LogFAQs > #968970899

63. Sunday Without God
https://myanimelist.net/anime/16009/Kamisama_no_Inai_Nichiyoubi
Summer 2013 (12 episodes)
My Score: 7/10, MAL Score: 7.30/10
Best Character: Dee Ensy Stratmitos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=At9Abkapnlk

Premise: God has abandoned the world, meaning no new life can be born and people can only die if they're buried by inhuman gravekeepers. Ai is a young girl who serves as her town's gravekeeper, at least until a mysterious man with the same name as her father arrives.

The Good: Sunday Without God was a supernatural anime with (if I had to pick a genre label) a focus on mysteries. I really loved the setting. God seemingly abandoned the world long ago, so now nobody can die. Injured people just slowly lose their sense of self, at least until a gravekeeper buries them. This kind of weird apocalyptic setting is something I always enjoy, and SWG does a lot of creative stuff with it. One of my favorite things was a character who was actually two different people cut in half and sewn together vertically, and it worked because neither of the two halves could die. Ai was an interesting character, but I also liked the friends she gathered during her adventures. The ghostly Dee was still my favorite, as I'll cover in her write-up. More than anything, though, this was just such an interesting world. It felt like a place where anything was possible with a lot of potential for fun arcs.

The Bad: As much as I loved the world, there are parts of it I would've liked a better explanation of. For example, I didn't fully understand the specifics of what death meant exactly. Supposedly only burial by a gravekeeper can kill someone, but plenty of characters are rendered immobile. Are they just constantly suffering in silence or what? I wanted more details on stuff like that. I also thought the first arc with Hambart was a bit too meanspirited and edgy.

Overall: Sunday Without God had an incredibly interesting setting. Parts of it weren't explored as much as I'd have preferred, but I mostly forgave that just because the sheer creativity impressed me. Ai and her companions were good characters, and I liked all of the arcs. Dee was my favorite character, though, mostly because the final arc of the season dealing with her was the best one by far.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/4/9/4/AAcDcBAAD0Qu.jpg

CHARACTER: Dee Ensy Stratmitos (Sunday Without God)
https://myanimelist.net/character/86345/Dee_Ensy_Stratmitos
Voiced by: Kitamura Eri
TOP 100 RANK: 97th

SPOILERS FOR SUNDAY WITHOUT GOD

(I couldnt find a good video for her)

During her adventures, Ai meets a guy named Alice and his ghostly companion Dee. Alice, noticing Ai's knack for solving problems in this crazy godless world, asks for her help in solving a big one. It ties into one of my absolute favorite things about the setting, which I didn't mention in the anime write-up because I think it's a spoiler (and I don't remember if this was ever confirmed or if it was just speculation). God hasn't abandoned the world, he's actually trying to grant wishes and miracles. He just really, really sucks at it, resulting in things like giving people immortality in a way that turns it into a nightmarish curse.

In the early days of whatever change happened to the world, a student at a school fell out a window and died (or whatever death means in that new world). Their classmates, horrified at what happened, wished to undo it... and the stupid god granted it, creating a kind of enclosed reality where the town keeps repeating the same few months over and over. Memories of what happened are fuzzy even for Alice, who was the first one to realize something strange was going on. He found a way to escape alongside Dee. Since she became a ghost in the outside world, though, it wasnt hard to eventually put it all together. Dee's tragic death has trapped that town in a timeloop, and Alice gets Ai's help to break it.

Everyone enters the enclosed world, a perfect replica of a time now long gone. It's easy for everyone to settle into a pleasant life in that regular town, even though they know they have to solve the mystery before the timeloop resets or else the memories of their mission will be erased and trap them there forever. Dee remains oddly unhelpful, too, and once they realize she was the one who fell out the window everyone realizes why. Ending the timeloop would likely mean killing her for good. Dee tries to speed up the timeloop reset, and when confronted the real truth is revealed. It wasnt Dee who fell out the window and died that day. It was Alice, and everything she's done has been her trying to keep him alive because she loves him. Alice still decides to sacrifice himself to save everyone else, the timeloop ends, and Ai moves on to have more adventures.

This was a complicated arc. I'm sure there were parts I didn't fully understand and I probably did a terrible job summarizing it. The important thing is that it had a lot of things I found really interesting, like the enclosed world timeloop. I also really felt for Dee. For large parts of the arc she seemed obstructive and selfish, but the reveal that she was doing it all for Alice put her actions into a new perspective for me. I liked her character a lot.