Starring the voices of:
Caitlynn French, David Matranga, Genevieve Simmons, Andrew Love and more.
“The story is set in a fictional world, where, fifteen years earlier, human beings lost the ability to have children and to truly die. Those who have died continue to exist, regardless of injury and decay. According to legend, God abandoned his creations but left them one final gift in the form of “gravekeepers,” strange individuals with the ability to give rest to the living dead. Twelve-year-old Ai is one such gravekeeper. Her life changes forever when an immortal gunslinger named Hampnie Hambart massacres the residents of her small village. With no place to go, Ai is forced to rely on Hampnie, and she comes to learn the truth about him and her village.
Afterward, she sets out on a journey, performing her duties as a gravekeeper and striving to learn more about why the world has fallen into such a state, and she declares her desire to save the world God has abandoned. While on her journey, she encounters new people: Hampnie’s childhood friend Julie, the gravekeeper Scar, a mysterious boy named Alice, and a ghostly witch named Dee.” – From Wiki
I started this randomly when I still had a “Crunchyroll” membership. I had attended several comic book conventions and many of them had “Anime” rooms. This made me interested in anime a lot. I started seeing what was out there. Randomly, I saw the premise of this show. It spoke to me on many levels. I wanted to see what the overall message was of this. I watched the first arc back then, but never finished it. I found at a flea market somehow (serendipity maybe?) a DVD collection of the show. I purchased it and it sat on a shelf for a few years. I started realizing recently how many items I have that are just sitting there that I have never seen. I continue to just keep purchasing, but never getting through what I have already bought. I have been paying so much for streaming services when I really should be watching what I own. I decided it was time to do that. I put several of the anime series down in front of my roommate and he helped me select which ones to watch and why. This was the first one from that. I knew that I wanted to see what happened with the series. I watched it over the course of a few days.
“On the seventh day, God abandoned the world.”
This anime was a very weird ride. I thought there would be a heavier focus on the fact that the premise was the main character was a “gravekeeper” but this felt almost secondary to these weird arcs that the writers decided to let be the overarching theme of the show. There would be multiple episodes that focused on one arc and then several other episodes that would be another complete arc. This, as a viewer, was a bit jarring. Sometimes it would feel like one thing happened and then the next boom something went against that. There were serious moments that were just so jarring.
The stylization was perfect and at at the beginning it felt like we were in a fantasy type world, but as it progressed the fantasy element seemed to become stripped away and it began to feel a bit more like we were in a future version of the real world. This again was pretty jarring as a watcher. The style of characters though were great, but there would be times that the characters just seemed to not be important. We would get introduced to a character and then it seemed like they disappeared for several episodes, went into the background, or in at least one case they died (won’t say who as I don’t want to spoil). It just felt like at times that I wanted to be like “Oh, shouldn’t we be focused on specific characters?” I know that they only had 12 episode to tell the story they wanted to tell, but it felt forced in places to introduce so many characters and then not allow them to shine in any substantial way. This was even more prevalent in the last arc as it seemed to force the characters we had been with up to that point to basically not be around the main character. It made me side eye the entire run.
The enjoyable part of this was the premise. I could also tell that this was leading to somewhere in terms of that. When it arrived at the conclusion though I wasn’t the happiest I could have been. The way that this weird world started felt like the creators could not come up with something that was new or fresh. It felt like they needed to find something they thought would be shocking or enjoyable, but it felt like it was a bit flat overall. While I am glad I finished this, this isn’t an anime I would watch again.
This is also a light novel (Manga):
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