Undead Unluck

Episode 8

I was wondering if “Victhor" was just going to be an extended battle to finish off Spoil. That wouldn't be an awful episode but given that Spoil turned out to be a fairly rote villain, it would have made for a disappointingly pedestrian beginning to our heroes' adventures with Union. Then Victor arrived in the back half of the episode, and I thought, “Ah, here is the real good stuff that we were promised.”

To be clear, it isn't like “Evil repressed personality with ungodly strength" is a particularly original trope in anime, but it can be fun as hell when it is pulled off correctly, and Victor seems to be the kind of raw, unfeeling force of destruction that we can get some mileage out of. Not only does he beat the ever-loving hell out of Shen, who has proven to be a great supporting character in the most recent episodes, but he outright threatens to murder Fuko just so he can screw with Andy, not to mention kill any chance of a real romance developing between the two of them while he's at it. That's just not cool, man!

I figured that Andy's amnesia-inducing brain card-thingy would come back after it saved his and Fuko's bacons in the very first episode, and I'm very glad to see how efficiently Undead Unluck is using this twist in Andy's character development to establish even higher stakes in the story while also cementing the conflicts that will shape how Fuko and Andy both will have to challenge themselves and grow in future stories. If last week's disappointing turn felt like Undead Unluck was just killing time, then this is the show at its most ferociously propulsive.

Plus, a bunch of bonkers-cool shit happened like Victor selectively regenerating his entire body from a single dismembered finger, which is exactly the kind of creative choreography that I have been loving from this show. I am curious about how the combined Union forces can contain the monster that Andy has been keeping locked up for so long.

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.