Undead Girl Murder Farce

What a refreshing and original anime.

Ever wanted to see a severed head, a half-Oni, and a kick-ass maid solve supernatural crimes? Neither did I, but damn I really liked this series.

The main characters are interesting from the first episode on. I mean the group is so unique, that it's almost impossible to not be intrigued where this show is gonna go.

The action vs actual detective work time ratio is favoured heavily towards the latter, some people might say that's "boring". I think that actually gives more time to the actual interesting part of the story: the mystery.

Mind you, the battle scenes which do happen are amazing. The anime looks spectactular throughout with top artwork, with some very original scenes at times as well. It's not just the cast which makes this anime unique.

The biggest negative? It's only 1 season (so far) we've only been given the beginning of this story; with a very open ending. Very much looking forward to more.

Having just sat through five episodes of the 2023 Japanese Anime "Undead Girl Murder Farce", I must say that I was expecting quite something else than what it turned out to be.

Sure, the premise of the Anime tells of a disembodied head working as a supernatural detective traveling the work looking for her lost body. And that sounded interesting enough to make me sit down and watch it.

But spending four episodes on solving a murder of vampire, just hardly constitutes proper storytelling in my book. It was too slow paced, monotonous and downright boring. And after having suffered through the fifth episode as well, I am calling it quits on "Undead Girl Murder Farce", never returning to watch this again.

Luckily I sat down to watch the episodes in their original Japanese language. I loathe English dubbed Anime, no doubt about that. However, it was strange why everyone in the series spoke Japanese, even the Englishmen in episode five. That was just downright stupid.

The art style in "Undead Girl Murder Farce" was good, I definitely liked that. And the animation was good as well. But it was hardly enough to alleviate for the shortcomings of the narrative.

I have to admit that I was sorely disappointed with the outcome of "Undead Girl Murder Farce", because it had such an interesting foundation to build something good on.

My rating of "Undead Girl Murder Farce" lands on a three out of ten stars.

I called it guys. From the start of the season, I was betting on this anime to be good. And it completely blew me away. It's just too bad that Link Click aired it's season 2 alongside this, because this is clearly anime of the season material.

This anime is the perfect example of what makes anime so entertaining - the style, the action, the cleverness, the quirkiness, the supernatural environment, the iconic characters. And it's not just about how entertaining it is, it's also written very cleverly. The mysteries are very well written. The direction and the stylish vision of the director, is something that not many could have imagined for this story. It's just brimming with style.

The characters are all great, especially the 3 protagonists. They have great chemistry among them and they are worthy of being the protagonists of this story. Aya and Tsugaru in particular are just amazingly entertaining as a duo and they're very cleverly written.

The story is split into 3 chapters (excluding episode 1). The 1st chapter (Ep 2-4) sort of gets you into the characters as well as the Whodunit mode. The 2nd chapter (Ep 5-8) is incredibly entertaining, action-packed and I won't spoil if you're not aware, but some very iconic characters show up in this chapter. And surprisingly, even after such an entertaining 2nd chapter, the 3rd one actually even topped that. The 3rd chapter (Ep 9-13), has a mind-blowing mystery that completely surprised me. All the whodunit mystery fans are going to be elated after watching this chapter. From the way, the mystery is written, to the way it was set up, it was just amazing to see and worthy of being the finale of this anime.

For a mystery, this anime has a lot of action. In fact some of the action setups here are as good as some of the best shounen anime out there. The soundtrack by the composer of Link Click, was just amazing. He has made 2 brilliant scores in the same season. The amount of humour was also surprising.

Almost everything about this anime fits perfectly. I can't wait for season 2!!!! I recommend this anime with all my heart.

This series is set in an alternate nineteenth century where supernatural creatures and various famous literary characters are real. The action takes place in Europe but is centred on three unusual Japanese 'people'; Tsugaru Shinuchi is an experimentally created half Oni, a so called Oni Slayer. He works for Aya Rindo, an immortal woman who, having lost her body lives as a head in a bird cage; finally there is Shizuku Hasei, Aya's maid. Over the course of the series they must solve various mysteries and face various dangers. Some issues are solved in a matter of a few episodes while there are others that last all series.

I thought this was an enjoyable series. The protagonists are great and it is fun seeing various famous nineteen century characters interacting with each other even though they would never have met in the original works. The series looks great with good character designs and animation. Many plot lines are wrapped up by the end but things are left open for further season; if we should get more I'd certainly watch. Overall I'd certainly recommend this to fans of period action with a supernatural twist.

These comments are based on watching the series in Japanese with English subtitles.

Having only watched 8 episodes, I can say with confidence that this series is one of top 3 that came out this summer.

For starters, the animation and fighting scenes were exceptionally well made. It doesn't have that silly generic look to it that most shows have nowadays.

The plot is really engaging that I found myself immersed and didn't feel the time passing. The chemistry between the main characters is also another strong selling point for this show. Furthermore, the use of public domain characters was utilized well to drive the story.

If you want a show with a serious tone and non of childish characters that plague most anime now than this for you.