Junketsu no Maria – 10

Episode 10 asks a leading question: is human emotion better or worse than God’s lack of emotion… or is there any distinction between the two in the first place?

Certainly Michael’s violence isn’t as base as Garfa’s but it’s easy to argue that Michael’s mixture of intervention and indifference put Garfa (and his many victims) in the situation in the first place. If humans only exist to suffer before death and transition to the afterlife, and that no amount of prayer will change the degree of their suffering nor bring about otherworldly protection (except from Maria), the shows depictions of greed and violence become an understandable offshoot of survival of the fittest.

And that’s saying nothing of Michael’s direct acts of violence. First with Maria and now, nearly killing Viv for calling him out on being an empty automaton.

While I suppose this is all rather heavy handed, I appreciate that JnM is subtle enough to leave the question unanswered. Ezekiel is emotionally broken (though it’s not clear why she has emotions in the first place) and humans are particularly violent for much of the episode.

Bernard’s total lack of attention even mirror’s Ezekiel’s. He’s said his piece, feels the rules are being followed, and moves on content to let the masses do whatever they want.

In a pleasing twist of events, Edwina shows up and saves Maria from burning at the stake and Gilbert, Bernard’s underling, recognizes Edwina’s cat/girl familiar as the source of the church’s medicine… which causes his own internal conflict.

Unfortunately, the episode suffers from Joseph having garbled reasons for being away at war and Garfa being pure evil. I just don’t get how we’re supposed to buy into Joseph going to war for glory to… use his glory to save Maria? It doesn’t make any sense.

Similarly, Garfa has gone from being an interestingly gray character to some smirking, knife handed, “gonna kill you in the church” jackal. I suppose I ‘buy’ that he could turn out this way but I don’t find it very interesting…

It’s worth noting that despite all the animation in this episode — and there was a lot with wonderful technical detail — it was not animated very well. Scenes jerk together with no transition sequence, walk cycles are choppy, and many of the characters look… off.