I haven't watched anime (or any show, really) for a while, but fuck man, Undead Girl Murder Farce really got me hooked, and I think it's mostly down to its two lead characters.
Like, yeah, the premise of the show itself is good. It's fucking excellent; a pair of Japanese yokai travel to Europe to solve Monster Crime™ is an instant grab for fans of horror, paranormal, and mystery (of which I am all three), but from episode to episode I keep finding myself drawn specifically to the main duo and their antics.
First you have Tsugaru, a man who, thanks to being half-oni, will have his life cut prematurely. But rather than him being mopey, he's decided to just have a good time while it lasts. If the candle is burning twice as fast anyways, he's going to make sure it burns twice as bright no matter the circumstance.
And on the other hand you have Aya. Unlike Tsugaru, she's immortal, but has decided--now that she's a severed head--that life isn't worth living without a body. It's a cold and logical decision that she only changes her mind about once Tsugaru convinces her that there's a chance to get her body back.
And despite their very, very different circumstances and methods of thought, what makes them the most entertaining to me is how similar they are.
Both of their perspectives give them a sort of detachment to the world, because for both of them (for different reasons) anything that happens, no matter how shocking or tragic, is only temporary. Which leaves them free to react to almost any situation however they want. This is best demonstrated through their shared interest in gallows humour.
That last one in particular is of note, because that bit they're doing happens in the middle of them questioning a man about his dead wife.
And it's not just that they make jokes in dire circumstances; they laugh at each other's jokes too, showing appreciation for the other's sense of humour.
We're only seven episodes in at the time of writing, but it also seems so far like they're both good examples of static character arcs. In other words, they're characters that don't necessarily develop a lot over the course of the story, but do develop the world around them through their actions. Another good example of a character like that is Sherlock Holmes, which is a hell of a coincidence because he's also a character in this show. But it makes sense for Tsugaru and Aya because of their detachment. They can't really be shaped by the world if they're rarely affected by anything in it.
The issue that typically arises from characters like that (at least I find) is that, without becoming interesting over the course of the story, static characters need to start their stories by being interesting, which Tsugaru and Aya both do extremely effectively. We haven't gotten a ton of their backstories yet, but it's pretty clear from everything they do and everything they say what kind of people they are and how they think, and that is fantastic character writing.
TL;DR: watch Undead Girl Murder Farce (or Undead Murder Farce? The anime seems to have dropped 'girl' from the title) because it's really fucking good.
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One of the details I like most about the anime is how in the first episode even Tsugaru's jokes sounded somewhat melancholic, but in the following episodes after he started traveling with Aya and Shizuku his jokes and puns really seem genuine. He really likes them and being around them and I think that's really cute.
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