Manga review: Undead Unluck, Vol. 1 by Yoshifumi Tozuka

Review

⭐⭐⭐ | 3 out of 5 stars

Yoshifumi Tozuka’s manga series is funny, though only if you’re able to look past the crude humor that’s centered around sex, self-harm, and suicide.

About the Manga

Undead Unluck, Vol. 1 (2020)

Chapters: 1-7
Series: Undead Unluck (2020—)
Volumes: 21+
Author(s): Yoshifumi Tozuka
Demographic: Shōnen
Genre(s): Action, Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi
Theme(s): mortality vs. immortality
Status: Ongoing
Trigger(s): gore; self-harm; sexual assault; suicide; violence

Tired of inadvertently killing people with her special ability Unluck, Fuuko Izumo sets out to end it all. But when she meets Andy, a man who longs for death but can’t die, she finds a reason to live—and he finds someone capable of giving him the death he’s been longing for.

All Fuuko wants is a passionate romance like the one in her favorite shojo manga. Unfortunately, her Unluck ability makes that impossible. But just as Fuuko hits rock bottom, Andy sweeps her off her feet—literally! Now she’s become Andy’s unwilling test subject as he works to find a way to trigger a stroke of Unluck big enough to kill him for good. However, when the pair discovers a secret organization is hunting them, it puts Andy’s burial plans on hold.

From Goodreads.com

Undead Unluck has an interesting premise. It’s set in a world where people with unique abilities live, though they’re not necessarily seen in a good light. The protagonists of the series, Fuuko Izumo and Andy are two people who have these abilities. However, they’re not entirely happy with them as they spend their time trying to escape the lives they live. Andy is immortal and Fuuko can give people bad luck that may cause them terrible harm, including death. And while that alone isn’t bad, the story takes a wild turn as both characters are seeking for one thing: death.

While Fuuko seems to change her mind about her own suicide, Andy is optimistic about her ending his life. The situations they both find themselves are funny in a dark kind of way. Andy is decapitated, cut in half, and hit with blunt objects but he never truly dies. He’s even hit with a meteor but emerges from the rubble as if nothing happened.

Ch. 1

Now, the crude humor around death isn’t something new in any medium. But Tozuka kicks it up a notch by making rules for his power system. Fuuko’s unluck abilities only work if someone makes direct contact with her skin. This is a rule that Andy eagerly follows as he usually wastes no time trying to grope the heroine. The first chapter ends with Andy insisting that he and Fuuko have sex because surely, her unluck ability might finally be strong enough to kill him…

Ch. 4

Of course, most of the groping is done without consent and is usually treated as a comedy bit between a pervert and a barely-18-year-old character. If I could compare Fuuko’s character to any other it would be Tamaki Kotatsu from Atsushi Ohkubo’s manga series, Fire Force. Both Tamaki and Fuuko are used as the fanservice character of their respective series. Their purpose is to be seen and harassed, which doesn’t paint the treatment of these female characters in a pretty light.

Although my thoughts on the story are not entirely positive, I will say that the story does present an interesting perspective on mortality and immortality due to the characters’ desires. At first, Fuuko wanted to die to save others from her unluck. According to the manga, if Fuuko is unable to live a normal, happy life, then she may as well not live at all… And as for Andy, he seems tired of living.

Conclusion

While I found myself laughing at some things, I couldn’t help but feel stuck on Fuuko and her characterization. Whether this is all Fuuko’s character has to offer the series is not clear to me just yet because I’m only one volume in to the series. I really hope it isn’t.

Fan service isn’t new to me, but it does suck when I find a story with a lot of promise only to have the mangaka degrade the female cast for a couple of cheap laughs. It makes me wonder if these views of women are in-verse only, or if they’re the kind of sexism one might find from the writer himself.

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Atsushi Ohkubo’s response to people criticizing the fanservice in his own manga was essentially “I can, so I will.” I briefly talk about Tamaki Kotatsu’s characterization and Ohkubo’s response to the fanservice in a previous post: Manga Series Review: ‘Fire Force’ by Atsushi Ohkubo.