Vatican Miracle Examiner

A fierce orange candle glow shatters the cold darkness of the night. Near a forest chapel, a group of strange hooded figures circle around the Ouija board, put forth their hands and begin their chant. Suddenly, a guard picks up on the sight, boldly confronting them with a blinding blue flashlight as they run off. “Damn brats! Playing demon rituals again, huh?” The guard continues his work. Craving a drink, he enters the large, creaky door of the nearby chapel. He gasps. DRAMATIC MUSIC rings out as he stands at the entrance gawking at something-or-other?! Several awkward seconds pass before the cameraman remembers to show what onearth is so shocking!! INTENSE CLOSE-UPS ensue of... majestic, sparkling blonde hair? Buckets of deep red blood... gracefully drift down from some man’s hands like soft rose petals? In light of the HORRIFIC sight, the guard utters the first thing that comes to mind: “They’re floating in the air!!” …I mean…huh? Oh, yes, that is what he says, because that’s what the script demands that he point out to the audience. Never mind the blood; that apparently doesn’t faze a guard like him. This first minute hints at what the more enjoyable parts of Vatican Miracle Examiner are all about: campy mystery-horror shenanigans from a show trying its hardest to be dark, intriguing and dramatic, but more often coming off as plain silly; posing as if it knows what it’s doing when it clearly hasn’t a clue; sloppily trying to be well-directed and dramatically presented, while cutting corners wherever possible; masquerading as gripping mystery brilliance, while viewers just laugh at how absurd it all is. At its best, Vatican Miracle Examiner is enjoyable for almost entirely the wrong reasons… and I love it! Or at least, I love the first third of it. But that doesn’t mean I enjoyed all of it, nor do I consider it to be a well-made show... by any stretch. Shows dubbed “so bad, they're good” hold a rather niche appeal. Many viewers simply aren’t interested or amused by watching shows because they’re laughably bad, and even among those who are, what one finds hilarious may induce groans of annoyance or soul-numbing agony in others. But for those who do get a kick out of this sort of thing, I recommend trying out the first 4 episodes and then skipping the rest. I say first 4 because they, by far, best encapsulate what makes this show such a riot at times, while I found the rest far less consistently enjoyable. For now, let’s focus on the opening arc, and how it manages to be so extraordinarily good at being entertainingly bad! The premise of a mystery show where Josef and Robert, two miracle examiners for the Vatican, investigate reports of seemingly divine or supernatural incidents to uncover the truth, was a workable one. In the right hands, this could have made for a truly intriguing watch, but the series stumbles at just about every step, the first such step being its visual presentation. The animation and shot composition give off a constant sense that they're trying way too hard, while paradoxically being as lazy as possible… or just not knowing any better. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell. Imagine a teen who just started using a new curse word, whether to feel grownup or just to add emphasis to everything. But the person gets too excited and overuses it, throwing the word into every sentence multiple times, trying so hard to use it everywhere whether appropriate or not, without realizing that they’ve effectively destroyed its emphatic nature. The result just becomes silly. The word loses all its power when the person uses it all the time without rest. Apparently, the director’s new curse word was the Dutch angle, a cinematic technique in which the camera is positioned at an angle on its roll axis. This is often used to give a sense of psychological unease or tension… when used properly, anyway! Vatican uses so many Dutch angles, even in mundane situations, that it becomes downright ridiculous, like it wants to add as MUCH UNEASE AS POSSIBLE, failing to realize the importance of moderation! Sometimes it even ends up disorienting the viewer… or perhaps that’s just because in all the excitement about showing off this new skill, fundamentals like establishing shots or proper timing and lighting are often neglected. It also uses a lot of very noticeable cheap tricks to save on animation, chief among them being an excessive number of extreme slow-panning close-ups so only characters’ lips ever have to move. This excess of slow-panning Dutch tilt close-ups often leaves little sense of spatial awareness for the audience. At times this leads to hilarious failed attempts at a shocking or dramatic scene. I mentioned the intro scene above. In another episode, the show tried to pull off a SHOCKING CLIFFHANGER where… well, I think it was trying to make us believe one or more major characters had suddenly been killed by some Dagger Ex Machina figure in the woods (with absolutely no buildup). Beyond being a cheap suspense tactic to begin with, it was also so badly shot with disorienting tilted-sideways-panning-ultra-close-ups, that I genuinely couldn’t tell what on earth these yelling characters were doing until the scene ended on a vague slow-motion blood splatter that may or may not have been from one of the established characters. It was only then, that I realized, “wait, that was supposed to be a cliffhanger?” It’s safe to say it was a failed one. Adding to this sense of silly presentation is the soundtrack, which in fairness, almost manages to be good; it's pleasing to the ears with lots of mood-setting themes and safe but suitable instrument choices. The issue is that, like most things in the show, it tends to try a little too hard, frequently becoming overbearing or unsuitably dramatic without rest, and adding to the overall sense of pseudo-dark silliness. But beyond the presentation, the real riot comes from the show’s content, and in particular, how it handles its mystery elements! Throughout its first arc, Vatican Miracle Examiner reads like the mystery-horror equivalent of how an inexperienced student of Michael Bay might try to plot a series; it goes for spectacle and plot twists above anything else at the expense of integrity or non-superficial viewer interest. Vatican is far from the only anime or even mystery anime to do this, though the degree to which it does so in its first arc (almost) commands respect for its sheer, bullheaded commitment! The show’s modus operandi is to simply spout as much exposition in as short a time as possible, and act like it’s supposed to be intrigue. Then when it comes time to reveal the unbelievably over-the-top and ludicrous “answers”, you only occasionally get some semblance of proper buildup and deduction. More often than not, the show just asspulls extra information that somehow never made it into the expository typhoon for the viewer to be aware of, or be able to in any way reasonably deduce it for themselves. Usually it’s too out-there and stupid to cross the viewer’s mind anyway, yet still, the show acts like our main characters Josef and Robert are oh-so-clever for figuring it out! In addition, even in the more “fair-play” micro-mysteries, the solutions tend to either leave unanswered questions, or rely on real-world knowledge of physics or history, while fudging the details to the degree that it no longer makes sense. The weeping statue incident is a good example of this; it was seemingly an attempt to incorporate real-world miracle reports from the Vatican, but went with a scientifically not-quite-accurate explanation that ended up being hard to buy into. Other times, it will seem to contradict its own premise, with apparent “miracles”, which would normally be investigated to determine their validity, being either accepted or denied by its main characters without a second thought, just for the sake of the plot. One egregious instance of this was when one of the main miracle examiners had a dream about a hooded figure, then later accepted that dream as a premonition just because someone happened to say he might have seen a hooded figure in the distance one night, and apparently a person who happens to have a hood is just that unusual of a sight. Tying all this miss-tery together is a cast consisting entirely of sticks and mouthpieces, or, in more technical terms, walking plot devices and expository figures! They display minimal personality, minimal development, and minimal reason to exist other than to move the plot along, pull solutions to mysteries out of thin air, or become another *gasp* SHOCKING DEAD BODY COVERED IN BLOOD! Typically I’d complain about how this reduces its cast to shock puppets instead of emotional anchors, but here, it just made things funnier! Not only because the runaway plot train was part of the appeal, but because of the amusingly clumsy ways these expository fountains get used! The only thing to come out of any character’s mouth in a typical scene is a shotgun spray of expository verbal diarrhea on topics that often come up without any provocation! Character A will simply ask about someone’s name, and then Character B will go on an extended ramble about how much of a fantastic war hero and caretaker of children he was, among other backstory details that would never naturally come up in context. People randomly change subjects or go on unprompted tangents, with little attempt to maintain proper conversational flow. Everything in this show has to be spelled out in blood, no matter how inorganic it comes off; there’s no restraint to be found. This applies even to the most mundane topics of discussion, which are usually treated with the gravity expected of big, decisive evidence kick-starting a hot pursuit of a serial killer! The show’s unrestrained brand of dramatic music shines through to amplify this effect, and it fits right into the silliness of everything else! Making all this even better is the absolutely breakneck pacing of the first story arc! With no boring handcuffs like characterization or proper regard for logic to worry about, its barrage of ironic entertainment is nonstop! A crazy highlight reel of all the best-worst parts of the story, because who cares about expanding on the world or the cast? May as well just keep things insane and escalating constantly! Normally I’d say this was a problem, but in this case I think it was the right choice, as it helped eliminate even short moments of boredom that would otherwise exist in such an incompetently-written arc. It even adds to the otherwise limited non-ironic fun factor a fair bit. This show barrels through its early material blisteringly fast, bouncing between set pieces and piling on bad mystery after bad mystery that I knew by episode 2 would lead to some hilarious attempt to tie it all together, and likely a spectacular failure to do so with any sense of tact. Gosh, was I ever happy to be right! Episode 4 is the real goldmine; it was the pinnacle of my experience with this show, and one of the greatest “jump the shark” moments in anime! A series of reveals and resolutions so baffling, it’s absolutely amazing! All those insane mysteries, and all the forced exposition, get shoddily smashed together into an explosion of sex cults, faux-history, voodoo magic, physics-busting explanations, deranged psychopaths, ridiculous plot armor, and self-contradictions! Exorbitant amounts of information pulled from a zeppelin-sized ass to create a perfect storm of laughter and disbelief! It boisterously puffs out its mystery-writing chest, thinking it’s so amazingly clever for bringing all this together in a way its audience never could have seen coming! It proudly shows off answers more far-fetched than simply throwing one’s hands up and saying, “It was indeed a miracle after all!” I dare not spoil those answers here. They’re worth experiencing firsthand! Hypothetically, if Santa were to fly off to the moon with a giant cannon to fire moon dust at the earth, suffocating its population in lunar ash because climate change made him run out of snow, that would be a sensible story by comparison! This episode's story managed to set new standards for what I look for in ironically-enjoyable bad anime! One that could be summed up in 2 words: “Holy Crap!” The degree of ineptitude and absurdity were so high at times that I seriously questioned if the show was actually presenting and scripting itself this way on purpose – intentionally being as stupid and hilarious as possible while taking itself seriously as some sort of twisted satire of the mystery/horror genres, or just for the fun of it. I simply couldn’t fathom the idea that the show was somehow blissfully unaware of it all. Alas, nothing further emerged to support this theory, and I was forced to accept that it appeared to be genuine. It was actually meant to be taken seriously while handling such plainly outlandish concepts so poorly. Despite this, I was still on board with it, both for comedic reasons and just to see what lunacy it would come up with next! But alas, even on this front, the final result disappoints. The show never quite recaptures the side-splitting insanity of its first arc, becoming more hit-or-miss in its entertainment value. Ironically, this seemingly resulted from efforts to make something somewhat closer to being within sniffing range of competent. The pace drastically slows to something more conventional, but less fun. The dialogue is, at the very least, closer to believable, but less hilarious, and still almost entirely composed of exposition dumps. There's still no meaningful characterization or character development in sight, which just leaves little reason to remain invested. The series does come up with a few interesting ideas, like the psychological effects of having all of one’s wishes immediately granted against one’s control, but instead of leveraging them to create a more fleshed-out cast, it just explores these ideas in the same exaggerated, barely-thought-out fashion all the way through. The result is that little of it is able to resonate properly. The show had a glimmer of a chance to pull off its own miracle and obtain genuinely decent qualities, but ultimately fell short. Meanwhile, the questionable direction, hilariously stupid concepts, and bad mystery habits all remain, but are more sporadic in their appeal. The show still overuses Dutch angles and dark close-up pans even in the most mundane of discussions; still spouts nonsense desperately trying to be intrigue; still addresses the nonsense by pulling crucial information out of a hat when it decides to “solve” the mystery; still acts as though these implausible solutions are clever. And as always, the show still takes the idea of a golden life-size Jesus statue making weird horn sounds, glowing, and erupting in sparkles and rainbows each morning, just a little too seriously! That one's real, by the way, and the "explanation" is as dumb as ever! But this only makes up a fraction of the remainder of the show, with the rest being disappointingly dull. I’ll say that despite frequently leaving loose ends and forgetting plot threads, the later episodes were overall a technical improvement over the early ones. But even with these small improvements, it’s definitely not worth watching Vatican Miracle Examiner for its own merits, since it never manages to grasp the fundamentals of proper intrigue, presentation, or anything else. Instead, its first arc is best watched for a good laugh. Perhaps the show as a whole could also be examined to see how not to write a good mystery horror. But frankly, it’s a bore at points coming off the first arc, and it’s up for debate whether it’s worth sitting through its lows just for highs that don’t come close to episode 4’s gambits. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed. Enjoyment: 6/10 (8.5/10 for the first arc) At the end of the day, unintentional comedic gold is still comedic gold. Even when Vatican’s breakneck pace slowed down a bit after the first arc, there were still a few moments of entertainment, though still for the wrong reasons, and with many lackluster moments in between. As for the first arc, it’s a nonstop hilarious brand of stupid, and I had a blast with it! I encourage those interested to give the first 4 episodes a go for this very reason, though the rest is definitely skippable. Overall: 2/10 Vatican Miracle Examiner loses steam fast after its first third, but that initial third is either the spawn of Satan, or a glorious gift from above, depending on one’s perspective! Between its clueless presentation, forced exposition, rushed and sloppy direction, mishandled cast, impressively clumsy script, and revelations too bafflingly ridiculous to articulate with words alone, Vatican Miracle Examiner’s first arc is the most spectacular mess I’ve seen all summer! And that’s exactly why I loved it! It tries SO hard to be dark and serious, but its inept absurdity and complete lack of subtlety just make it a campy 50-pound cheeseball, with tons of potential comedic value! The rest of the show, on the other hand can be safely discarded.