Welcome all, to the grand finale! This is it, the final episode Undead Murder Farce! There’s a lot that needs wrapping up this week. Will the series manage it? Or will it continue to stumble right at the finish line? Lets dive in and find out!
Starting off, did Undead Murder Farce manage to fix its lackluster visual production by the end? Well to be honest, not really. We still got shitty green screen compositing, poorly lit night scenes generally dull movement. Those have been stables since the show first aired and they are still here now. One thing we did get though was a pretty damn good cave sequence. It only lasted for a minute, sure. But it feels like that scene was every ounce of creative energy the show had condensed into a single minute. It was legitimately pretty great. The use of line work and different colors for different characters, the use of negative space, bright reds for wounds and such. Add on to that some… creative, if a tad nonsensical, scenes like Carmilla’s and at least as far as finales go, Undead Murder Farce didn’t do half bad I don’t think.
Getting into the actual episode, the grand conclusion of the murder mystery was kind of cool. Yeah, when you stop to really think about it it’s a tad silly, how could Jutte keep of 2 different lives in 2 different villages, did she never have to sleep? And how did the parents not notice that their daughter had been replaced with a different person, it’s not like they were twins or anything. And are you telling me that Louise spent a year and a half in a hole in the ground without going insane or being found? Simply put, there are a lot of small holes that we could poke in this story. But I’m not gonna do that. Because even with those holes, the spirit of the mystery still works I think.
What do I mean by spirit of the mystery? Well I’m talking about the framing of Alma, the kidnapping/killing of Louise, Nora being Jutte, her motivations, etc etc. These are all rather solid and fall in line with what I was expecting. Not Jutte being Louise, that came out of left field, but everything else I pieced together for the most part. Yet even with the clues being there for observant viewers to figure out, Undead Murder Farce still managed to surprise us by switching up Jutte’s motivation. She wasn’t doing this for revenge, though I’m sure that factored in to deciding to do it at all. Rather she killed to help the werewolf girls escape the village and its archaic customs. That’s pretty cool! I wish we had gotten more hints about those customs, fleshed the culture out a bit more, but I’ll take what I can get.
As for how the reveal of the mystery was handled, it should come as no surprise this was decent. Aya is one of the best parts of the show, her VA killed it, as per usual. Her little inflections, her teasing, how she walked us through her deductions and how she came to her conclusions. There were a few leaps in logic here and there, sure. But’s normal for these sorts of mysteries and so isn’t a terribly big deal. I’d say the most unbelievable part about it was that both sides just stood there and listened instead of, I dunno, trying to murder each other? Hell half the werewolf village is already on the ground dead, are we just going to forgive this and walk away? I dunno, we never get to find out. But the reveal itself was nice I think.
Finally we come to the primary disappointment of the episode: The fights. These were… Not good. Like none of them. Ok well maybe Carmilla’s, hers had some nice flash to it. But even then I have no idea why she just left after wrapping Shizuku up in some weird fabric display. It just doesn’t make much sense. Same with Victor and Crowley, what did they even come there for if they were just going to show up, fight, then leave? They brought nothing to the arc, same as the insurance people, and left with barely a world. And what fights they did get just… weren’t that fun or cool. I just don’t understand why they are here, not to mention why they exist at all. Imagine if their fights were cut in favor of more fleshed out time with both villages? Sounds pretty nice to me!
So yeah, all in all this was a decent if lackluster finale. It had some cool visuals, which were a pleasant surprise, and the mystery was resolved well. But a good 1/3rd of the runtime was taken up with bullshit that really didn’t matter nor needed to be there. And that’s kind of emblematic of Undead Murder Farce as a whole. When it’s focused, doing the mysteries, letting Aya and Tsugaru take center stage, it’s pretty good. Great even at times! But that doesn’t happen near as often as I would like. And when they aren’t leading the show? It becomes clear just how far behind everything else is. Undead Murder Farce lived or died by how it used it’s leading duo. And they weren’t used as well as I would have liked I’m afraid.
Anyways, thanks for reading! Final review should be out in a few days, give or take some time to write this report for grad school. I swear to god I’m writing like… 10,000 words a week right now, its both great and terrible. In any case, see you see for the next season!
The resolution to the mystery was well explained and such, but this was the point for me where the show’s biggest flaw, the character bloat harmed it. There is just such an absurd amount of characters in this show that I lost track of things and while the earlier arcs I felt that I fully understood everything that was going on, I felt lost here and the reveals as such didn’t have as big an impact as intended. As the episode started I once again thought to myself about how the insurance agent characters were so completely useless and never should have been included in the show in the first place.
All that said, I still love Aya and Tsugaru and the premise/setting. This was the only new show I followed this season and I absolutely will watch a season 2 if we ever get one.