Undead Unluck

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This series totally subverted my expectations. At first, I had assumed it was going to follow the usual shounen plot route, but no. To think there was a point where I had gotten bored of the anime and almost dropped it - until I reached the Autumn arc.

Up until the Unknown and Autumn arc, I felt absolutely no attachment to the characters - if you killed Fuuko, Andy, or any of the other Union members at that point I wouldn't have really cared. It wasn't until I reached those last few episodes of Season 1 that I thoroughly enjoyed and started wanting to root ... for the characters of this series.

After the first season of the anime finished, I binged the manga until around Ch 200 last August 2024. All I can say is I'm so happy I didn't go through with dropping this when I mistakenly presumed it was another typical shounen story. What it lacks in style (I mean, even the author acknowledged that his art style's sort of outdated for a manga published in the 2020s), the manga makes up for with an ABUNDANCE of substance. This series is one of the best I have encountered since the pandemic.

First, UxU has one of the most unique power systems and world-building elements I've seen in a manga. I thought the negation abilities were confusing at first as some characters would technically break the conditions required for their negation abilities to work (and there would be little to no explanation for it other than "s/he expanded their power/range/interpretation of his/her abilities"). But after Andy's power up in the Autumn arc and the end of the first loop, I developed a deeper appreciation for the "it's all about perception" message the author was trying to push.
Point is, at some point the author made me forget about all the technical stuff and just enjoy the series for what it is.

For those who want to start reading this series, I think it's best if you go into it not dwelling too much on the world's mechanics. When I was still trying to get into UxU before the Autumn arc, the existence of universal rules as UMAs and the nature of "Revolution" as Ragnarok made it difficult for me to follow and reconcile some of the technical aspects of this show with what I know intuitively about the world. I'm not sure, but something about the exposition felt lacking and too axiomatic to me at the time which made me want to drop it. But again, I'm so glad I didn't. EVERYTHING makes sense now.

Lastly, UxU doesn't have the most unique ability users, but it does have one of the BEST and most LOVABLE ensemble of protagonists there are. The author has the uncanny ability to write arcs that will make you appreciate every single union member, even if there are over two dozen of them.

- On a side note: some will think Andy's new perception of "death" after meeting the Fuuko in his memories to be cliche and overused. But what I can say with 100% certainty is that this series, through Fuuko and everyone's interactions, really made me think long and hard about what Andy's definition of "death" means to me and makes me want to go out in the world in search of the greatest death possible for myself too!

Tldr: UxU is wicked sick, please go read it.

Quite bluntly, I'm sad that this manga started as a funny, unpredictable action manga and slowly became a mess where tension has been lost and the plot twists seem contrived now in chapter 56.

The sexual harassment fanservice played for laughs wasn't very funny as well.

Art was always good.

After a while, in my opinion, the story became too meta. The emotional and deep moments also weren't because they felt forced. All in all, I think the story slowly ran out of energy.

I still think that people should read this manga. It was greatly executed for the first 20 or so chapters. Have fun reading :)

The work has a good initial idea but a lot of holes!

Reading Undead Unluck I had this impression that the work did have a good premise but that it dragged on for too long, making me notice some holes in the work. The work itself is fun at the beginning when you are getting the idea of ​​the world that they want to present to you, but after that it gets very boring, it is always like "a strong adversary appears, defeats the beast and another stronger adversary appears". This kind of thing is very, very noticeable, even more so at the time it was ... released when, for comparison, we had Jujutsu Kaisen which did a much better job with its antagonists (in this case the curses). If we are to compare them, the UMAs are pretty mediocre, at the beginning they were impressive but then every UMA that appeared could destroy the entire universe, very boring. While reading this work, I had the idea in my head for several moments of "I hope it ends soon" because I couldn't stand to read this work anymore since it has a lot of dragging in it from the middle to the end and by that half I couldn't stand to read a single chapter of this work.

Another point to mention is that this work has an empty universe, nothing besides the characters of the work has any relevance, the world is lifeless, it seems that if everything ended it wouldn't be missed since there is nothing in this universe that makes me captivated by this world and want to see it well. In general, my rating is a 4 because they let the chance to make a good work slip through their fingers, they had a protagonist with an interesting ability, a different power system and interesting characters but left that only as a promise.

=================================================================================================================Versão em Português=====================================

A obra tem uma boa ideia inicial mas muitos furos!

Lendo Undead Unluck tive essa impressão de que a obra teve sim uma boa premissa mas que foi se arrastando por tempo demais fazendo que eu notasse alguns furos na obra. A obra em si é divertida no começo quando você está pegando a ideia do mundo que querem te apresentar mas depois disso a coisa fica muito chata, fica sempre em um "adversário forte aparece, derrota o bicho e vem um outro adversário mais forte", esse tipo de coisa é muito mas muito perceptível, ainda mais na epoca que estava lançando que para comparar tínhamos Jujutsu Kaisen que fez um trabalho muito melhor com seus antagonistas (no caso as maldições) se formos compara-los, os UMA são bem meia boca, no começo até impressionavam mas depois todo UMA que aparecia podia destruir todo o universo, muito chato. Enquanto lia essa obra por vários momentos tive a ideia na minha cabeça de "tomara que acabe logo" pois eu não aguentava mais ler essa obra já que tem muita enrolação nela da metade pro final e nessa metade eu já não aguentava mais ler um capitulo sequer dessa obra.

Outro ponto a se citar é que essa obra tem um universo vazio, nada além dos personagens da obra tem alguma relevância, o mundo é sem vida, parece que se tudo acabasse não faria falta ja que não tem nada nesse universo que faça com que eu me cative por esse mundo e queira vê-lo bem. Em geral minha nota é um 4 pois deixaram a chance de fazer uma boa obra escapar pelos dedos, tinham um protagonista com uma habilidade interessante, um sistema de poder diferente e personagens interessantes mas deixaram isso só na promessa.