Undead Murder Farce

Episode 4

As the mysterious circumstances behind this act of vampiricide come to a head, Undead Murder Farce wraps up its first case in an appropriately tragicomic fashion. Aya takes the floor and explains her deductions leading to the culprit's identity. Tsugaru takes to the woods and renders judgment upon the murderer in a fun action scene. And the circumstances of the crime tie neatly into the series' thematic lynchpin about the difficulties and anxieties of the world's transition into modernity. It's not easy being a monster, and that's exactly why monsters need to look out for one another.

The solution to this mystery clarifies an important distinction between Undead Murder Farce and the other detective show I recently covered, In/Spectre. In short, Undead Murder Farce makes it possible for the audience to solve the crime independently, and thus it hews close to the conventions of the whodunit genre. All of the evidence Aya cites this week had been previously disclosed, and there aren't any unreasonable leaps of logic so that a savvy viewer could have fingered Raoul as the culprit. The holy ice stake is probably the biggest roadblock to the solution—I certainly didn't guess that—but frozen weapons aren't anything new to this genre. Honestly, the regenerating fingers are the most bullshit part to me, but that was explained earlier in another context, so I have to respect the cleverness. What's important is that the pieces fit together in a way that makes sense of the prior contradictions, giving us the satisfaction of viewing a completed puzzle. That's how you handle classic detective fiction.

This series isn't just classic detective fiction, however. It's a story about ghosts, ghouls, and everything in between, so the supernatural angle lends itself to superpowered action scenes. While Aya is the brains of the operation (by default, but also by merit), Tsugaru is the brawn, taking command once Raoul rips off his mask. My favorite part of this scene is how far Tsugaru leans into its theatricality. It's congruent with his sideshow background and throws a veil of macabre camp and humor over what is otherwise a grim execution. I think this also demonstrates what might have attracted Hatakeyama to this project because both Rakugo Shinju and Kaguya-sama were highly theatrical stories and productions where reality and performance intertwine. Even a farce can belie powerful and uncomfortable truths.

Here, while Raoul is the culprit, the root cause of this murder lies in the shifting societal landscape in this period of early modernization, as told through a fantasy lens. The monsters of the old world must now contend with a new world that belongs to the humans. Godard saw the writing on the wall and tried to integrate his family into this order, where they could enjoy their wealth but not their previous shadowy dominion as bloodsuckers of men. He would still kill as a father protecting his loved ones if needed, but he would no longer kill as a vampire. That was enough for him. It was not enough, however, for Raoul, who resented this defanging. It can be easier for a newer generation to romanticize the past because they're further away from its realities and complexities. Thus it's easier for them to project their insecurities onto an imaginary idyll they believe was stolen from them. Raoul is a proud young vampire who can't stand the thought of being anything less.

As is too often the case, Raoul's resentment turned inward, and he decided to hurt the people closest to him. Sure, he had grander ambitions about manipulating his family into opposing the humans once again, but his act of matricide was an act of vengeance as well. He felt that his parents betrayed him, so he repaid them. He wasn't even bothered by the hypocrisy of involving vampire hunters in his plan—the ends would justify the means. While he pays for his crimes, I don't think Undead Murder Farce is unsympathetic to his motivations either. Godard's best intentions would never be enough to erase human prejudices, and Tsugaru recounts his story about the demon-hunting troupe slaughtering the specters of the old world. These are valid concerns. But the answer the show posits is one of solidarity, not one of betrayal and division. Aya and Tsugaru help and complement each other, letting them provide their services for other maligned creatures and misfits. Raoul's actions leave a shaken Godard with a fraction of his family remaining and plenty more muck for the tabloids to throw at him. Yet he will continue down his path because he knows firsthand that the alternative is too painful to bear.

We're left with a weighty end for Undead Murder Farce's meaty first arc, and it leaves me confident that these characters should have a surfeit of blood and banter to sustain the rest of the season. The idiosyncratic direction hasn't let up either, and I hope the adaptation only gets weirder and more garish. I love, for instance, the return of the intentionally shitty chroma key effect on certain cutouts. The anachronism adds playful anarchy to the production, and the deliberate reconstruction of a visual glitch echoes the narrative's preoccupation with people outside the fringes of “acceptable” human society. Most importantly, it's also very funny to me. And that sums up Undead Murder Farce's appeal too. It casts a wide net: main characters with palpable chemistry, cool whodunits with tricky solutions, a cast promising plenty of cameos from Victorian-era fictional favorites, a pop art visual ethos, and a macabre sense of melancholy running beneath everything else.

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Undead Murder Farce is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is on Twitter while it lasts. He's just trying to get ahead in life. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.