Undead Unluck

Episode 6

“Spoil” is one of those Undead Unluck episodes that works as a perfectly fun little slice of television; nothing more, and nothing less. It's also the first half of a multi-part story that will feature the hunt for the titular UMA, Spoil, so it also doesn't need to be anything more than an entertaining setup for the rest of the arc. We've got zombies, we've got road trip shenanigans, and we've got Andy being his usual goofy-ass self as the gang tries to figure out just what in the hell is going on in the Nevada town of Longing. It's a good time.

It helps that I harbor some bias toward anime stories set near my neck of the woods, geographically speaking. I love it when I get to see what the landscapes and visual tropes of the United States look like from the lens of Japanese anime creators, especially when the American West is the focus. We don't get quite to Garo -Vanishing Line- levels of Spooky Desert Roadtrip goodness, but I'll still take a zombie outbreak in a tiny Nevada town. If nothing else, it gives Undead Unluck the chance to develop Fuko, Andy, and Shen's growing rapport.

Aside from getting the opening act of the hunt for Spoil, we also get to enjoy a deeply weird “Andy Being Andy" side-story as compensation for the lack of payoff in the rest of the episode. It would be one thing just to play Andy being convinced that he can understand “Zombinese" as a goofy delusion when he runs the one undead gal who can point them in the direction of Spoil. It's even funnier when it turns out to be true that getting partially zombified gave Andy the gift of ghoul-gab, and that he needs to walk a rotting corpse woman down the aisle to make some progress in the mission. It is even, dare I say, pretty damned cute.

Less cute, unfortunately, are the kids that Fuko and Shen find hiding in the tunnels under the city, mostly because the poor tykes are afflicted with Spoil's timer, and doomed to become one of the undead legion unless the Union members can work their Negator magic and take Spoil down. Will our heroes be able to beat the odds and save the day? Probably! I'm not expecting any major surprises, next week, but it'll still be good fun getting to watch them do their work, though.

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.