English Dub Review: Undead Unluck “Spoil”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Fuuko and Andy’s first mission with Shen takes them to Nevada, where the UMA being Spoil is sealed in a walled off city full of zombies. After some shenanigans with Andy getting infected with the zombie virus, part of Spoil’s power, they eventually find Spoil, who is a giant monster.

OUR TAKE

We begin our arc for the next couple of weeks as the main duo go on their first mission to capture a UMA. And it occurs to me that I don’t really have a good grasp on what exactly a UMA is. Negators are pretty easy to nail down, just being the name for superpowered people in this world who also have abilities that “negate” something to function, but UMAs are described as “the living embodiments of the rules and punishments made by God” which…could mean they cause plagues of some kind? That would certainly fall in line with something that has the ability to turn people into zombies, but we’ll have to see future examples to really draw some data points. In the meantime, this episode is pretty fun, though nothing all that exceptional. Shen is still the member of the existing Union that we at least are familiar with the most out of everyone, so him coming along on this mission makes sense as we look for chances to get to know him better. And of course Andy’s recklessness gets him infected with the virus, but because he constantly regenerates, it only effects him partially.

The fun part is how this episode does its own take on zombies. The people, or at least a few of them, aren’t zombies mentally and so can communicate, just in a different way. Once Andy is infected, he can understand a zombie woman next to him somehow, and she decides to help him find Spoil in exchange for having a marriage ceremony, something that she obviously doesn’t have much chance to do now that she’s decomposing. Fuuko also gets infected, but willingly, showing that Andy’s behavior is rubbing off on her. Shen also seems to know some bigger things about Andy, implying he has a more savage side that he’s hiding or suppressing somehow. But in the meantime, and for the next couple of episodes, we gotta deal with this giant demon looking asshole who can make zombies. And that’ll take us to the end of the first third of the series, which will probably be a good milestone for the story, showing how far the characters have come since their first meeting in the first episode. That’s right, I’m speculating about two episodes of now when I’ll reflect on the past eight! It’s a pre-retrospective, and look forward to more of those…eventually!