English Dub Review: Undead Unluck “Undead and Unluck; Union”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Fuuko Izumo has a special ability that gives bad luck to anyone she touches, even accidentally killing 200 people including her parents. Now 18, she has decided to end her life, until a strange naked man approaches her to talk her down. When her bad luck kicks in, she realizes he can regenerate his whole body from any injury, even using his blood as a jet to fly around. With no name, she calls him Andy (from Undead) and learns that he is looking for a way to finally die, which he thinks her powers can give him. However, they are being hunted by The Union, a mysterious organization of other powered people (known as “Negators”). After running for a bit, Andy learns that he’ll need Fuuko to fall for him in order for the bad luck to hit the hardest. But to be safe in the meantime, they’ll need to join the Union by taking out two of their members. They manage to kill one, but the other decides to direct them towards another instead.

OUR TAKE

You ever wonder what X-Men would be like if Wolverine was a nudist without claws and Rogue’s power was the opposite of Domino’s? Well, that’s not really at all what we have here, but it’s some sort of framework for what we’re dealing with. It’s another anime about superpowered people, like there aren’t already dozens of those, but the twist on things here is that one of the duo wants to die and the other just wants to not be putting everyone in danger all the time. On top of that, we have some instantly recognizable character designs, mainly helped by Andy being a giant beefy man who wears nothing but a single censorship flap. His constant rapid regenerations of body parts, besides being very well animated, also make for a lot of fun scenes both in and out of fighting. Fuuko, meanwhile, has her powers mainly express themselves as catastrophic natural disasters or accidents, which have so far been good at keeping fights and other situations interesting. Basically what I’ve been able to pick up on is that, in any given fight, Andy will charge in with his entire ass hanging out, get cut up a few dozen times, use the blood jets to get around, and then cop a feel off Fuuko to make something awful happen.

I’m not super jazzed about a story where a not insignificant part of the main characters’ dynamic is where the guy gropes the girl, especially where the end goal is for the girl to fall for said guy, but I’m gonna overlook it for now. Fuuko and Andy do have interesting interactions at the very least, and they seem to be forming a rapport, so that’s…probably fine? I’m honestly just trying to focus on the animation and fights right now. All of those look sick as hell, as do the OP and ED and that’s gonna take it a long way. Aside from looking like a pretty regular modern world, there’s also the Union, who initially seemed like they were going to be the main antagonists, but now that the goal is to join them to stop them from hunting the main pair, I guess they’ll be allies before too long. And it looks like this will be a 24 episode show as opposed to the usual twelve or so, which means we’ll have plenty of time to see what comes next. Whatever that means and wherever it ends up going, I’m eager to see what Undead Unluck has to offer.