Sunday Without God

Alt title: Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi

TV (12 eps)
3.653 out of 5 from 7,078 votes
Rank #3,680

God forsook the world on a Sunday, leaving mankind unable to stop living - even long after they've died. The sole hope left for humanity comes in the form of gravekeepers; only a burial by one of these chosen few will allow the deceased to finally rest in peace. Ai is a young girl who serves as gravekeeper for her sleepy village, taking over the job after her mother’s death five years ago. However the tranquility is shattered when Ai returns from digging graves to find that everyone in town has been slaughtered, and the culprit is a young man going by the same name as her long-lost father: Hampnie Hambart. Forced to lay to rest everyone she's ever known, Ai must now forge her own path into the unfamiliar world in search of answers.

Content Warning

my anime:

User Stats

19,427 users are tracking this. to see stats.

If you like this anime, you might like...

Reviews

ZetsubouKaiji
2

Kamisama starts with such an interesting premise and loads of potential. A destroyed world that god has abandoned where the living and the dead have to live together. The world is a desolate wasteland where the remnants of humanity both living and dead have created their own insular societies. It's a great premise, much like Kino's Journey it's a chance to explore different aspects of humanity in an extreme environment. Unlike Kino's Journey, Kamisama never makes use of its premise. Instead it keeps throwing up new ideas and new characters without bothering to develop any of them adequately. There isn't really a plot to this anime, instead it's split up into a few different arcs chronicling Ai's journey through this wasteland world. The story arcs themselves are rushed and not very well developed any deeper themes are lost in a morass of bad comedy and even worse character drama that obscures any greater point to the people/societies that Ai meets along the way.The problems with this anime start with the very first episode. It starts with a bleak somber tone that is immediately ruined with silly comedy and the overly cute main character being cute just for the sake of it. It's immediate shown that she is very naive, but instead of having her learn from her experiences the anime seems to actively encourage her naive ideals and then has her push them on other people. Worse yet, anyone that doesn't buy into her naivety are always shown to be misguided no matter what their reasoning is. It's quite sickening to watch her preaching her empty words and then treating them as meaningful in some way. The firs arc is very rushed, and yet very glacially paced where I didn't feel like much of anything was actually going on in the first two episodes only to have the third episode be a hilarious plot hole filled cheese fest with a saccharine sense of sentimentality. That third episode was the one where this anime became really unredeemable train wreck. The story of Ai and her father makes little sense there are so many coincidences and stupid little inconsistencies it boggles the mind really. Her father is carrying around a picture of his wife and child but somehow doesn't recognize Ai and even worse Ai sees the picture is somehow unable to recognize her mother until the very last second. It's beyond stupid and the only reason is like that is to create false tension when there shouldn't be any. Again and again the character's actions don't follow any sort of logic but instead just serve to move events forward.The second arc is an even bigger sin. It starts out well. It actually uses the premise of the series. Ai finds a city of the dead. A society of dead humans for dead humans. Exploring the city and how these sentient but slowly rotting corpses live their day to day life would have been very interesting. The dead in this world retain their memories and reasoning capacity for all intents and purposes they are the same person they were when they were living. However, before even starting to explore this premise the show derails into stupid drama involving a princess and her tutor. There's also a subplot with the tutor that involves magic and a bunch of other things that don't fit in with the series, including a strange he/she hybrid thing. All of this distracts from the premise of the series. Instead of playing out as a dark fairy tale to explore humanity, it becomes all about the boneheaded drama, and even the drama is ruined by the stupid comedy moments. The climax of the arc involves Ai naively getting involved with the princess's life and trying to force her beliefs onto the princess. Nothing gets resolved other than Ai meddling where she didn't need to. The third arc is where things really go off the rails as at that point Kamisama stops pretending to even care about its own premise. Instead Ai finds herself at a Professor Xavier's For Gifted Youngster only with forced labor instead of learning mutant powers. This arc is barely even worth talking about. It involves an escape plot that several of the students had legitimate reasons for not wanting to escape back into the destroyed wasteland of the world where they were unsure they would be welcome anywhere. Ai however once again badgers the students that don't want to leave basically making them feel guilty until they decide to leave rather to listen to anymore of Ai's whinny ranting. The third arc introduces the characters for the 4th arc which once again has nothing to do with the premise of the anime; instead it throws in an entirely new concept that doesn't gel with anything shown previously. However, instead of talking about the specifics of that arc, I'll say that it made the one theme Kamisama has very clear. The anime is about dispelling illusions or people's delusions, or at least it wants to be. However, the way the anime goes about it is very offensive. Given the situation of a lot of the characters; they might be living in a situation that they have to tell themselves is okay, but when the only other choice is to live in a post apocalyptic wasteland were the few societies are small and rather insular, it's pretty arrogant to tell people that they just need to buck up and deal with it. The people that Ai comes across are living happy little existences for the most part so who the fuck is Ai to come along and them "no,no, no, you're living the wrong way." And the thing is the anime totally supports Ai. It never takes into consideration other people's view point. Yes, the students at the school were forced into labor, but for the most part they were taken care of and they were unsure about being accepted anywhere because of their special abilities. They were comfortable at the school with their own relationships, but Ai told them they were wrong to want to live like that. And that fucking pisses me off. I hate her preachy holier than thou tone and I hate that she meddles in people's lives telling them how to live. Especially when she talks in such a naive way with absolutely no substance to anything she says. Her words are all meaningless platitudes. She claims she wants to save the world but she never defines what that actually means. It's like whatever she does she justifies it as part of her naive desire to save the world. Save the world by doing what? Forcing people out of their happy existences into wasteland of the word? Are they supposed to thank her for that? Is that going to make god come back? Fuck, no. She has no plan or idea of what she's talking about. Ai seems to get her naive idealism and meddling nature from her father Humperpiety Whateverthefuck. Humpandpump has this whole belief that he should just kill the dead because they are being delusional, and he just plain doesn't like it. Honestly, fuck this character. Humpanddump goes around destroying the dead who are just trying to get along in a world that won't let them die. He can't even put them to rest, just tear them apart so they can't move. It's beyond cruel what he does and yet the anime treats it like a good thing. As Ai while not destroying the dead, takes on his attitude that people should live the way she wants and anyone that doesn't is wrong. The rest of the characters in the anime hardly matter. The other people that travel with Ai aren't particularly interesting, get little to no development and are mostly pushed to the side. It seems like they had their own stories but they got cut out of the series for more of Ai's horseshit. The single arc character never get much of a chance to develop and they barely get time to give any kind of argument with Ai's beliefs, instead just getting pushed along in her direction. The characters from the last arc Alis and Dee get a bit of screen time. However, Alis is as single minded as Ai and while Dee tries to provide a counter point but her voice is drowned out in the anime. She's ignored to the point of being irrelevant until the very end and a retarded twist makes her change her mind. The last arc is also the most fucked up because the people in it are living a happy existence that they chose to wish for, but nnnooo, that's not good enough. They are doing it wrong because Alis and Ai say so. And to that I give them a hearty fuck you. People should be able to chose how they want to live and as long as they aren't hurting anyone there shouldn't be any problem with it. Instead Alis and Ai are forcing these people to go into a world that may very well may not be able to sustain them. It may be doing much more damage than good. The art and animation are the only high points of the anime. MADHOUSE gave everything a very nice look. The OST is pretty forgettable. I doubt anyone will be listening to it outside of the show. The voice acting isn't bad but Ai's shrill voice will probably start to piss you off as you listen to her non-sense drivel over and over again.Overall I hate this fucking anime with a burning passion. Not just because it wasted its really interesting premise, but because of it's stupid preachy tone which really just tries to hammer home it's own stupid message with no substance. Avoid this shit like the plague.

YuiYui
7.5

Warning this Review May Contain Spoilers- So this review is for Kamisama Inai no Nichiyoubi also known as Sunday Without God. Which is a fantasy anime based around a young girl called Ai and her journey trying to find the truth about the land with ‘God’ apparently abandoned or so they say. Ai is a grave keeper and has to technically put people who have died where they belong, the dead people are slightly like zombies, they can’t die until a grave keeper buries them so ok…slightly unique.  The story was emotionally developed quite well however rushed die to the shortness of the anime, because it is only 13 episodes. It is really detailed and it surprised me in a good way, I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. The opening and ending animation was spot-on, I don’t think that there was much to say other than that. The character designs were unique in their own ways and they all had interesting element to make them all different. The music was unique and it is surprising that Eri Kitamura sang the opening after hearing her voice characters like Yui, it was pretty cool. The voice actors were chosen perfectly and I couldn’t really say much about that either other than it was amazing. The ending like normal isn’t as catchy as the opening but that is just that.  The characters match their designs pretty well however like the story they weren’t developed much, come on people they had to get rid of one of the best characters in episode 3, what’s that all about.  3 episodes isn’t long enough for a good character development at all, this was slightly disappointing but even still I like how they kept Ai until the end and some of the other main characters. Other than the whole 3 episode thing the characters were pretty well laid out in a way, so they were quite good. In conclusion Kamisama Inai no Nichiyoubi is good for a 13 episode anime which we all known are always the best in emotional development. If you haven’t watched It you should check it out but be prepared it can get emotional.  ~AngelBeatsYui~

kotokuki
5.5

No Spoilers (only mild sass) Overall: Good (Possibly Great) idea, poor execution. This show had some fantastic potential and the main character's, shall we say uniqueness brought a lot to the table, but goodness nothing really happened. This type of show does mini stories, which you can see by the titles of the episodes. Although they're in a chronological order, they don't necessarily have information between the storylines. Not necessarily a problem mind you, just a point to consider as the writers have given themselves the potential to jump around to any point in our lead's journey. ...Hint they don't take advantage of this. There are some plot twists, but I wasn't enthralled enough to care. To be completely honest instead I ended up rolling with the punches of it like "oh, neat... what's next..." Honestly the reason I'm so disappointed is because they have such a great set up and it's so poorly executed. I mean they talk about death vs. life and such throughout it but don't draw any conclusions, they talk about deadly things and what happened but don't go into any details or turmoil that ensued from it. AND most of all, with all these bad things that can happen, we assume can happen, they've dropped hints that they have before and may happen now, our little protagonist is fantastic at finding good, wonderful people and the shining light on all. TRA-LA-LA! So this could've gone way different just by adding contrasting character who are actually disagreeable. I'm not even mad they didn't make this a zombie apocalyptic thing, but they didn't even focus on the people affected all that well either (which I assume was their point, focusing on the humans left)... Instead of following a path to discovery, we follow a path to confusion. By which I mean dreams and ambitions of main characters become uncertainties. Mind you this could be beautiful (question life, come to conclusions, face the world, philosophies, etc.), but it isn't really presented that way. There may have been an intent to question our thoughts and get all meta up in here, but they don't... I mean our main character is 12 years old sooo you get the idea.  Please keep in mind the Hulu mature audience thing is a really just because we're talking about God and stuff. Nothing sexual, Ecchi, bloody, or heavily violent in the show so don't let the disclaimer step up some expectations.  Characters are the real focus of the story. We explore and watch the characters grow, yet there isn't much visual growth. Our protagonist, for example, is a curious and questioning person (of course never questions the audience would ask, but instead character development questions) from the get-go who provides comments that are unusually insightful towards the person they're speaking to so you can't really grow from that. Some characters I enjoyed more than others, and you'll probably find yourself in the same boat. Some backgrounds of characters are glossed over so we "don't care" as much about changes yet the writers cover their tracks on personality traits. This can get kind of annoying since you want information, but you get nothing really because they just want it to be fact. Finally on characters, all the characters who we take the time to get to know are good in some form. Like kid's movies are more forwards with HE.IS.BAD concepts, instead all characters have some (heavily) redeeming quality. Animation was cute, but nothing special. It actually has some similarities with early 2000s style even though it's 2013. MADHOUSE usually does produced clean works and some trademark detail work so it certainly is done well and appropriately. Sound was not my favorite. It didn't hurt the show, but I didn't make me glad for it either. Voice actors were normal as well. Common matches so nothing too special either. Soo I'm disappointed, but I liked the concept. So it got some solid points for concept, but man, oh man did they miss the mark on this one. And the first few episodes are such a bait and switch!

See all reviews

Related anime

Related manga

Characters

See all characters

Staff

See all staff

Discussions

Custom lists

See all custom lists