Thursday, August 22, 2013

Dawnleaf Watches Sunday Without God: Episode 3 – Who’s Your Daddy?



I still can’t say that I like this anime, but some stuff happened this episode that rectified some of the problems I brought up in the last episode.  Mostly, the ones related to that ass Hampnie Hambart (I know that he has another name now, but I can’t remember it, so I’ll keep calling him his hilarious alias).


He died!  And he’s Ai’s father!
…um…


-How the hell could he not tell Ai was his daughter?   She looks exactly the same as her mother!  I mean, maybe I would have bought it if we were shown that he briefly considered it and then discarded it in an earlier episode, but he acts like this idea never had entered the realm of possibility before.


-Why was Ai’s mom… Un-gravekeeper-like?  Ai’s excuse is that she’s half-gravekeeper… Was her mom half-gravekeeper, and Ai’s actually quarter-gravekeeper?  God, that sounds really stupid.  I don’t think gravekeepers were even around long enough for that to be the case.  Plot convenience, then?


-Why was Hampnie immortal, anyway?  Because he asked nicely?  He thinks he was because he asked God to be immortal, but if God is so willing to take requests, why was Hampnie still immortal long after his life goal became to no longer be immortal?  Oh, yeah, by the way, that was also introduced in this episode, that he wanted to be able to die.  That could have created some emotional impact, but this anime decided to introduce that in his final episode, so there’s no time for the concept to develop or make me care, so the ‘drama’ feels token and hollow.  His voice actor does do a really good job in that scene, though.


-Why did Hampnie suddenly become un-immortal?  Literally, the minute he learned Ai was his kid, he died.  Don’t tell me it was because he was happy and satisfied with his life, so he didn’t need to be immortal anymore.  That would be ridiculous, contrived, and dumb as hell.  And it wouldn’t make much logical sense.  His immortality was in no way related to his daughter (He never even knew that she existed up until now), so why would she cause it to end?  Come on, Sunday Without God, I know you like trying to incite emotion in me, but your attempts just aren’t working. 


-Oh, wait… Is it because Hampnie (minutes before his death, mind you) revealed that he wanted to die happy?  So, literally, he decided that he wants to die happy, and, minutes later, he gets happy and then dies.  Am I the only one who thinks that sounds stupidly contrived?  Why do his desires control the real world like that?  Is he supposed to be God or something?  I thought that in anime, God was a bored high school girl…


-Why does he have such a massive vendetta against the undead (AKA dead people who haven’t been buried yet AKA “Only Mostly Dead”), and feels like it’s his job to repeatedly shoot them until they’re really dead?  Even if they gradually start to become more instinctive and selfish in the future, Hampnie seems to think that it’s totally okay for him to go around and fill ones that are totally harmless with bullets. 


-What the hell was up with those last few minutes of the episode?  Those were so unbelievably contrived, I could barely believe what I was watching.  It was like that last scene in AI where the little robot boy gets to spend one more day (and only one day, for some stupid reason) with his mom, and they have fun and stuff, and it’s so tragic because she dies after that day.  Except it’s that the little gravekeeper girl gets to spend one more day (and only one day, because the guy hates undeads so much that he can’t stand to be one, even though his daughter probably won’t survive very long in the crazy post-apocalyptic world without him to keep an eye on her) with her undead daddy (who is acting completely out of character, and who she accepts pretty quickly), and they have fun and stuff, regardless of the fact that he murdered her surrogate family and threatened to shoot her and kicked her around several times, and it’s so tragic because he then is an asshole and makes her bury him, even though there’s another perfectly serviceable gravekeeper with purple hair hanging out with them and he doesn’t really need to go, anyway.  …wait a second… AI is the name of the movie, Ai is the name of this anime’s main character… AI… Ai…  Coincidence?  I think not.


-Why did Julie spontaneously like Hambart, anyway?  He called you his friend?  Well, y’know, he still murdered your wife, which is a pretty big deal in most circles.  And he sounded pretty sarcastic when he called you ‘my friend’.


-If Ai is so capable of beating the crap out of a group of dangerous thugs with a shovel, why the hell hasn’t she used this immensely useful skill in past episodes?  I mean, just as an example, how about the time that that guy went to her village and started killing everyone?


-If the village Ai lived in was full of the undead, and Hambart says that the undead are evil and selfish blah blah blah, why were they all really nice to her and each other?  Then again, I guess that I could just chalk this up to him being wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me.  But still, if they were all so nice, why did he think that they needed to die?


-Why the hell isn’t this anime about her?  Watching a harmless-looking woman with a friendly grin on her face cheerfully and politely thrash the baddies in this episode was by far my favorite part, even if it was pretty brief.


-What’s this anime going to do next?  I really have no idea, this anime could have ended here with basically no loose threads.  These three episodes probably could have been put together and made into a movie.  A rushed, contrived, short movie, but a movie nonetheless.  I hope it doesn’t go downhill from here, as it wasn’t really all that high up to begin with.  My morbid curiosity is really the only thing that keeps me watching, honestly.


Also, this anime has so much shaky cam...

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