After finishing the third episode of Kamisama no Inai Nichiyoubi, my initial impressions of it have altered significantly with this emotional episode. And that is why I don't really have a definitive opinion of a series until 3-4 episodes in, but I like to enter into the anime on some kind of strong emotion toward the series -- which includes both positive and negative in that umbrella. The worse feeling is it not having much of an impression on you, and Kaminai was one of those anime, but my view has changed dramatically, as stated previously.

So what did Kaminai do to change my mind from neutral to positive? Well to put it simply, it made me care. Ai was just some overly joyful gravekeeper and Hampnie Hambart was a psychopath, murdering the masses. But with a simple power shift, we could finally see some personality get established, and I actually started to like Hampnie Hambart, despite his odd sounding name.

We got to see Hampnie in a vulnerable situation, and peek into the mind of this "immortal killer"; what we found out was he has own issues with living forever -- specifically that he is always trying to find someone/something to kill him. And in that moment we see that living forever isn't something that is all that it is chalked up to be -- I personally have taken issue with people that say they wish to live forever, but that is just tangential.

When Hampnie admits that he wants to die peacefully to his kidnappers, that displayed to me the difference between someone that when crazy because of good reasons, loss, and people that are doing it for the trill. The real from the fake, and yet Hampnie was still human simply because he had his own opinion on how he wished to die.

Getting though this episode, you slowly begin to realize that not all good things last forever; because we found out Hampnie Hambart was actually Ai's father, he got his wish for peace, and in that split moment, it was a bit of irony told in so few words. Hampnie, or should I say Astin Kizuna, didn't want to die because he found his family. As far as death scenes go, I would say it was well done, and it got me right when I started to care for Kizuna.

And of course that last scene is what really got me to cry only the manliest of tears, that no anime has really done this early on into a series. Ai having to bury her father was what put the final nail in the coffin to convince me to stick with the anime. It may have had a slow start, but I think I can follow the story of the half-human, half-gravekeeper Astin Ai.