Undead Girl Murder Farce

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.

Undead murder farce is a treat for all fans of fantasy and mystery. The basic premise is that a severed head and her two assistants go around solving mysteries, very reminiscent of classic Holmes stories. There are a few twists on the classic formula, however. Firstly, most of the mysteries involve fantasy creatures in their deductions, leading to an incredibly intriguing set of cases. Secondly, is that the characters are also constantly getting developed and we are able to see their worldviews, personalities, and relationships change. Finally, there is also a lot more fighting than in a typical detective story. This is largely because of a few different groups that are very shounenesque in their design. Each member of these groups has different abilities and we get to see how their different abilities interact during their fight scenes. The fight scenes are often short, but well animated, with them certainly being a secondary attraction to the cases themselves. The cases are well paced as well, with each one providing enough time for the audience to get invested into the characters and overall mystery being presented. On top of all this, Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty and major players, so look forward to seeing them in a world filled with monsters!

I have not seen much hype around this anime, but I've heard good things about the manga and things are off to a very good start. The overall production is very solid and the directing is rather unique with interesting camera angles and visuals. The premise is pretty interesting too, and the characters so far are quite likeable, hopefully this continues for the rest of the season.

If you like detective type shows murder mysteries or anything around that line this is for you. It basically is a supernatural detective show.

It is brilliant in its premise and sticks to it. The story is basically about an Oni a Headless girl and her assistant and how they go on through the journey to get something back while solving mysteries along the way.

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.

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.