10 Second Anime - Vatican Kiseki Chousakan - Episode 12 [END]

Joseph's little brother Ryouta's cancer takes a turn for the worse, but a miracle, maybe two, shows him, Roberto, and Joseph God's Grace. Season Finale.

Episode XII - "Sinfonia"

Hmm.

The episode title is very fitting for this show's last installment. Like Lauren Di Luca's standalone episode, Ryouta got his own story. The sinfonia from the 17th and 18th centuries was an orchestral piece to be played as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to Italian operas. These days, it just means symphony, but the archaic meaning is appropriate to the older Italian style of the Vatican.

Also fitting was how in this whole season Roberto and Joseph did not verify one real miracle. I don't know if you call it lazy, coincidental, or a sign of Grace (following the episode's theme of the Sacrament of Flowers), but proof of real miracles just happened to be Joseph's little brother. His Gift was to see the Harbingers of Death visiting the next poor soul. Unfortunately for Joseph, Ryouta developed a habit of keeping bad news from him to keep him from worrying. It started as a natural inclination when he saw his big brother off to college by not telling him how much he would miss him, but then it was reinforced by his mother asking him not to tell Joseph how serious her illness was. After all that, how could he tell him that he saw red, white, and black robed beings around people who were about to die?

After being diagnosed with a rare cancer and being sent to a children's hospital filled with other unfortunate children, Ryouta's gift was finely honed. It was good that he was brought up in a good Catholic family so he could pray for those poor kids before they died. I worried that he would be looked on as an Angel of Death since he would be a physical sign of the Harbingers. Apparently the kids and staff didn't pick up on the coincidence of his prayer sessions and the soon after deaths. Sadly, kids must die all the time at that research hospital.

So, Ryouta in and of himself is a miracle, but how would such a miracle be discovered? This is where the show built up nice story elements to produce Roberto's moment of Grace at the bedside of the cured Ryouta. The hospital library contained an old notebook with a golden bookmark with a code known only to Roberto and his long deceased childhood friend Joseph. Without Ryouta's gift, Joseph could not have shown him a vision of his friendship with the withdrawn Roberto. And without knowing the significance of the bookmark, Ryouta could not have shown Roberto at their first meeting the meaning of it and how these signs of interconnectedness demonstrate God's Grace as everyday miracles.

That was good. Unlike the other mysteries, there were no plot holes, and the pieces of the puzzle were laid down slowly and deliberately to produce Roberto's miracle.

Heh.

That was a nice hook where Ryouta saw the Harbingers of Death and said that it was finally his turn. It's a tried and true method to get us interested in the telling of a long back story. I mean, how interesting would it be to watch a little kid on his death bed for a few hours before Joseph showed up?

This vision of Joseph, Roberto's friend, is giving the fujoshis lots of material to work with. At least we know where Roberto got his love of books, since his father's background as an artist didn't lend itself to an interest in text.

Fr. Julia! Of course. A German hospital doesn't seem like the place that would just let a priest friend administer an experimental drug to a dying kid without any kind of consent. Well, any time this show tries to deal with true crime mystery stuff, it falls apart, so why stop now at the last episode?

One good thing that came of Fr. Julia's (shouldn't he have been defrocked already?) "miracle" was that Ryouta came to an understanding of his spiritual gift. It wasn't enough for him to pray for the dying, but also to deliver the dying's prayers to the living. That's proof of a real miracle right there.

No yaoi preview couch, but we did get a yaoi epilogue bench. It's kind of a nice connection that both Joseph and Roberto's crucifixes came from loved ones who died. It adds that extra sense of saintly devotion.

The message of the yaoi epilogue bench is that miracles are actually mundane, they happen all the time, so there's no need to investigate them. It's more than enough to offer thanks to God.

Final Thoughts.

This is not a show for everyone. That's my number one takeaway from this anime. Using miracles as the premise for a mystery investigation procedural is a fine idea. For the most part, the "mysteries" were solved, but there were glaring holes in the final resolutions. Whether that was a product of the adaptation process, bad editing, or bad direction, I can't tell. It seems like a combination of all three, but if you're a fan of the mystery genre, you'll be left wanting.

From a Roman Catholic perspective, I was very glad to see the unapologetic language of prayer invoking Jesus Christ, the saints, God the Father, and the Holy Spirit. These are supposed to be Vatican Miracle Investigators, so they better get that stuff right. But this was a poor man's Da Vinci Code with its inclusion of Catholic conspiracy politics. I suppose the author had to draw on something to create a nemesis in Fr. Julia, and a Bourbon alchemist isn't a bad solution, but Nazi influence found in Mexico (not Argentina, huh?) is the kind of stuff Catholics view the same way Jews look at Rothschild banking. There really is no there, there.

I'm actually intrigued in the choice of introducing Fr. Julia in the context of African missionary work and was glad that the Crusades and the Knights Templar weren't even mentioned. There's a lot of Catholic conspiracy history to draw on, but to go to the places where there's enough faith to produce miracles, like Central and South America or Africa, was a very good choice. Modern Italians have hardly any faith at all, so the whole Monte Village mystery was just to get Fr. Julia and the Bourbon gold to stay in the viewers' minds.

The pure strength of this show, however, was in its niche genre for yaoi (gay love stories told in such a way to excite heterosexual females). All the tropes were there. The art style was there. The lack of focus on any female character was there. The fujoshi would eat this show up. The audience who would appreciate this show the most would be any Japanese fujoshi who went to a Catholic boarding school. So, any of the side characters in your classic yuri story...

The final question of whether a show is good or bad for me is whether I can recommend it to a broader audience instead of a niche demographic. Sadly, no. The mystery crime procedural premise was just executed too poorly to hold interest, so I can't. But if you just happen to be a Japanese woman who went to an all girl Catholic boarding school, I'm telling you, you need to watch this. The tall guy wears an apron when he cooks! You know what I'm talking about.