, also known as for short, is a Japanese light novel series written by Kimihito Irie, with illustrations by Shino. Fujimi Shobo has published nine volumes since January 2010 under their Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint. A manga adaptation by Abaraheiki began serialization in the November 2010 issue of Fujimi Shobo's Monthly Dragon Age. A drama CD was released by Marine Entertainment on December 29, 2010. A 12-episode anime television series adaptation produced by Madhouse and directed by Yūji Kumazawa, aired between July and September 2013.
Plot
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.
Characters
Main characters
Ai is the main character and a twelve-year-old gravekeeper, taking on the job after her mother died. She is quite naïve but cares a lot about others. According to her late mother, her father was called Hampnie Hambart, and when she meets a man by that name, he claims he never had a daughter, and after encountering him she learns that all the villagers in her life were actually deceased and that Hampnie is her father. As the child of a gravekeeper and a human, Ai is arguably the last child born in the world, where ordinary children stopped being conceived three years before her birth. This and the fact that she has emotions is what makes her different from the other gravekeepers. She desires to save the world God has supposedly abandoned and leaves her village to set out on a journey.
Also known as , he is a strange albino man who suddenly appears in Ai's village one day. Upon arrival, he proceeds to shoot everyone in the village, sparing only Ai. Hampnie's goal in traveling is to find a woman named Hana. He became immortal fifteen years ago when God abandoned the world, and can regenerate after being injured. Although he has a cold personality, he claims to only use his gun in self-defense or to destroy the bodies of those who already died, as according to him, the dead have no place among the living. His wish was to die happily beside his family, and it is realized when he learns that Ai is his daughter with Hana after being tortured to death by Hiko and his gang. After awakening as an undead, Hampnie is buried by Ai beside Hana's grave at his request.
An emotionless and skilled gravekeeper with no actual name, and she passes by Ai's village in search of the "dead". She eventually joins Ai on her journey. As the group stops over at Ortus, she also saves Ulla's older sister Celica, a baby frozen in time, and adopts her as a daughter. Scar begins to show more emotions when Julie vows to take care of her, having wished to become human while at Story Circle, a birthplace for gravekeepers.
Hampnie's childhood friend. Julie hid his wife away from the gravekeepers after she died due to illness to prevent her burial. Hampnie caught up to him and destroyed her body, and after the death of his child, he seeks revenge against Hampnie, although Hampnie claims that Julie, knowing of Hampnie's immortality, is actually suicidal and desires to be killed by him. After Hampnie is put to rest, Julie starts traveling alongside Ai and Scar, and later bonds with Scar as they care for baby Celica together.