The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

Written by Yu Okano

This is a story of Rentt Faina, a 25 year-old bronze-class adventurer who has been at his job since 15.

One day, he ends up being killed and subsequently swallowed whole by a dragon in a dungeon. Reasons unknown to him and everyone else, he manages to wake up and finds himself a skeleton, basically a monster.

Wanting to rejoin the human society, he attempts to find a way to become a human-like creature. He, first, evolves into a ghoul and then into a vampire thrall. Later on, he becomes a vampire, sort of.

Above is the gist of the series. It’s about Rentt’s journey to … something. We don’t know, yet.

LN

I started with the light novel first. It triggered my interest initially but this novel has a ton of monologue to a point that I found it completely unnecessary and excessive.

And, because of such a large portion of the novel is dedicated to never-ending monologues, even by novel volume 9, the plot barely progresses. I was amused by that fact.

Basically, I think I skipped about 1/3 of the novel; they were monologues. You may need to do the same because the monologues were just going around and around about the same topic over, over, and over and then some more.

Now, if you can manage to trim off such monologues, the core story itself is decent with a sense of slice of life stuff going on.

And, while the story has a clear harem potential, it has not yet turned into a harem. It does try though. It may turn into a harem later since the story has barely progressed at this point. I feel that the cast is still in the gathering phase … even at volume 9.

Anime

This series has been approved for an anime adaptation in 2022 April. I think this will do well as anime since a lot of internal monologues can either be omitted entirely or incorporated into a narrative voice. Some action anime series do love monologue voices after all. (Hint: Naruto & One-Piece)

And, since the novel story goes nowhere, so will the anime which is fine since not many anime actually have a proper ending nowadays. It really feels like anime of recent is being used as an advertisement more than anything else.

I reckon you will see this in anime form in about 2 to 3 years from its approval, so 2024 or 2025.

Manga

I am going to say that manga is better than the light novel due to a simple fact that the manga either omits or simplifies excessive monologues of the source material, making it a much more pleasant read.

And it feels like this series might be better off as a manga in fact. Of course, there is a fact that manga has to play a catch-up game with its source material.
While some mangaka choose to pave their own plot after a certain point, manga for this series remains very faithful to the source material.

So far anyway.

Overall …

So far, it’s not too bad. In spite of its extremely slow pacing, it does have its charm. I am most grateful that it hasn’t turned into a harem series. If it does, I will drop it at once.

There is one thing I am not so sure about. It’s the plot or lackthereof. The story has minor goals, but I am unable to see the bigger picture from the story. Basically, I have no idea where it is going. And this is after I’ve read 9 light novel volumes. And, since an anime season (12 ep) is about 4 books, I am positive that anime, too, will go nowhere.

In the end, manga is what I’d recommend.