on one chapter although that one was longer).
If you don’t already see why this would be a bad idea: it completely disregards that with a fix lenght of pages per manga chapter, depending on the number of panels and how much dialogue there is, there can be a lot happening within it or very little. There can be fight scenes where there are a lot of panels but it’s all happening very quickly. Or there could be one-page or even double page spreads that have a lot of impact in a manga but are basically just one shot in an anime.

So this anime adaptation is using all kinds of tricks to dilute the content of one manga chapter and make it long enough for half an anime episode. They interlude scenes with minute-long flashbacks to something that happened just one episode ago, do camera drives to show every character who is in a scene, linger on scenery shots when nobody is talking or stuff like that. Especially in scenes where time is supposedly critical (like episode 16/17) that just ruins the whole tension.

I really don’t get why they are doing it like that. There are currently 20 volumes out in Japan and are ending up at the end of the 5th at this pace, so it’s not like they couldn’t have tried to adapt twice as many chaptersl. They are also not going to end up at a distinct point in the story (episode 24 ends up aligning with chapter 42 if they don’t change pace, and that’s completely in the middle of an arc). I guess one reason I can think of is that if they had the same effort for producing, say, 16 episodes instead of 24, it would seem less productive.

It could be that someone who hasn’t read the manga doesn’t notice it that strongly, but while I watch an episode I’m constantly internally screaming “just ge on with it” and “please not another flashback to last episode”.

So that’s the bad part. Are there any good ones?
I mean, there is a reason I love the manga. One of them is that we have a female and a male character (titular Undead and Unluck) who are equally important to the plot, which is sadly rarely the case for shounen series. Fūko lets Andy do most of the brawling, but in all the arcs so far her actions have had more influence on the outcomes. I just love the dynamic between them. Admittedly it starts a bit cringey with him being all gropey, and I can understand anyone who won’t get past that, but that’s dialed back quite quickly and they become a good combi where he truly wants her to grow and helps her do it.
There are also a lot of other cool characters with unique traits that I haven’t seen repeated endlessly in manga / anime.
I am also extremely happy with the plot which ties deeply into the worldbuilding. It leads to a lot of unique challenges that are far more interesting than the typical shounen plots that usually are some variety of “we have to beat this group or individual character” or “we have to save that person”. There is still fighting, but most of the fights are not one in battle but by making creative use of the negator abilities of the people we are following.

And the anime also has a high quality. The art is always good and there is a lot of effort put into using atmospheric coloring and interesting shots. The animation also never stood out to me as bad.

Overall, if they left out all the unnecessary flashbacks and increased the pacing, this could be a very high quality adaptation. But they didn’t, and that’s why I’d rather recommend to check out the manga on MangaPlus or with your local publisher (if it’s licensed).

This anime has many good things, but in one way or another it manages to generate rejection.

Undead Unluck is a rollercoaster of likes and dislikes. The work is designed so that, regardless of your preferences, you find one or two elements that capture your attention. At the same time, since it wants to cover more topics than it can handle, you will inevitably also encounter elements that will make it difficult for you to move forward with the story. Some decisions and devices used in the story seem more like a cry of "Please look at me again" than trying to tell a meaningful story.

The ... protagonists go from bad to good, at first they have no chemistry at all and the interactions (quite physical interactions that border on harassment) are uncomfortable for the viewer. Andy starts out as a stalker who only seeks to touch a girl's body with the excuse of seeking the best possible death. Fuuko starts out as a stubborn girl full of idealism but who can't do anything for herself. As the story progresses (I don't know if the world itself or the author realizes that this dynamic is strange) it is decided to change the focus of the relationship between these two. Putting them in the spotlight of a romance, which still feels awkward, but is more enjoyable to watch.

The secondary cast is a negative point. They have many characters with different powers and personalities, but which they refuse to actively use. Secondary characters are usually used as sources of information, but in a fighting shonen one would expect them to be used to show various confrontations. We are in an anime where each one has a special power, the beauty of this type of anime is seeing how each of the powers interact with each other in the fights. The main organization has 13 members, of which we only see 4 participate in the missions. The others remain as mere extras.

On the other hand, villains or antagonists are better used. I'm not saying that they are villains who are malevolent and are going to put the protagonists in constant predicaments, causing them to earn our hatred. They are villains, who, like the protagonists, are motivated by the very nature of their powers. They all have the same objective, the only thing that differentiates them from heroes or villains are the methods they use to reach the goal. Without giving any spoilers, in the middle of the season an event happens that undoubtedly makes you put on the edge of your seat waiting for what is going to happen in the next chapters.

In conclusion, Undead Unluck is an anime made to try to please as many people as possible. Because of how it is designed, it is very likely that you will end up liking more things than you disliked. To the people who drop it, don't worry, it's normal since the structure of the anime is a double-edged sword, just as it can attract people, it can also drive them away. In my case, if a second season is announced, I will be waiting to see if it improves and seeks to have its own identity.

I could tell from the poster and trailer that this anime is the new 'it' shonen anime of the season, so I had high expectation. Unfortunately it backfired quickly. Animation is great, art is good, ending and opening theme are awesome. But the big turn off for me is the ecchi. There are ecchi I can tolerate and not. If used wrong, ecchi can ruin an entire show for me, no matter how great or hyped the anime is. For example Nanatsu no Taizai. In this aspect, I think Undead Unluck is similar to Nanatsu no Taizai. Both MCs are way older than they look ... and hold big mystery about their past, and there are the young naive heroines with big boobs who are constantly being sexually harassed by the MCs but despite saying no, they never really actually reject the advance, and ofc, you bet they would be the damsels in distress and the MCs would be their loyal white knights. It just happens that all above are the tropes I hate thus I can barely watch this anime. But if you like or can overlook these parts you might enjoy the anime as the story, battles and other characters don't seem so bad as they make pretty much the typical/decent modern shonen anime.

Huh, this one almost kept me watching but it's just... Meh. On one hand I quite like the animation/art style of the characters, feels like classic anime. However that's where the good things to say about the animation pretty much end, lol. Background art is low effort, and has that weird shiny look to it like it's glazed or plastic which clashes horribly with the character art. Story wise it's freakin' WEIRD, like weirder than FLCL or Kill La Kill imo. Also the fan service is just kind of gross, it's not the "oops I stumbled into your boobs" kind of fan service, thankfully, but ... it's still just ew. Then of course come the midget anime girls, every single one is at least 2 feet shorter than the men, like ??? Sure short women exist but this feels more like a fetish to sell merch than artistic design choice. I kind of dig the music but they roll the music at really weird times, like MC is explaining something so they blast music weird. I do get what the anime is going for, the explanations clearly don't matter at all and logic is thrown out the window for fairly standard absurdist anime humor, but it just never clicks for me. This anime has tons of potential but like Fire Force it squanders it, and in a way it reminds me of Tenchi Muyo, except without the killer animation/art. Again. this one just doesn't really click for me like FLCL or KLK.

Your mileage will definitely vary on this one, depending on where you're at on the "crusty old anime fan" scale you might love it or you might hate it, I'd give it a whirl and see how you feel.

I do have mixed feelings about this anime. The first two episodes were exciting, but then the last two kind of lost me due to the silliness of certain things about the show.

Andy finds Fuuto, the MC of the show who has disaster happen to anyone that touches her. Andy is considered an Undead, and wants to die, so he believes his only hope from a “grand death” is to fall in love with Fuuto. I love Andy as a character because he’s so optimistic no matter the challenge, and he’s overall hilarious especially when he cuts his legs off to get a power ... boost then regenerates 😂

So far the show has been about them running away from organizations trying to catch them, but Andy is around the corner to save the MC every time, as he’s doing everything he can to protect her.

When they introduce Gina, that’s when things started to fall off for me. Her power was just corny and took away from the show a bit.

I’m hoping there will be some romance later down the line since Andy is trying to woo Fuuto and Fuuto has never been in a relationship due to not being to touch anyone, so I’m intrigued to find out if they actually fall in love and Andy gets his grand death, but Im actually hoping he sticks around with her.

The anime is decent for this season and worth a watch. I can only speak on the 4 episodes that are released. I’d recommend it as comedy.

Not a great anime. Here's why:
1. Tone is all over the place. It's comedy, then tragedy, then action, then dramatic. It makes each of those scenes less impactful than they should be due to the tone constantly changing so quickly. I would have much preferred a consistent dark tone to the anime.
2. It's a shounen anime despite the concepts not fitting into a shounen anime. The power system, characters, and world just don't fit in a shounen anime. You have a normal world where people are seemingly born with negator powers that can end the world, but nobody knows about them...except a secret org ... made up of negators guided by a talking book? Make it make sense. In most shonens, the setting is in a fictional world so it's more easy to digest why things are the way they are. Not so in this case...
3. Additionally, the only growth I can see from the MCs is emotional and character growth. They are already at their peak power and their motivations are not to get stronger but to actually get rid of their powers completely. This does not bode well for a shounen-style plot, so I can't see this ending in a satisfactory manner.

Overall, I will finish off the season but the last few episodes have had really poor writing. I can't believe they dedicated so many emotional scenes to a teacher who has had 2 minutes of backstory. I was completely turned off by that.

edit: finished off the 1st season and it does explain a lot more of the world and origins of the powers. Overall, my rating doesn't change though. I think the action and pacing is better than most shonens, but in the scope of overall animes, there isn't anything special here. The characters are just not well-developed and I can't invest anything into them.