Undead Unluck

Episode 24

Here is how deep Undead Unluck has sunk its teeth into me: I've never been particularly invested in Rip as a character. As an antagonistic force, he's been perfectly serviceable, and occasionally quite charming, but I've appreciated him much more as a cog in the wheels of the plot than a fully fleshed-out individual in his own right. Here, in “To You, From Me,” Akira's story climaxes in the thrilling moment when he draws a copy of a time manipulation artifact and sacrifices over a century of his lifetime to bring Rip back to his adult form. In his narration, Akira cheerfully tells his mother how cool and nice Rip is, despite his pretense of villainy, and how Rip will be even cooler when he's grown up again. Instantly, without a moment's hesitation, I found myself thinking, “Well, alright then, it looks like Rip is one of my new favorite characters in Undead Unluck ; I will die to protect him and I will destroy any fool that dares besmirch his name.”

To borrow a phrase that I have seen a lot of as of late, and have become utterly obsessed with, Undead Unluck is one of those shows that is so good that it straight-up changes your brain chemistry. I love Andy and Fuko, and they love Akira, which means that I cannot help but love Akira, too, which in turn means that I am doomed to become Anime News Network's #1 “Rip the Dork-Ass Doctor Boy” Stan. There is no point in trying to fight it. I must embrace my destiny.

In fact, I may as well level with you, critic-to-reader. At this point, I fear that in waging a deliberate campaign of targeted psycho-emotional warfare (aka “Telling an incredibly goddamned wonderful story that is eerily keyed into my specific tastes”) Undead Unluck has annihilated my defenses and destroyed my ability to be objective. How else can you explain that this big, thrilling final battle against UMA Autumn was interrupted by yet another extended recap sequence, and I was delighted by it? Sure, I could try to pull the wool over your eyes by getting all fancy-schmancy highbrow critic on you. I could wax poetic about how Akira's final review of his life's story is a perfectly paced and thematically rich setup to the incredible payoff of getting to watch Andy give the still alive and invisible Akira history's most poignant fist bump. It's difficult to believe that any anime could be so expertly written and executed that it gets me, James Beckett, a well-known stone wall stoicism, to cry like a baby at another freaking mid-episode flashback, right?

The only reasonable expectation is that Undead Unluck has broken me. Any minute now, the Critic Police are bound to show up at my door and demand that I turn in my badge and my sidearm. And I didn't even get to spend five paragraphs ranting about how sick the battle against Autumn ended up being, or about how I ended up loving the red-drenched color scheme of the fight once I realized that it was caused by the light being diffused through the ungodly amount of dying leaves that the UMA leaves in its wake…

No. It won't end here. It can't. Even if I am forced to become a rogue agent and flee into the night, I cannot abandon my sworn duty to inform you, The Readers, about which cool Japanese cartoons you should spend your hard-earned time and money on. I will find a way to work from the shadows and complete my mission, doing whatever it takes to influence the masses and convince the Powers-That-Be to greenlight another season of this show. Even if I have to hijack other Weekly Streaming Review Assignments or even the upcoming Spring 2024 Preview Guide to do it, I will find a way to keep spreading the ultimate truth that I have spent the past six months uncovering: “Undead Unluck rules, owns, slays, rips, and whips so hard that only the lamest of the lame would ever dare to deny its most excellent and wicked sickness.”

If you aren't making plans to watch it literally right now, as you read these words, then I at this moment dedicate my life to pestering you until you change your mind.

Rating:

Undead Unluck is currently streaming on Hulu.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on Twitter, his blog, and his podcast.