English Dub Season Review: Undead Unluck Season One

Do you miss Fire Force? Well, if you’re like me, and I know I am, you probably stare up at the ceiling late at night wondering where the hell that announced third season is. But what if the studio and director of the first season got back together and made…something else entirely! Then congratulations, you’re getting the latter with the arrival of Undead Unluck, an adaptation of an ongoing Shonen Jump manga about a girl who causes dangerous things to happen and the immortal buff naked man who wants to use her powers to finally die. And that is the absolute simplest explanation you’re going to get because shit gets REAL complicated REAL quickly. Basically, as SOON as our main duo/couple, Fuuko and Andy, meet and team up, they’re immediately targeted by a group of people with other powers, join up with them, are tasked with fighting a horde of zombies, and then it just kind of escalates from there. Still, when all’s said and done on this first season, we have the beginnings of something special, as well as a bigger story that may just end up being the big new thing for fans of edgy shonen.

If I had to sum up Undead Unluck in a sentence, it’s that it’s a series of double-edged swords. What I mean about this not just that there is a lot of being stabbed and cut by sharp objects, which there definitely are, but also that many of its strengths and edges also end up hurting it after a point. For example, the show starts getting VERY interested in its own power system VERY early, filling out the world with Negators (the people with special abilities) and how their powers work, but also that there are weird monsters called UMA and Artifacts that are objects which also grant special powers. So, things become pretty fleshed out rather quickly, but also get incredibly complicated which may turn people off. Also, remember how I mentioned Fire Force at the top of the review? Well, it shares quite a lot with that show in terms of production details, mainly in it having a lot of really cool and well animated moments AND massively cheap moments like playing the same clip multiple times within an episode or dragging out whole clips that make no sense to repeat later on, making you scream at the screen “YES I REMEMBER THAT HAPPENED IT WAS FIVE MINUTES AGO”.

Essentially, for all its faults, Undead Unluck is actually a pretty solid start to a pretty cool series, being full of stuff that instantly characterizes it and makes it charming, but also plenty of things that might turn someone off or make it feel a bit too self-indulgent. Even the season finale itself, while cool on its own, very much feels like a lot is left unresolved or underutilized. Hopefully there’s a second season on the way so that it can get into more of the stuff that manga readers enjoy, but even without it, the first offers a very intense first impression. It can be a little cliche at times and feel like it cribs from better things in other shows, as well as get considerably full of itself and have so much going on that it makes your head spin, but it ultimately comes away feeling like something with a lot of heart and a lot of balls, which are things a show really needs to get very far. Maybe I’ll go and check out the manga after this, which is something I don’t often do, but every day is a new chance to start a new timeline.