Welcome to This Week in Shonen Jump, our weekly check in on Viz’s various Shonen Jump series. Viz has recently changed their release format, but our format will mostly remain the same. We will still review the newest chapters of one title a week, now with even more options at our disposal. The big change for our readers is that, even without a Shonen Jump subscription, you can read these most recent chapters for free at Viz.com or using their app.
This week, Zach checks in with “Undead Unluck.” If you have thoughts on these or any other current Shonen Jump titles, please let us know in the comments!
Undead Unluck Chapter 42
Written and illustrated by Yoshifumi Tozuka
Reviewed by Zach Wilkerson
It’s a bit of blind luck when you dive into a manga series midstream and instantly connect with the story. With large casts and obtuse, long running stories, it can be hard to make heads or tails even when you’re reading a book from week to week. Much to my surprise, my luck paid off with a series about a girl that spreads bad luck.
Jumping into “Undead Unluck,” I’m instantly charmed by Tozuka’s unique art style. There’s a trend of new Jump artists with a scratchy, minimalistic style. This includes artists like Tozuka, Gege Akutami, and Tatsuki Fujimoto, but Tozuka’s is the most detailed of the three. He skews a bit more retro, evoking a style that reminds me of a nineties shonen or Japanese rpg. In a black and white medium, the use of inks is extremely important. Here, Tozuka’s inks are fairly sparse when drawing Andy and heavier when depicting Fuuko’s dark hair and clothing. The contrast paradoxically gives a ghostlike quality to hulking Andy, even though Fuuko is the time traveling “ghost” here.
Picking up in the middle of time-traveling shenanigans, this chapter of “Undead Unluck” finds Fuuko in the late 1800’s, where she hopes to learn more about the history of her undying friend Andy. Picking up from the sudden tragedy of last chapter, Andy and Fuuko go on a gripping montage adventure. We see the duo shooting down bandits on horseback, Andy wielding dual axes against masked men as the figure of an angel stands watch, and quiet moments where the pair say goodbye to fallen friends. It’s here with the theme of loss that mangaka Tozuka makes a few remarkably profound and heartwarming observations on the nature of life and death.
Just as it’s rare to instantly click with a manga story in media res, it’s arguably even harder for the connection to be deeply emotional. In light of the recent loss of his friends, Andy asks Fuuko what it means to die. It’s a great philosophical question, arguably one outside the purview of Shonen Jump. Nevertheless, I found Andy and Fuuko’s musings on the legacy of life and love comforting in a sweet yet simple way.
Tozuka manages to tell a terrific capsule story in this brief space. The friendship between Andy and Fuuko is heartwarming, even when stripped of the context of their relationship in the present. Once the two are separated, I feel compelled to follow the story back to the present. Since the main job of a manga chapter is to entice the reader to pick up the next chapter, I’d say this one was a success.
Final Verdict: 7.5 – This heartwarming time-jump adventure makes for a surprisingly good jumping on point.
