Welcome all, to another week of Undead Murder Farce! This week adds another layer to the murder mystery, we meet a bunch of werewolves, and Shizuku gets an actual episode all to herself. It’s good stuff! So lets dive in to it shall we?
Starting off lets get the obvious out of the way. The night time scenes still look like shit. This sucks. Especially when Undead Murder Farce actually had some decent nocturnal lighting near the end during Shizuku’s little investigation. It’s like the show is learning, just not fast enough to really matter. Putting that dead horse aside though, the most important thing about this episode to me was that it was all Shizuku. Tsuguru and Aya make small appearances, mostly to push them towards a reunion, but Shizuku gets the majority of the screen and it’s great. She’s really needed something separate form Tsuguru and Aya, some time to away to come into her own as a character, and that’s what we got here. Not only in terms of her limitations, she isn’t the brains of their group, but also in how she treats people outside of our main squad.
Getting into the meat of the episode, I really really liked what Undead Murder Farce did with the mystery. How it’s not just one set of murders but two, and near identical ones at that. They both began about a year ago, both occur once every four months, both target young girls, and both have reoccurring murder weapons. All the while Alma, our suspect from the human village, is nowhere to be found. This is great. I said last week I thought it being Alma was a bit to easy, like we’re speeding towards a rather basic conflict. But this complicates things in a very natural way, showing us the other side of the conflict and how they aren’t so dissimilar to each other. I’ve never been more interesting in one of Undead Murder Farce’s mysteries than I am right now. Hopefully it can bring together for a satisfying end.
As for what I’m expecting? My guess is that someone is trying to create conflict between the two villages, that it’s the same murderer in both cases. I still think Alma is Jutte, she’s so clearly Rosa’s kid. But rather than getting revenge on the human village by killing them, I think she’s trying to incite conflict between both villages, a conflict she knows the werewolves would win considering their numbers. She probably stole the rifle from the shed, mentioned two episodes ago, and has been using it to kill the werewolf children. They don’t transform because she smells like a wolf to them, letting her get close and take them out. And she’s doing this because she knows she can’t take on an entire village all on her own. I think it’s pretty sound, but even if I’m wrong I love that I can come to my own conclusions.
Going back to Shizuku for a moment, this was kind of cute. I liked her small moments of kindness, teaching them how to make nice tea, trying her best to solve the mystery of the murder, all the while knowing it’s really not her thing. The whole sham trial, how it connects to Rosa, and the visual metaphors of being trapped in a cage like Aya, were clever. On top of that we also got a lot of information about the village through her, how all girls become priests, there are no real pairings/families, and there’s some kind of blood ritual performed by the priestesses, probably to contain some far greater evil Moriarty wants. I’ll admit to not being to interested in that last bit, as I’m much more engaged by the mystery. But it’s still cool that it’s there.
The episode doesn’t cover much else beyond that though. The small moments with Tsuguru and Aya are, once again, top tier. Tsuguru having a story perfectly fitting Shizuku’s situation, and not hesitating to tell it on a steep cliff while Aya just looks at him amusingly, was great. Frankenstein jumping down on them for a sudden cliffhanger less so though. Honestly I’m starting to agree with some commenters about Moriarty not adding much to the story. I liked him before because the Lupin arc was rather weak, and he brought some much needed excitement to it. But here, in a much stronger mystery, with much stronger character motivations? He doesn’t feel all that necessary. Still fits in better than the two insurance people, sure. But does he really need to be here for the murder mystery to work? I don’t think so.
Anyways yeah, I quite liked this episode of Undead Murder Farce. I’m loving this mystery, it’s easily the strongest yet, the whole thing with the werewolves just trying to live peacefully in the woods and dealing with their own murders is quite nice. I liked that Shizuku got time to herself as well, allowing her to spread her wings away from Aya for a bit. I don’t know how much it will pay off down the line, as we only have two episodes left, but for now at least I think it’s good. It remains to be seen if Undead Murder Farce can close out the season well, as there’s plenty of plot hooks still left out there. I’m expecting some kind of “read the manga” ending. If it can make this mysteries climax satisfying though then that might not be a problem. Find out next week I guess.
