Undead Unluck

I knew about this manga long before it became an anime, and wasn't expecting much from it because of one of the main images used to promote it: https://i0.wp.com/sequentialplanet.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/download.png?resize=749%2C556&ssl=1 (main character groping the main girl under her clothes). Still kept my mind open since we can't judge a manga too hard based on just one image with no context.

The anime came out and I barely recognized it because they're using a diferent art (as you can see on MAL), and since it's doing so well in popularity I gave it a shot.

As you can see from my score, that image is as bad as ... it is, the non-consentual groping does indeed happen in the anime and worse, the main character fully naked takes advantage of a suicidal girl who can't fight back, constantly touching her and following her, he straight up kidnappes her even though she's always saying him to stay away. If it was an attempt to be comedy, it turned out as only disrepectfull and insultive, and you know what's even more stupid? The girl ends up liking him and kissing him for no reason at all barely after they met.

Even as a shonen it fails miserably, as you can guess from the title, every fight has no stakes and none of them are interesting, just heavy plot armor because the "plot" or lack of there of, is about making the main charcter look cool.

The creator tries to make the main character look cool by his carefree attitude and being invincible, but he only turns out to be creepy, a pervert, and abusive. The main girl isn't much better, her personality is just being a tsundere and is there only for sexual jokes.

Overall this anime fails at everything, as being a battle shonen by having an OP unlikable Main Character, as a comedy since every joke is about being sexual and taking advantage of the dumb tsundere main girl, as a story since there is none and damn if they try to make this a romance.
It has nothing of value, just an uninspiring and inconsiderate anime that I have no ideia how it got the popularity that is has, the fantasy of being forcefull towards random vunerable strangers is that strong.

I'm going to be very harsh on this because I think it's just a straight downgrade from the manga, and the manga's already pretty mediocre.

Chapter one of the manga really pulled me in at first, and the anime completely ruins it. I'm going to give some context here, but I don't consider this a spoiler since it's the very beginning of the manga and the first five or so minutes of the anime.

You can skip the next paragraph by reading the first four pages of the manga.

In the manga, we open with one of our main characters, Fuuko, standing on a bridge over some train ... tracks. She's finishing up a romance manga, and is about to off herself. There's a large crowd of people trying to save her. Our other main character, Andy, happens to be walking by, which isn't too strange considering it's a pretty busy footbridge. Andy seemingly ignores the commotion until he overhears Fuuko dissuading worried people from getting near her by saying that anyone who touches her will contract an incurable disease and die. As Fuuko is looking the other way while holding her knife out, Andy impales himself on the knife.

You wouldn't guess from my dry summary, but this is pretty damn funny and a fantastic opening. Let's look at all the ways the anime ruins it.

First off, we don't start with Fuuko on the bridge, we start with a visualization of the manga she just finished reading. This adds absolutely nothing, is confusing (so confusing that I double checked I was watching the right show), and only serves to be artsy. This could have been okay with more narration from Fuuko, but it's mostly silent which adds to the confusion of what's going on.

The manga visualization is interspersed with Fuuko's backstory, which although not horrible to show right away, isn't great to throw out as the first thing the audience sees; the comedy opener works much better. It's not a deal breaker though, so I won't elaborate and I'll leave it at that.

The real issues in the anime start when we get to where the manga starts; Fuuko on the bridge. First thing that absolutely baffled me is that Andy is staring right at her and he's the only other person there. The crowd is completely gone which drastically changes the context of the encounter. Andy is no longer a random passerby, but seemingly sought out Fuuko. Fuuko is also unfazed by Andy's ridiculous appearance, something that makes a lot more sense in the manga because she hadn't even noticed him until her knife was deep in his chest.

The removal of the crowd commenting on the situation, livening things up, and making everything feel a bit more grounded vastly reduces the impact of the comedy in my opinion. In the manga, it felt like all this weird stuff was happening in the real world, but in the anime the world is completely dead. The backgrounds don't help with this. I understand that budget is an issue, but the backgrounds are just so freaking ugly and bland here. Backgrounds are usually the last thing I complain about when it comes to anime, but they're just so noticeably bad here.

It's not just the opening scene either; Andy and Fuuko travel throughout the city for most of the first episode, and aside from two rail workers, there isn't a single random citizen anywhere (aside from a flashback); the streets are completely empty, no cars, no people, nothing. Everything's just dead. A big part of the fun in the manga is watching all of the madness unfold in a regular city, full of people and life. Anime is supposed to bring manga to life, but this does the opposite. It's not even expensive to animate, just draw some still images of people in the background and add some random voice lines here and there with some city ambience.

This was all a pretty big shock because David Production usually nails this stuff. Urusei Yatsura looks absolutely fantastic and is so full of life; what the heck happened here?

Anyway, that's pretty much all I had to say.

The story itself is pretty boring; thought I'd give it another shot via the anime, but that was a no go. The powers are used creatively, but the characters aren't interesting and it's not fun to watch them interact for the most part.

The manga's not terrible though. I'd probably give it a 5 or 6 our of 10. This adaption is just worse though; the manga is a strictly better experience.

A few years ago, David production were working on a new shounen title called Fire force. Long story short, it was a decent watch dragged down to mediocrity by one major flaw, the fanservice. The show couldn't resist shoving tits and ass right in your face every few minutes, even in the most inopportune of times, like the middle of a fight. It honestly amazes me just how much damage this decision managed to do. It's a damn shame, since the rest of Fire force was solid, but this single decision managed to change my rating from very good to above average. So how is ... any of this relevant? Well, imagine Fire force with mediocre fights, completely fucked pacing, constant changes in tone resulting in massive whiplash and plot contrivances through the roof. That show is called Undead unluck. I get that they were stuck adapting subpar material, but there really isn't an excuse for repeating the mistakes of the past. That being said, there are some good things that I should mention. I like the way Andy fights. Even with a very generic superpower, he manages to use it in a very original, although sometimes very nonsensical, way. The art is also decent. There are some very good scenes, but it's really inconsistent, so there are quite a few stinkers as well. They stopped using the meme 'bruh' sound effects in fights, so at least something has been learned from Fire force. Yeah, as you can see, I am running low on praise here. The silver lining is simply way too thin to rescue the show this time. I know that this is a very short review but there honestly isn't much to be said. Even if we were to ignore the aforementioned problems, the core of Undead unluck is a dime a dozen shonen slop that you have seen a thousand times already. In ten or twenty years, shows like this will probably be mass produced by AI and I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference.

if Undead Unluck had anything to offer, that would be the sad sight of how low ex SHAFT's director Yuki Yase and his team has fallen

I was anticipating Undead Unluck quite a lot, just to see how terribly would Yase's direction match with something aimed to 13-year-old children, and yeah, I found out; there's nothing wrong with the director or the team themselves (except for the art direction, which is quite disgusting), the problem here is the nature of the source material, as mentioned before their approach is something that would never work with a cheap battle manga adaptation, it doesn't let the staff's ideas ... bloom and the final result is almost unbearable to watch

There's a funny and probably even sadder part to it though, they're trying so hard to make that SHAFT-pilled approach work that it's noticeable, so it feels unnecessary and makes those acquainted with older SHAFT works like me feel awkward, the only parts where their ideas actually bloomed were the opening and the ending sequences, they're so good!

The only thing that didn't make me regret wasting time on this that much is that it had some great animation sequences here and there, Kazuhiro Miwa's ones especially were amazing, unfortunately that alone doesn't make this mess look any better.

Thanks for reading!

Undead Unluck is one of the many recent adaptations from the new era of weekly Shonen Jump titles. The premise sets it apart from the typical Shonen story; however, the severe tonal whiplash during episodes makes it challenging to take the story seriously, resulting in difficulty to care about what's happening.

So far, Undead Unluck's structure revolves around fights in which the main characters must identify their opponent's abilities and then utilize this information to discover their weaknesses while simultaneously defending themselves. The concept of understanding your enemy's powers and devising strategies to counter them has always been an intriguing aspect of Shonen series (masterfully ... executed in Hunter x Hunter). Nevertheless, it's tough to stay invested when the fights are constantly disrupted by unfunny sexual harassment jokes. Pushing aside the jarring tonal shifts, there still isn't much noteworthy happening in the story thus far to justify a high score. The first four episodes consist of ongoing battles with rather whimsical abilities, and whenever the narrative attempts to introduce something serious, the levity of the preceding silliness hampers its impact.

In any case, if you need a reason to watch this series, I can commend the colorful and smooth animation by David Production, along with the satisfying sound effects. However, apart from these technical merits, the series primarily consists of a bunch of silly jokes that surround a naked guy sexually harassing a teenage girl. Unless you're into that kind of thing, that alone makes it nearly impossible to take the show seriously and become emotionally invested in what it's trying to portray. Heck, even Jojo's Bizarre Adventure knew when to dial back at certain points (until it reached part 5, but that's a different story).

Final Scorings:
Animation: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Story: 3/10
Character: 4/10
Value: 2/10
Enjoyment: 3/10
Overall: 4.5/10