(TV SERIES) My Undead Yokai Girlfriend Season 1 - A Fun & Interesting Fantasy Action Comedy Series

I have actually watched this series on Prime Video more than a week ago but just did not have the chance to write about it. Since yesterday I have not completed a new series that was just released, I decided to write my views about this one instead. And what was the series about? Let us find out more, shall we?

Brief Story Line

Tadashi (Hayato Sano - Usogui, Trillion Game TV series etc) was an unpopular college student who loved to play online game with a group of friends including his best friend Tanuki (Comedian Anthony). While other people his age were already having relationships, Tadashi who was nicknamed Hachi never had any. Through some sort of magical spell, somehow Hachi got his wish of a girlfriend, except she was in the form of a 500 year old Yokai (Japanese spirit) nicknamed Izzy (Ai Yoshikawa - Honey Lemon Soda, Influence TV series etc).

Though Hachi was excited with having Izzy, he would find it hard to adapt with her intimate relation desire and murderous intent. Things got more complicated with the appearance of Yokai hunter Tenkai (Yukiya Kitamura - Under the Open Sky etc) who was chasing after Izzy and the involvement of police led by Detective Inukai (Takashi Sorimachi - Great Teacher Onizuka, Full Time Killer etc).

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story LIne

When I read the brief synopsis of the series, I was immediately interested as the premise sounded fun and interesting. Though I was not familiar with the term yokai, but I could foresee it was going to raise a lot of comedic situation. And indeed it was even from the first episode. You could imagine a young man like Hachi who encountered the kind of woman like Izzy with her disregard of people's opinion & inexperience of the present world and obviously her insistence in having relationship with him. And with such episode ending, I definitely was intrigued to find out more.

As the story progressed, the comedic situation were enhanced but at the same time the mysterious nature of Izzy and the hunter's persistence in killing her made the series became more exciting. The pretty well crafted action sequence also added the entertainment value. And what I liked about the series was the growing excitement on each episode, with some unexpected twists towards the end. However, the season seemed to have some unresolved matters, which probably was saved for subsequent seasons. I just hoped they would renew this so we could have proper conclusion.

Usually Japanese series like this would be based on manga/anime, especially with the characters who had strong anime feel. But I could not find in the opening or closing credits and on the internet. So I guess this was an original series for Amazon Prime Video. Which meant the creators Yalun Tu & Zach Hines had done an amazing job and should be applauded for their creativity. 

The cast, particularly Hayato Sano and Ai Yoshikawa were wonderful as well. Hayato was convincing as university student struggling with all his problems while Ai was perfectly suited as the Yokai with great agility and robotic behavior. I also like Antony here as the best friend. But the most interesting was Sorimachi's characterization (I am sure you would understand once you have watched this series). In addition to those names, there were other support cast like Yuna Taira (The Dark Maidens, ReLIFE etc) as Hachi's senior Arisa, Sakura Kiryu as online gamer Hikari, Yuka Itaya (37 Seconds, You Lie in April etc) as Hachi's mother and few others.

Btw I was quite surprised when I watched first episode only had 37 minutes and the rest of them were all 35 minutes or less. So it did not take long to complete the whole season which only consisted of 8 episodes. Furthermore, the rather light nature in the first two or three episodes also made it easy to finish. For me the greatest attributes of the first season was the story and the relationship between Hachi and Izzy plus the action & comedy. Only thing that I hoped for was a complete conclusions to the series, as there was always a chance it is not renewed which would make it annoying. If it was based on manga/anime, at least we knew there was going to be a proper ending by the author.

Overall this was an interesting and fun series. It was not complicated, humorous, got some nice action and even some pretty surprising twists. Those looking for a short series that would not eat up a lot of your time and want to enjoy a light action comedy series, then you would likely be entertained by this as I was. However, if you are not accustomed to Japanese style of characterization, then you might find it difficult to enjoy.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars