Undead Murder Farce – 2 [Vampire]

Welcome all, to the first new show of the summer season: Undead Murder Farce! This is a fun one, the moment I saw it I knew I wanted to write about. It was just such a surprise that I had to do it. So without further ado, lets dive in!

First up, overall Undead Murder Farce looked pretty good this week. There were a lot of strong choices, from interesting shots and small facial/character ticks to some nice shading. After the premier this isn’t very surprising. However there was one thing that stood out to me, and not positively: The pixelated greenscreen effects. I don’t know if this was meant to look cheap, if that was the effect they were going for, but they really just looked like a complete and total failure of compositing. Like they were done by an intern on short notice or something. It’s really rather ugly in my opinion, and ruins a couple of otherwise decent shots. A shame in what is otherwise a pretty decent looking episode I feel.

Getting into the contents of the episode itself, I need to repeat from our First Impressions that I absolutely love the character interactions. The way Tsugaru and Rindo bounce off of each other is easily one of my favorite things so far this season. They just seem so comfortable with taking the piss out of each other, whether it be jokes about running out of fingers while counting or Tsugaru going out of his way to cause misunderstandings and forcing Rindo to set them straight. It’s an Abbott and Costello, straight man and wise guy double act, and it’s great. And it’s not like the jokes are physical slapstick comedy either, a lot of them are on the darker end as Tsugaru completely ignores the severity of the situation/murder mystery. I think it brings a lot of fun to a show that otherwise could feel to serious. Plus Tsugaru comes off as purposefully a troll rather then actually stupid, he’s clearly doing it on purpose.

Of course one thing that helps this is that apparently this isn’t their first adventure together. It appears that there’s been a bit of a time skip between this and the 1st episode, with them having solved mysteries in both Norway and Belgium prior to this. While I think it’s a shame that we missed those formative adventures, this easy comradery they have feels worth it. There’s no question of “Will this relationship work”, no teething problems, Undead Murder Farce just skips right to the Holmes and Watson style dynamic. Hopefully this doesn’t mean Undead Murder Farce is skipping all of that, I do want to see their relationship develop a bit on screen as they come to really trust/care for each other. I’m more just hoping the show is skipping over stupid bullshit drama that normally comes from these kinds of partnerships.

As for the episodes narrative, we get a bit more world building for the first half. For example, apparently vampires are public knowledge? And many of them have resolved to live with humans peacefully? It’s really all just a thinly veiled metaphor for racism, what with how the police clearly don’t care to protect them properly and they are targeted by a few fanatic’s, that bit is kind of dull. But it helps that the vampires them selves are actually legitimately dangerous and that, should this murder mystery go wrong, Tsugaru might have an actually difficult fight on his hands. It also adds a bit of a fantasy twist to what is otherwise a pretty standard murder mystery. Rather then a smoking gun it’s a silver stake, vial of holy water instead of wine. It’s flavor, which I can appreciate to a degree.

Speaking of the murder, as I said it’s a pretty basic mystery. It doesn’t seem like it’s all that important to the main plot, more serving to show us what our leads have been up to between now and episode 1. What I did like though was how Undead Murder Farce communicated it to us. Much like with Kemono no Souja Erin in this weeks Throwback Thursday, shameless plug, the show took the time to walk us through their deductions. And it did so in an entertaining way. Showing us the evidence, Tsugaru piping in with some wit, the reaction of the Father, Godard. It really felt like he was piecing together how it had to have been someone in his household, probably the butler if we are being honest, at the same time we were. That’s nice, and I hope it can keep it up in future mysteries!

The only thing I didn’t like about it was the ending. Simply put, Undead Murder Farce ended really suddenly. Like… right before it felt like it was about to reveal something big to us. It felt like the episode ended right when it should have been climaxing, cutting us off with a “Boo” joke from Tsugaru when we should have gotten a “The murderer is… X” sort of thing. This felt really bad, like the show is blue balling me! It’s the worst kind of cliffhanger and feels kind of unnecessary. I get it, the episode was pretty packed, Undead Murder Farce communicated a lot to us. I just wish this last bit had been handled a bit more elegantly so the last taste the show left me with was a high one, not a sour one.

All in all though I would say I still quite enjoyed the episode. It had a lot going for it, and the leads relationship alone makes the show worth watching. Everything else is just the cherry on top. Hopefully it can continue this level of dialogue and character writing up through to the end. It’s based on a novel, a real one not a light novel, so I have high hopes for it. Those typically don’t get published as easily, nor are as schlocky, as their light counter parts. And in my experience anime adaptations of the works, such as Fune wo Amu and Run With the Wind, are generally some of the best written things out there. Still, only time will tell. Just know that I have my fingers crossed for this one and will be really sad if it fucks it up.