FA+
Shop
Al's Anime Reviews - The Unwanted Undead Adventurer
2 years ago
25-year-old adventurer Rentt Faina has been hacking away at monsters for a decade. However, without much talent for the job, Rentt finds himself stuck hunting slimes and goblins for meager amounts of coin everyday. Swallowed whole by a dragon, he wakes up a short time later not quite dead, but not very alive either... He's nothing more than a pile of bones. Armed with nothing but his trusty sword, tool belt and ghoulish new looks, Rentt sets off on his quest as a newly reborn skeleton monster to achieve Existential Evolution, hoping to one day return to civilization with his original form.
There were a lot of places that The Unwanted Undead Adventurer could've gone after the somewhat intriguing opening scene that featured its protagonist getting horrifically murdered by a weird angel-dragon-thing and turned into a living skeleton monster. While I briefly held out hope that this was maybe going to result in some fun and wacky hijinks, the show instead opted to make the most boring and predictable choice possible: It spent half of the premiere on a flashback that explains, in excruciating detail, how its protagonist ended up fighting that monster in the first place.
I'm going to take this opportunity to make an open plea to all of the writers working on these RPG-inspired fantasy stories that have been plaguing the industry for so many years: If you're going to resort to plagiarizing the already plagiarized bargain-bin crap that was itself ripped off from the half-baked clones of JRPG fantasy stories that haven't felt fresh or relevant since the early 2000s, then please do not feel like you need to spend time explaining to us how the hero guilds and monster loot systems of your setting work. We all know how it goes by now and the play-by-play has gotten a bit insulting.
Really though, that's more of a general complaint about the industry as a whole. As for the particulars of The Unwanted Undead Adventurer, well, I'd get into more specifics if there was anything "particular" to comment on. We get introduced to Skelly Boy, spend an ungodly amount of time watching as pre-skellified Skelly Boy goes about his mundane life, and then post-skellified Skelly Boy monologues to himself in a dark, ugly cave about how difficult life as a Skelly Boy is probably going to be. He also kills some slimes, I guess, and then evolves into a more ghoulish form for reasons that have yet to be explained.
Of course, I make this complaint with the full understanding that there may not have been a better way to handle the earliest part of this story. It's all very unfortunate, because there are hints at more interesting subjects waiting just ahead. Even though Rentt (which I keep wanting to type as "Rennt") is largely a solo adventurer, he's got people he cares about and who care about him. Early on, he mentions a friend who's a scholar, and later, when he fails to return from his adventure in the Labyrinth of the Moon's Shadow, two people are very obviously concerned about it. Sure, his scholar friend's words could be taken as "I was hoping he'd swing by and make dinner", but she's still remarking on his absence, and Sheila at the guild is also worried about his failure to return. He's a solo adventurer, but he's not friendless. That makes his determination to achieve a higher level of undead form and eventually regain a living one so he can return to town take on a different meaning. He doesn't want to hit "ghoul" and eventually "vampire" so he can sleep in a proper bed, he wants to get back to the people he cares about and where he feels at home. He's also not willing to give up on his dreams of becoming a top-class adventurer, which is perhaps less charming, but no less important when it comes to what seems to be the core concept: Rentt isn't done with life or being human.
But then it feels like 80% of the episode is just endless scenes of a CG skeleton walking down blue hallways and fighting other CG monsters, all scored by his unnecessary narration that needs to explain every single goddamn thing that's happening onscreen. You'd think that would be annoying, but the content and delivery are so dull that they can't even rise to the level of irritating. Rentt's voice actor could be reading the phone book for all it amounts to. I can't even talk about the visuals much because there's barely anything besides blue dungeon corridors and the millionth generic fantasy circle town. Rentt looked like a background character before getting skeletonized, and afterward he looks like a premade Unity asset. And even worse, it's one that can't even emote! There's not even a bone pun or death joke to be found! That's like the one thing every hack writer will lean into when writing an undead character! Where are the damn skull jokes to make me yo-ho-ho-ho?
Told differently, I think this could've been a much more engaging episode. I like that the snippets we get of the town are understated because he hasn't been missing all that long, so they would be concerned rather than panicked right now. I enjoyed the scene of Rentt juggling bread, and I genuinely laughed at his attempts to talk at the very end, so this has some things going for it. I want to see how he interacts with other characters. I want to see how he handles the numerous challenges in his undead life. I even want to see if he regains his humanity and gets to keep living a normal life. Could the show turn out to genuinely be the repetitive, monotonous, boring slog this premiere makes it seem like? Sure it could, but I'm willing to give this a couple more episodes to find out. If you're at all intrigued, this seems to merit the old three-episode test--it may not look great, and the storytelling and humor in this episode are clunky and weak, but it isn't devoid of potential. I hope I'm making the right call, because this season frankly has more than enough shows on the Anime That Will Not Be Remembered by a Single Living Soul When the Season Ends Pile already.
There were a lot of places that The Unwanted Undead Adventurer could've gone after the somewhat intriguing opening scene that featured its protagonist getting horrifically murdered by a weird angel-dragon-thing and turned into a living skeleton monster. While I briefly held out hope that this was maybe going to result in some fun and wacky hijinks, the show instead opted to make the most boring and predictable choice possible: It spent half of the premiere on a flashback that explains, in excruciating detail, how its protagonist ended up fighting that monster in the first place.
I'm going to take this opportunity to make an open plea to all of the writers working on these RPG-inspired fantasy stories that have been plaguing the industry for so many years: If you're going to resort to plagiarizing the already plagiarized bargain-bin crap that was itself ripped off from the half-baked clones of JRPG fantasy stories that haven't felt fresh or relevant since the early 2000s, then please do not feel like you need to spend time explaining to us how the hero guilds and monster loot systems of your setting work. We all know how it goes by now and the play-by-play has gotten a bit insulting.
Really though, that's more of a general complaint about the industry as a whole. As for the particulars of The Unwanted Undead Adventurer, well, I'd get into more specifics if there was anything "particular" to comment on. We get introduced to Skelly Boy, spend an ungodly amount of time watching as pre-skellified Skelly Boy goes about his mundane life, and then post-skellified Skelly Boy monologues to himself in a dark, ugly cave about how difficult life as a Skelly Boy is probably going to be. He also kills some slimes, I guess, and then evolves into a more ghoulish form for reasons that have yet to be explained.
Of course, I make this complaint with the full understanding that there may not have been a better way to handle the earliest part of this story. It's all very unfortunate, because there are hints at more interesting subjects waiting just ahead. Even though Rentt (which I keep wanting to type as "Rennt") is largely a solo adventurer, he's got people he cares about and who care about him. Early on, he mentions a friend who's a scholar, and later, when he fails to return from his adventure in the Labyrinth of the Moon's Shadow, two people are very obviously concerned about it. Sure, his scholar friend's words could be taken as "I was hoping he'd swing by and make dinner", but she's still remarking on his absence, and Sheila at the guild is also worried about his failure to return. He's a solo adventurer, but he's not friendless. That makes his determination to achieve a higher level of undead form and eventually regain a living one so he can return to town take on a different meaning. He doesn't want to hit "ghoul" and eventually "vampire" so he can sleep in a proper bed, he wants to get back to the people he cares about and where he feels at home. He's also not willing to give up on his dreams of becoming a top-class adventurer, which is perhaps less charming, but no less important when it comes to what seems to be the core concept: Rentt isn't done with life or being human.
But then it feels like 80% of the episode is just endless scenes of a CG skeleton walking down blue hallways and fighting other CG monsters, all scored by his unnecessary narration that needs to explain every single goddamn thing that's happening onscreen. You'd think that would be annoying, but the content and delivery are so dull that they can't even rise to the level of irritating. Rentt's voice actor could be reading the phone book for all it amounts to. I can't even talk about the visuals much because there's barely anything besides blue dungeon corridors and the millionth generic fantasy circle town. Rentt looked like a background character before getting skeletonized, and afterward he looks like a premade Unity asset. And even worse, it's one that can't even emote! There's not even a bone pun or death joke to be found! That's like the one thing every hack writer will lean into when writing an undead character! Where are the damn skull jokes to make me yo-ho-ho-ho?
Told differently, I think this could've been a much more engaging episode. I like that the snippets we get of the town are understated because he hasn't been missing all that long, so they would be concerned rather than panicked right now. I enjoyed the scene of Rentt juggling bread, and I genuinely laughed at his attempts to talk at the very end, so this has some things going for it. I want to see how he interacts with other characters. I want to see how he handles the numerous challenges in his undead life. I even want to see if he regains his humanity and gets to keep living a normal life. Could the show turn out to genuinely be the repetitive, monotonous, boring slog this premiere makes it seem like? Sure it could, but I'm willing to give this a couple more episodes to find out. If you're at all intrigued, this seems to merit the old three-episode test--it may not look great, and the storytelling and humor in this episode are clunky and weak, but it isn't devoid of potential. I hope I'm making the right call, because this season frankly has more than enough shows on the Anime That Will Not Be Remembered by a Single Living Soul When the Season Ends Pile already.
Drag0nK1ngmark
~drag0nk1ngmark
Honestly I am curious on this one
