Undead Unluck Chapter 1
VIZ
Mangaka: Yoshifumi Tozuka
If you’re like me when you saw the announcement for Undead Unluck online, you too were curious as to why a grown man appeared to be full-on groping a young woman as the promotional artwork. And before you say anything, I’m not immediately writing off this series; I enjoy plenty of ecchi content from time to time, and there are series currently running where the central characters consist of degenerate assholes and I love them (cough cough Chainsaw Man). However, I will say that the few scans I saw of the Undead Unluck one-shot seemed to show only more groping. And while I am fine with a little lewd, when it doesn’t seem like your series has much of a point otherwise I lose interest. Still, I withheld judgment until the chapter dropped and read it with a (more or less) open mind.
Undead Unluck follows Fuuko Izumo, a young girl who gives “unluck” to anyone that touches her bare skin. At the beginning of the story, she is attempting to kill herself because she will never be able to enjoy a romance like in her favorite manga due to her condition. Before she’s able to jump off the bridge and into the path of the upcoming train, however, a strange man stops her, touching her face and activating her “unluck” resulting in him getting hit by a train. That’s when Fuuko discovers that this man is an “undead”, and he wants to figure out Fuuko’s “unluck” so that he can finally have the extreme death he craves.
Undead Unluck has an interesting premise, but aside from that this first chapter didn’t do a lot to endear me to it or its characters. Fuuko comes across as a naive and whiney young girl who flips from trying to run from the undead man to defending him from enemies for basically no reason. The undead character, named Andy by Fuuko, has a strange design (although I must admit I do love that grin) and is nude for most of the chapter, and besides having a pretty cool action sequence towards the end spends most of the chapter being really hyped about dying. The enemy characters introduced are unnamed and completely uninteresting so I won’t even bother talking about them, but it does seem like there will be an organization at odds with Fuuko and Andy later on.
I’ll admit that there is more to this series than just the ecchi gag, and there is only one groping scene in the first chapter (which is less than I was expecting), however with the entire premise of Fuuko’s abilities being “if you touch this young girl’s bare skin, bad stuff will happen to you” and the discoveries Andy makes in regards to her powers over the course of the chapter, the gag is definitely not even close to being over and we can expect plenty more lewd groping in the future. To me, so far the series just isn’t funny enough and the characters are fleshed or interesting enough yet for me to even enjoy or at the very least look past the ecchi gag. I understand that this is just a first chapter, but even with many other first chapters I’m at least intrigued by the characters. Here, while Andy does have some intrigue surrounding him (especially in regards to his long life) I can’t really say I’m too interested in continuing to watch it for any other reason than just because I read the first chapter. With first chapters of series like One Punch-Man or Mieruko-Chan, I felt immediately endeared to the main character or I was interested in seeing where the series’ gimmick (beating anyone with one punch and seeing horrific ghosts, respectively). Here, I don’t care about the female lead at all besides “oh, she’s cute” and the male lead is… Well, he’s a bit of a creep. And while I’m fine with creeps and even love them at times (my grape king Mineta), I don’t like Andy enough yet so the creep factor only puts points against him for me.
Undead Unluck will have to work hard for me to keep reading it. It’s not bad enough for me to say I won’t read the next chapter, but if chapter two doesn’t hook me this series is getting dropped faster than a meteorite.
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Undead Unluck Chapter 1
Undead Unluck will have to work hard for me to keep reading it.
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