I wonder how many people who treat stringent content moderation and cancel culture as civilization’s first, last, and only line of defense against a world of widespread misogyny and racism understand how many of their favorite bits of entertainment would be unacceptable by today’s standards. 

And no, I’m not talking about books written in 1884, when Mark Twain could drop the n-word more often than a hyperactive squirrel with paws coated in butter would drop an acorn and have no one bat an eye. I’m not talking about movies released in 1961, when a white actor could play a racist caricature of a Japanese landlord to widespread praise from critics. I’m talking about 2006. 

That year, Markus Zusak gave us The Book Thief, an eerily beautiful coming-of-age book set in Nazi Germany whose virtues would be drowned out by the flood of trigger warnings modern gatekeepers would attach to it. Opening with the death of Liesel’s brother (tw:death, tw:child death, tw:parental abandonment) it includes a loud, abrasive foster mother (tw:abuse, tw:child abuse, tw:verbal abuse, tw:mental abuse) who is portrayed as a headstrong protector of her family (tw:abuse apologism) and the Jew they hide in their basement (tw:white saviorism), as well as a meek foster father who kowtows to his wife’s ways (tw:domestic abuse) and teaches Liesel to roll cigarettes (tw:smoking). It’s narrated by Death (are there even enough trigger warnings for that?) who, rather than condemn characters who have embraced Hitler and Nazism, points to the bitterness, grief, and misinformation catalyzing their fervor (tw:Nazi apologism). 

For those of you readying a barrage of rebuttals to that summary, scrolling down to the comments to tell me that I stripped the book of any nuance—that’s the whole point. The Book Thief is a very nuanced story that conveys its message in shades of grey. Few characters are wholly good or wholly evil. Death is a neutral figure, condemning the horrors of war while pitying those who fight it no matter their side, portraying the nightmarish consequences of hatred while showing the reader how it is born. But since when has nuance ever mattered to someone riding high on a wave of righteous anger? 

Moving on, 2006 was also the year My Chemical Romance released The Black Parade, which sees Death (tw tw tw) telling the story of The Patient, a man whose life was filled with war, depression, political unrest, PTSD, religious guilt, self-loathing, broken relationships, and near-constant suicidal ideation—a life that ends in his thirties from heart complications due to a long, painful, emotionally draining battle with cancer. Millions of depressed kids, teens, and adults have found catharsis in the album’s raw, honest lyrics, but those same lyrics would earn the band a #CancelMCR hashtag today. To wit: 

Another contusion, my funeral jag/Here’s my resignation, I’ll serve it in drag: Mocking drag queens and men who crossdress. Using a very real expression of gender identity for shock value. Blatantly transphobic. 

Juliet loves the beast and the lust it commands/So drop the dagger and lather the blood on your hands Romeo: Toxic relationship. Probably violently abusive. #DumpThePatient, lady, and #MCRStopRomanticizingAbuse. 

Wouldn’t it be grand to take a pistol by the hand?/And wouldn’t it be great if we were dead?: Oh my fucking god, they’re romanticizing suicide now? How was this album even allowed to be made? Who let this happen and how soon can we #cancel them? 

If you’ve heard the album, you know none of the above interpretations are remotely true. You’ve probably shaken your head at the Daily Mail’s infamous claim that My Chem promoted self-harm and suicide, but the sad truth is that if The Black Parade were released in today’s climate, that claim would probably be taken up by the very people who now consider themselves fans. The raw honesty that resonated with so many could easily be taken as a stamp of approval on the very suicides its songs have prevented. The anti-suicide anthem, “Famous Last Words,” could be ignored or twisted into a mockery of those who condemn suicide, and the darkly wholesome “Welcome to the Black Parade” music video would likely be taken as enticement toward teens who want to end their lives: “Look at all the cool things you’ll get to see once you’re dead and gone!” 

Again, anyone who is even a casual fan of The Black Parade knows this is a deliberately malicious misreading of the material. My Chem’s music has been gratefully embraced by LGBTQ+ kids looking for a place to belong, and the band members have been outspoken in their support. They’ve been quoted, on multiple occasions, speaking out against suicide and self-harm. We know Parade is not pro-anything except pro-keep on living. But we know this because we gave the band a chance to tell us. We assumed good intent when we listened to their music, and so their intended message came across without interference. Were Parade released today, in the era of AED (Assume the worst, Exaggerate the damage, and Demand outsized retribution), the resulting furor (and refusal to hear their objections to the rampant misinterpretations) could very well have forced My Chem to vanish into obscurity. 

And look. I’m not against content moderation wholesale. I actually think it’s done some good in the world of entertainment. Podcast hosts and book reviewers who warn audience members about triggering content allow them to avoid that content before they suffer an anxiety attack. As a librarian, I have personally and enthusiastically recommended Does the Dog Die?, a website (doesthedogdie.com) that tracks hundreds of anxiety triggers in media, to colleagues who work with kids so they can allow their students to request a different book or movie if the assigned one would cause undue distress. Trigger warnings can prevent anxiety attacks. Content moderation allows audiences to make informed choices. 

But some things are toxic in high amounts, and when it comes to content moderation, we’ve long since passed that mark. 

When trigger warnings are used not as honest labels of content, but as a means to frighten people away from material they might otherwise enjoy, trigger warnings become toxic. 

When self-appointed content moderators tell others what interpretations they should take from a piece of entertainment, rather than allowing them to come to their own conclusions, content moderation becomes toxic. 

When artists are afraid to produce their most honest work for fear their honesty will be twisted into something dark and ugly, the world of fandom becomes toxic. 

Content moderation is not bad in itself. It can actually be a valuable tool for sufferers of anxiety, PTSD, and other disorders. But when it goes hand in glove with cancel culture, it becomes a monster, keeping audiences from discovering something they might otherwise enjoy by twisting the content into something it’s not. 

By all means, tag your triggers. Warn about your content. But don’t tell your followers to expect something horrible that isn’t even there. 

vnc 56: some scattered thoughts

I went into Vanitas no Carte chapter 56 expecting the side story mochijun told us we’d be getting this month. Something cute and fluffy and probably relaxing after the absolute madness of VnC 55 and the emotional heft of VnC 55.5.

So I wasn’t really expecting to end the chapter by jumping out of my chair and collapsing dramatically on the floor.

Tldr, chapter 56 manages to be an adorable side story while also elevating my levels of hype for chapter 57 from their already high “oh boy, I can’t wait to see Domi and Jeanne’s conversation!” to the next level, which is apparently incoherent screaming.

As always, this post contains massive spoilers for VnC chapter 56 and will probably not make sense if you haven’t already read it. With that, here are some scattered somewhat incoherent thoughts on VnC 56…!

Luna, Mikhail, and XXXX

These three are adorable.

Luna. I love them. Luna being a parent to Misha and Vanitas is fuel for my soul. They can’t tie their hair up right. They were planning on getting the number of fèves wrong from the very start. They were also planning on making a cake involving a plant with a face on it and some kind of floating black rock. god I love Luna so much—

Something interesting seems to be happening with Vanitas’s memories of Luna. It isn’t that they’re changing, exactly. But the tone of the memories we see— the memories Vanitas allows himself, and the audience, to revisit— is absolutely starting to shift from antagonistic to much more familial and warm.

And I think this change in how the memories are presented is (at least partially) happening due to Vanitas starting to let himself accept that he truly did love Luna. During previous arcs he doesn’t just hide his memories from Noé— he hides his memories from himself. He’s constantly irritated when he remembers them, and only lets himself revisit the moments where he insisted he disliked Luna. The only time he’ll admit that he didn’t truly hate Luna is when he’s feverish and at his lowest point, separated from the Book and Noé.

But after the Exposition Universalle arc, it seems like Vanitas has become a lot more willing to remember the good. Actually, that’s not exactly true— the first time we see Vanitas positively remember Luna is right after he uses their power to cure Chloé and save Gévaudan. And I think that’s pretty interesting. Just as Vanitas is panicking over his newfound romantic love for Jeanne, he’s also (on a much more internal level) starting to realize that he also really did love Luna.

In a way, I think this panic might be at least part of the fuel for what Vanitas does during the Exposition Universalle. His shell is starting to crack— he’s letting himself remember those warm, happy moments with Luna that he’s pushed away for years, he’s developing romantic feelings for Jeanne. And now he’s faced with someone who combines aspects of what he loves about Jeanne and what he loved about Luna, someone whom he (arguably) feels even more strongly about than either of them at this point, and he can’t let himself love Noé too. So he makes that one desperate last attempt to rebuild the walls he’s held onto for so long. If he can cut out the root cause of all of this change, if he can kill Noé, maybe he can remain loveless. Maybe he can remain “free”.

But this isn’t a post about Vanitas and Noé this is a post about VnC 56 so let’s try to stay on track.

The whole reason I brought up Vanitas’s shifting memories of Luna in the first place is because I think we’re going to see a similar shift in how Noé remembers the Teacher in the future. Just in the opposite direction. This is just a guess, but I think we’re gonna see a lot fewer happy memories and a lot more… less great ones. Our protagonists don’t have gaps in their memories of their parental figures, they just seem to unconsciously choose which memories they remember and which ones they bury. And I think being confronted with a side of Comte that cheerfully admits to nearly killing Dominique and Vanitas during the course of the Exposition is gonna make Noé start to face the memories he may have buried.

Returning to the chapter at hand! Mikhail’s horrific expression as he tells Vanitas he wants to choose his own piece is just fantastic. Vanitas disliking the cake, but eating more of it anyways so Mikhail can’t realize that there were three fèves hidden in it all along is adorable. Luna is Luna and they’re such a good parent and I love them.

Mochijun ends the flashback by once again calling attention to Vanitas’s redacted name, this time putting it in direct contrast to the name he’s currently going by.

Ever since Chapter 55 I’ve been paying more attention to what the characters of VnC call each other. Fun fact, the only person who actually calls Vanitas “Vanitas” this chapter is Noé— Amelia calls him “Monsieur Vanitas”, Misha calls him “brother”, Luna calls him “XXXX”, and Dante calls him “quack”.

That’s pretty much all of my thoughts on the flashback part of 56, so with that, let’s go…

back to the present

The adorableness continues as Vanitas bakes Noé an apology tarte tatin. Noé is adorably excited, and Vanitas is adorably annoyed, and Amelia is ador— actually, Amelia is quite sus the whole time. Maybe it’s just because we haven’t spent this much time in the hotel in a while, but I just can’t shake the feeling that Amelia is acting off. But looking closely at how she acts, she seems just the same as always. Why does she feel so off? Is this just me being paranoid about Comte’s shapeshifting? Where the hell is Murr—-

Dante arrives on scene, and he seems… off, too. At first I couldn’t quite place why, but unlike with Amelia, I think I’ve figured it out. In the past, Dante’s always been energized when giving Vanitas new information, excited to shake his buddy down for cash in exchange for the latest scoop. Thirty minutes ago he was loudly berating Vanitas for all the chaos he caused the other day. You’d think he’d at least tease Vanitas a bit for baking a cake for his sugar daddy. But now he just seems blank. He blandly comments on the baking, stares at Vanitas and Noé for a moment, and immediately cuts to the chase. Why?

And then my brain started adding it up.

Dante works for Vanitas, but he also works for Marquis Machina. There’s absolutely no way in hell he doesn’t know the Senate is looking for Chloé and Jean-Jacques. And now the two of them have shown up right under his nose.

What’s a dhampir to do?

Come to think of it, what did Dante do in those thirty minutes when he was gone?

Dante’s in an absolutely epic dilemma and I can’t wait to see where it goes. Based on the story he tells himself, the party line he’s been insisting on since the very start, his course of action should be very clear. Dhampirs only care about other dhams, so Dante should to do what’s best for the other dhams— tell Marquis Machina where Chloé is and profit.

Who cares if doing so betrays the trust of the first non-dhampir to ever truly treat Dante as an equal? Who cares if it directly causes harm to two vampires, who cares if it hurts the guy Dante cheered for during his battle with Astolfo, who cares if it hurts someone Dante won’t quite admit he sees as a friend? None of those people are dhams, so Dante doesn’t care… right?

This is where we’re gonna start to hit…

Speculative Territory

Chloé and Jean-Jacques are in Paris. This is. Feckin delightful. Did they come to Paris because Vanitas told them to? Or has something gone horribly awry? Why would Vanitas tell them to come to Paris? Does he have some plan for where to hide them? Is Chloé just taking a nap or is something w r o n g?

There are two main parties looking for Chloé and Jean-Jacques— the church, trying to erase the evidence of their past crimes, and the senate, trying to find the vampire who could reawaken Faustina.

But these parties are each made up of their own unique factions, each with a different motivation. Ruthven, who’s working with Gano, who’s working for the Vampire Eradication Faction within the church, who’s being investigated by fellow paladins Roland and Olivier. Antoine, who acts like the perfect senator, but actually seems to be working on behalf of the de Sades, whose younger sister just so happens to have overheard some hot gossip about her siblings needing to hunt down that d’Apchier vampire.

Thinking about it, every single character in Vanitas no Carte has some connection to the tinderbox that is the senate vs church situation.

This is why I ended VnC chapter 56 lying incoherently on the floor. Chloé and Jean-Jacques are a lit match and Mochijun has just tossed them into the mix. I don’t know how high the flames are gonna fly but I absolutely cannot wait to watch the fire burn.

the end (…for now)

Thanks for reading these somewhat coherent scattered thoughts on VnC 56! As per usual, everything in this post is just my interpretation of VnC and should be taken with a massive massive grain of salt! In case you couldn’t tell I am insanely hyped for where this upcoming plotline is going to go and can’t wait for the next chapter. Chapter 55.5 was the chapter that mochijun has been setting up for since the very start of the manga, and I think this upcoming arc is going to set us on a course towards the overarching church vs. senate storyline that’s been running in the shadows of the past 56 chapters. I am so goddamn excited to see it happen.

Thanks again for reading u r a god

vnc 55.5: some scattered thoughts

Heya fellow vnc simps, long time no see! I apologize for now empty this blog’s been in the past two months, but can’t… exactly… say it won’t continue in the future, as it probably will. however I do have tHoughts and eMOTIONS on vnc 55.5, so here’s some scattered thoughts on the incredibly beautiful im in agony oh god mochijun whychapter 55.5

as always, massive spoilers for VnC 55.5 ahead!

new year new vanitas

VnC 55.5 feels like the midpoint of VnC as a series. It might not actually be the middle, but it feels like a huge turning point for both Vanitas and Noé’s relationship and the narrative as a whole. VnC 55.5 neatly answers two of the biggest questions the story’s been following from the very start— 1) why does Noé kill Vanitas, and 2) why did Vanitas kill Luna. The two driving mysteries behind the Exposition Universalle arc and the story as a whole are given… if not exactly complete answers, definite outlines of answers.

It almost feels too abrupt.

I think a lot of this abruptness comes from Vanitas’s sudden change in attitude and demeanor. He’s taken a complete 180 from how he was acting just a few hours ago. Why did Vanitas change his outlook on sharing the secrets of what happened “that night” so quickly? Why didn’t Vanitas just tell all this to Mikhail and Noé last night? Did he think Mikhail wouldn’t have accepted that answer, or would’ve told Noé to invade Vanitas’s memories to check? Why was Vani so insistent on hiding this perfectly reasonable explanation for killing Luna in the first place?

Let’s try and think about some possible reasons for this sudden change in behavior.

Firstly, it seems like Vanitas has finally given up the security he got from insisting that his ‘revenge on Luna’ was born out of a hatred for them. He still calls his mission revenge upon the vampire of the blue moon, but it seems like it’s closer to revenge for Luna than revenge upon them. Vani seems to be slowly accepting the fact that he didn’t truly hate Luna, and is doing what he’s doing at least partially because he saw them as the mother he never had.

Secondly… something definitely changed in the VaniVerse after that conflict with Comte. I still can’t get that expression Vanitas had right before Comte left out of my mind. I’m pretty sure he realized something, or remembered something, or came to some sort of conclusion. I’ve no idea what that realization was but I feel like that little moment was important.

And thirdly, most crucially, Vanitas has given up on making Noé kill him.

The most devastating part of this chapter for me was the realization that Vanitas didn’t keep Noé around to protect himself from others. Vanitas kept Noé around to protect others from himself. After their initial fight, Vanitas determined that Noé would likely be strong and sturdy and morally good enough to kill him if necessary. So he recruited him. Ostensibly as a shield, but in truth as a failsafe.

Despite being incredibly strong, Vanitas never goes on missions involving cursebearers alone. The only time we see him intentionally go off by himself is when he’s facing the human Chasseurs. Even during the first chapter, Vanitas has Dante by his side. He seems largely disinterested the whole time and provides no considerable help to Vani during the fight. But Dante is there, watching, the whole time. And Dante has a gun.

With this we can read Vanitas’s behavior throughout the past 55.5 chapters of VnC in a whole new light. His constant cheerful responses to Noé’s animosity back during the Parisian Excursion arc were goofy funtimes back when I first read ‘em, but now I just see Vanitas pulling what we see him later do with Jeanne— acting like a complete asshole in order to push people away from him. Remember that bonus comic from a while back, where Vanitas asks Noé if he’s really that interested in kisses after their first encounter with Jeanne and Luca? I thought that was just more cute adorable funtimes with some extra fanservice on the side. But now… holy shit, Vanitas was actually flirting with Noé in an active attempt to make Noé dislike him.

Vanitas’s cheerful responses to Noé’s animosity aren’t him being goofy or arrogant, it’s him purposefully acting like the type of person he likes the least. He wants Noé to keep disliking him. Because Noé can’t get too close, or Noé might hesitate when the decisive moment inevitably arrives.

But Noé doesn’t do what Vanitas wants. He just pushes and pushes and gets closer and closer. And every time Noé starts to get too close, we see Vanitas shove him away. But Vanitas can’t keep this up forever, and when his latest and most violent attempt to make Noé despise him fails, Vanitas truly gives up on making Noé do what he wants. He gives up on making Noé kill him. And because of that, he’s now able to tell Noé the truth about the past and his intentions behind their partnership.

I’m absolutely intrigued by how Vanitas is gonna behave around Noé from now on. Because this feels like… this feels like the huge turning point their relationship has been building towards from the very start. This feels like the culmination of everything they’ve been through and everything they’ve been building towards. They are finally at least somewhat able to admit they love each other [platonically or romantically] without veiling it behind walls of dislike and animosity. And I seriously can’t wait to see how they adapt to this change in the status quo in whatever challenge they’ll be facing next.

oh noé

The tragedy of all this is, of course… even though Vanitas has given up on making Noé kill him, we as the readers know how the story’s going to end. Noé is going to fulfill Vanitas’s wish. He’s going to kill him. It isn’t a matter of if, just when and how.

The moment Vanitas started talking about his wish I knew it was coming. I knew he was gonna say it. I knew he was gonna have that same wish Louis had, the wish that’s haunted Noé since the day Louis died.

I knew it was coming and it still feckin hurt me.

Interestingly, Noé doesn’t react the way he did with Louis. He doesn’t immediately refuse. He just quietly starts to cry.

Noé’s definitely upset here, but I can’t help but feel like he’s also just a little bit relieved. He couldn’t save Louis, because by the time he reached that crucial moment when Louis could have told him anything it was already too late. But now Vanitas has told him, and now he knows, and now he can do something about it. He can sit next to Vanitas, lean on him so he can’t just run away, and talk to him properly.

And then, of all things, Vanitas apologizes to Noé, and tells him that even though this is what he wants Noé to do, he’s accepted that he can’t make it happen. They can talk to each other properly, and maybe Noé can reach out and save Vanitas.

Except he can’t.

Instead, he’s going to kill him.

mochijun why do you do this to us

mikhail

One of my main questions going into 55.5 was whether the Exposition Universalle arc was over or just getting started. This chapter really makes me lean towards the former. Mikhail gets what feels like a temporary farewell in this chapter, and it seems like we probably won’t see him again for a solid amount of time. If I had to make a guess, I think Comte and Mikhail’s story is gonna get set on the back burner a bit in favor of a few other arcs in the meantime (@/ gano and the vampire eradication faction, @/ the senate and its hunt for chloé and JJ, @/ the dhams, @/ loki, @/spi—-).

So Mikhail was all over the place this chapter, as he always is. I feel like the kids psyche is just so completely broken that at this point even he has a hard time determining when he’s actually displaying genuine emotion and when he’s acting in a certain way to get what he wants. At his core Mikhail has an incredibly simple motivation and value system (hates pain, likes kind people, wants to be happy with Luna and Vanitas forever), but his morality was completely twisted by his upbringing before he even hit the human experimentation lab, and then the complexities of the situation he’s ended up in with Luna and Vanitas have just made things even worse. (side note, I still don’t understand why Vanitas didn’t just tell Mikhail what happened to Luna on that night, and it makes me think he’s still hiding a considerable portion of the truth of what happened to Luna from the fam, if not outright lying.)

Mikhail seems genuinely horrified by the idea that Luna’s death might be his fault, and he seems genuinely upset when Vanitas tells him he’d prefer it if Noé were the one to kill him. But I also think Mikhail knows when to play up his childish emotional response and when to turn it off when Vanitas isn’t responding to it. And it just. Mikhail… just… holds head in hands… he’s so broken. I wish Misha could just feckin cry without wondering if someone will respond to his crying. Express his emotions and his childishness without also using them as an attempt to manipulate someone into doing what he wants them to do. But that’s what the world around him has shaped him into.

While we’re on the subject of Mikhail… Noé’s guilt over Misha’s injuries is palpable and I love to see it.

other neato stuff this chapter

In no particular order,

• we get solid confirmation that Luna made Mikhail their kin before turning Vanitas. Strangely, Vanitas seems much more competent with his Book than Mikhail is— were they turned at around the same time? Or did Luna refuse to teach Mikhail to use the book after turning him for fear that he might be rewritten?
• Mlle. Amelia actin kinda sus this chapter ngl
• I love how Dante has now been threatened by both Dominique and Jeanne
• speaking of Domi and Jeanne I’m delighted to hear that they’re talking and desperately hope to see their conversation in the next chapter
• Noé’s face goes really weirdly blank when Vanitas mentions Comte; gotta wonder why
• love how the smoke effect throughout the chapter looks similar to Luna’s hair

the end (for now)

As always, all the theories/ interpretations here are based on my current understanding of the manga and I am likely dead wrong about a lot of this. So! Please take everything here with a grain of salt. Thanks for reading these scattered thoughts on vnc 55.5! I can’t wait to see what mochijun has in store for us in vnc 56…

fun fact

same energy also what whuh why is noé using his left hand what does this mean is this a clue what

a somewhat coherent breakdown of VnC 55 (part 2)

I can and will spend the whole of Christmas Eve thinking about Vanitas no Carte.

prerequisite post warning: this post contains massive spoilers for vnc chapter 55 (and will probably not make much sense if you haven’t already read the chapter). also i will be referring to the teacher as both “the teacher” and “Comte” depending on my mood while writing a given sentence (ostensibly to honor the spirit of the character, in reality just because I’m too lazy to choose one and stick with it). With that, on with the metatheoryrambling!

Vanitas no Carte 55 is a wild ride and I absolutely love it. If you’re here and you haven’t already read it, here’s a link to part 1 of this theory analysis breakdown descent into madness. Some of the theories/ analysis I go into in this post will rely on theories and analysis from part 1, and may not make a lot of sense without it.

a somewhat coherent breakdown of VnC 55 (part 1): The Teacher

But! Just in case you don’t want to read multiple long posts in a row, here’s a very basic TLDR:

The Teacher (who is probably Murr) is currently named the Comte de Saint Germain, after a real life historical weirdo/ alchemist/ adventurer/ philosopher whose true name and identity remains a mystery. The Teacher has a Thing for names, refusing to use any name someone else gave him, in stark contrast to his narrative foil Luna, who seems to have accepted any name anyone else used for them. Comte is a Luna simp (aka a Lunatic, thank you to that one vnc confessions anon for making this the official name of the Luna fanclub).

With that, let’s jump straight into the rest of this chapter! I will try my hardest to make this post less incoherent and rambley than the previous one but……

….yeah, no promises.

Noé.

Noé got to relax for approximately ten seconds last chapter, when we see him finally drop his guard a little bit and start running to Dominique. Mochijun decided that those ten seconds were way too much relaxation, and followed the end of 54.5 up with a chapter that shows Noé’s brain absolutely breaking apart.

Noé’s first reaction to the Teacher’s appearance seems to be surprise and confusion. He’s taken aback, but unlike the rest of the cast, he isn’t frightened. We see his eyes, and they’re completely normal. When he asks Teacher why he’s there, he just looks… blankly curious.

But then Noé starts to piece together what’s going on. We see his eyes shift from their normal purple to red as he processes it in real time, realizing what this means. If the Teacher answers the questions Noé is asking in the affirmative, he’s the reason all of this happened. He’s the reason Mikhail kidnapped Dominique, he’s the reason Mikhail forced Noé and Vanitas into a fight, he’s the reason Vanitas almost died.

(as a side note, the things Noé remembers when he asks “was that you, Teacher?” are pretty much all centered around Vanitas. I would’ve expected him to remember Dominique falling from the Ferris wheel, but he doesn’t— instead he sees Mikhail, Vanitas’s fury over Mikhail’s attempt to revive Luna, Vanitas attacking Noé, and the two of them slumped on the ground after the fight. idk what this means but it’s definitely interesting to say the least)

The Teacher cheerfully replies that he’s “guilty as charged”. And Noé just freezes. Vanitas yells at the Teacher, the Teacher introduces himself with his current name, the Teacher threatens Vanitas… and I don’t think Noé really registers any of it. He doesn’t move a muscle until the Teacher starts to leave. He tries to dash after him, but the Teacher knocks him away with a world formula alteration (that looks suspiciously similar to Ruthven’s black flames, my brain says, winking. shut up brain, now is not the time, I reply). Noé, seeing a memory of his first meeting with the Teacher, blacks out.

Noé… in this chapter… Psychological turmoil would be putting it pretty lightly. The Teacher just told Noé, straight up, that he’s the reason this situation happened, and he does not regret it. It’s definitely possible Noé has some sort of distaste for or even fear of the Teacher buried in his subconscious, but it’s clear that in this moment he’s absolutely thrown for a loop. His mentor, someone he seems to admire, just told Noé that he’s the reason why the people most precious to Noé have been suffering and on the verge of death for the past several hours. It was all him.

Tldr, Noé.exe has stopped working.

Jeanne and Dominique (and the de Sades in general)

With our usual narrator Noé mentally out of the picture for most of this chapter, Jeanne reprises her role from 54.5, stepping in and taking over as our narrator. Jeanne is the least emotionally and mentally exhausted of our protagonists at the moment, as well as the main character with the least ties to the Shapeless One, so she’s a perfect narrator for the chapter officially introducing this eldritch horror to the audience.

Jeanne doesn’t play a particularly active role this chapter, but her narration is absolutely invaluable in adding to the complete and total horror that is Comte’s introduction. I actually kinda love Narrator Jeanne [and it’s lowkey making me headcanon that she miraculously survives everything that goes down over the course of the manga and is now working with Noé on the case study in the Real Present] and hope to see more of her in the future..!

Dominique also plays a background role throughout VnC 55, albeit without the narration we get to see from Jeanne. NGL, her main role throughout the chapter is providing contrast with Noé— Domi, unlike Noé, is very much freaked out by the Teacher’s sudden appearance. She isn’t quite as terrified as Jeanne or Vanitas, at least not at first, but she’s absolutely not as used to Comte randomly showing up out of nowhere as Noé is.

There’s these two panels of Domi I really really like this chapter— when Comte threatens Vanitas, telling him to make sure to use the right name next time, she starts to raise her sword in front of Vani, putting herself between Vanitas and the Teacher. Comte drops his current face for a moment, showing his true power, and in the next panel we see of Dominique she has this almost guilty, nervous expression on her face. She wants to protect her friends, but she’s scared too. Just like her father, Count de Sade, she knows she’s unable to defy the Teacher.

Dominique just got this massive boost of confidence. She was able to look herself in the eye, able to start to accept the guilt and self hatred she’s buried for so long, able to save Noé and Vanitas and stop Mikhail. And now the Teacher has come along and crushed that without even trying.

I’m kinda starting to see where the abuse in the de Sade family stems from, and it’s running from the top down.

Looking at Antoine’s demeanor and comparing it to the Teacher’s, it’s preeeetty clear that Comte and his grandson are very similar. They’re not biologically related, but given how similarly they behave you wouldn’t think it— they have the same cheerful smile, the same ability to manipulate those around them, the same blank- looking eyes. The only thing Antoine is missing is the intimidation factor, and I’d imagine that’s because he hasn’t taken his mask off yet.

If this is how the whole de Sade family operates, if this is the sort of thing Comte taught his son and grandson, is it any wonder why Dominique was so completely stifled by the family? It makes complete sense for her to be terrified of her father— just like Count de Sade cannot question the Teacher, it’s likely that the children of the family cannot question Count de Sade. Comte is solipsistic and seems to see others as beneath him, and we see that he’s passed those traits on to his grandchildren— Veronica and Antoine see Dominique as beneath them, and treat her as such.

Dominique, meanwhile, likely didn’t receive this sort of training from the Teacher or Count de Sade. The Teacher likely wanted her to maintain a positive impression of him (along with a naive worldview) so she would continue to bond with Louis, ultimately so he could use her during the conclusion of Louis’s experiment. And while this likely made her life with the rest of her family a living hell, it’s also made Dominique into the kindest and most genuinely good member of her family.

Turns out I had a lot more to say about Domi than I thought I did.

Jeanne and Dominique have a minimal presence in VnC 55, but the few moments they have speak absolute volumes and I love mochijun for it. I really hope to see more of these two in the aftermath of the evening. I think if I saw a scene where they reconcile and are gfs after the fight I’d cry. please mochijun please give us more Jeanne and Domi content I love these two so much

Vanitas

Oh boy.

Vanitas manages to gather his thoughts after Mikhail’s screaming sends him for a PTSD- induced loop, demanding to know where Comte has met him before.

Despite framing this as a question, the intensity Vanitas asks it with makes me think he’s not looking for an answer, but a confirmation of something he already suspects. I’m not sure what this suspicion could be— maybe he thinks he met Comte at some point in the past? During his Chasseur training? In Moreau’s lab? At some point before or after that? Has he realized Comte’s eyes are suspiciously similar to Murr’s?

Speaking of the past, the whole of chapter 55 reads as a parallel to Vanitas and Luna’s first introduction.

The events of the chapter all seem to follow a twisted version of chapter 48. Comte/ Luna arrives on scene, Mikhail demands they take him with them, Comte/Luna picks Mikhail up and speaks to Vanitas, Vanitas gets that look, Vanitas chases after Comte/Luna.

Beyond further establishing Luna and Comte as foils, what does this m e a n?

Frankly, I have no idea. Vanitas’s expression when Comte calls him “human heir to ‘blue’, the most beautiful creature in this world” is particularly confusing to me— he seems angry, but there’s this light in his eyes I can’t explain. If I didn’t know any better I think I’d even call it hope.

It kinda looks like Vanitas has understood something, like Comte’s response to his question has confirmed whatever suspicions Vani had before. Vanitas desperately tries to chase after Comte, mirroring his running towards Luna as a child, but Comte knocks him aside and it seems like the force is enough to knock the already exhausted Vanitas out.

I’m not quite sure what Vanitas realized at the end there, but I definitely feel like he realized something important. Hopefully we’ll get to find out in an upcoming chapter, which provides us with a nice segue into the next section….

predictions, questions, and other assorted thoughts

After an absolute ton of words and writing, I think we’ve finally worked through chapter 55 pretty well. I’m 100% sure there’s a lot of stuff I missed, but I think I’m starting to reach the limit of what my brain can absorb from this 17 page chapter in less than 12 hours. So!! What’s going to happen n e x t?

First and foremost…. I think we’re really really extremely due for a break. Mikhail is out of commission, the Teacher has left, and the chapter’s even titled “Après la pluie” (after the rain)— the gang’s confrontation at the fair is finally over.

The next chapter will probably either be a flashback or a breather chapter, possibly both. I’d really like to see Domi, Jeanne, and possibly the onlooking (and very terrified) dhams drag their boys back to the hotel and everyone start to get patched up. The ending of Chapter 55 seems to hint that we might be following Noé into a dream/ flashback sequence showing us another (likely much less idealized) version of his childhood with the Teacher— we see a few panels of the flashback we saw back in chapter 6, but this time Noé is looking up at the Teacher rather than down.

Another lil hint we get about the next chapter comes with VnC 55’s English title— “his wish (part 1)”. It’s unclear who this is talking about, but I’m pretty sure we’ll find out next chapter. The title kinda feels like it’s about the Teacher, could it indicate more Teacher content next chapter ///eyes emoji/?

Other predictions! I’m not quite sure how Mochijun is gonna gift us some canon levity after the darkness that was the previous 9 chapters of VnC, but I think she’s gonna pull it off somehow. I’m so incredibly ready to see casual interactions between the four main characters, and can’t wait to see how their dynamic is gonna shift after everything they’ve just been through together. I’m hoping to see some of them (looking at you Vanitas and Noé / Noé and Domi / Domi and Jeanne) sit down and actually talk about their feelings. But mainly I just hope they get to relax for more than ten seconds.

Chapter 55 has left me with an absolute ton of questions about the future of VnC, but the main one that’s stuck in my brain at the moment is… I’m not sure whether this is the end of the Exposition Universalle Arc or not.

This one rainy night at the fair has taken up 9 chapters. This is nowhere near the current longest arc of the manga, Return of the Beast (sitting at 19 or 21, depending on how you count 22 and 43), but is already longer than some of the previous arcs we’ve had— Hunters of the Dark was a mere 6 to 8 chapters (again, this depends on how you count intermediaries like 12 and 19), and the Parisian Excursion and Bal Masqué arcs combined only make up 11 to 13 chapters. It feels like we’re nowhere near the end of the Exposition arc— Mikhail is still out there, the Teacher just revealed his place as a major player on the board, we’ve only gotten a lot more questions and no answers.

But at the same time, I can’t help but kinda feel like the Exposition Universalle arc is over. Comte’s parting words to the kids— “Inevitably, there will come a time when you must wake and face reality. When it comes, let’s meet again, mes chatons. And you as well… human heir to ‘Blue’…”— make it sound like he’s planning on not seeing them again for a considerable amount of time. Notably and very suspiciously, he excludes Jeanne from his invitation.

Even though the core story feels far from over, I feel like we may be reaching the end of the Exposition Universalle arc. The overarching story about Comte and Luna will absolutely continue, but I kinda feel like we’re going to get some sort of intermediary arc (or possibly even multiple arcs) where we return to the rest of the story for a little while before launching into what I will temporarily dub Exposition Universalle Act 2.

Of course, I could absolutely be wrong about this, and the Exposition Universalle/ Mikhail/ Comte Arc could just be getting started. Whatever the case may be, I’m pretty sure we’ll get some indication of where the plot will go from here in the next few chapters.

I think we’ve finally, finally reached

the end (for now)

I love vnc chapter 55.

Thank you so much for reading this analysis/ meta/ breakdown/ theory thing! As always, this is 100% just my interpretation of the manga so far and I am probably very very wrong about all of this…. so please take everything here with a heart-unhealthy dose of salt. I will be back for more vnc content tomorrow, but since this is [probably] the last big meta thing I’ll post in 2021, thanks so much for reading my various slow descents into insanity this year. I can’t wait to see what Mochijun has in store for us in 2022.

a somewhat coherent breakdown of VnC 55 (part 1): The Teacher

VnC 55 is a short chapter.

But holy shit, so much happens in it. We get so much information and the art is so pretty and I’m very very scared and I Need To Know More and when is January again.

So much stuff happens in this chapter that while I was writing this breakdown I realized I was going to have to split it into two parts just for my own sanity (and also for readability reasons). Part 1 will primarily focus on the Teacher, and then we’ll get into the other characters, along with a few predictions for upcoming chapters, in Part 2.

Before we start, three warnings! : 1) this post contains many spoilers for vnc chapter 55; 2) i will refer to the teacher as “teacher” and “comte” interchangeably during this post; annnnd 3) this post is very long. even for me. i… the teacher is my new Ruthven and the fact that his story intertwines with Luna’s makes my already meager ability to control my rambling even worse.

With that, let’s jump into the wild world of…

Mur— I mean, The Teacher

Let’s start by breaking down our first Teacher Fun Fact: his face reveal. The Teacher’s left eye is copper sulphate blue, the same color as Vanitas’s. His right eye is some unspecified other color but (judging from the fact that the way his eyes are colored matches up pretty much perfectly with Human! Murr’s eyes in the volume 8 cat cafe omake) is very very likely to be magenta/ purple.

This isn’t quiiiiite confirmation yet, but the matching eye colors plus the Teacher’s line about meeting Vanitas in a different form makes it incredibly likely that the Teacher is indeed Murr. And this. Uh. I. /stares at various panels of Murr eating cat food, playing with cat toys, cuddling up to Amelia, and having a crush on a cat./ I will once again generously refer to him as a method actor.

Of course, there’s always a chance that this could be a red herring and Murr is a separate entity from the Teacher in some way, but there’s a lot of evidence pointing to them being one and the same.

The Teacher and Names

The next massive piece of information we get on the Teacher is the name he’s currently going by— the Comte de Saint Germain. After some very brief googling, it turns out the Comte de Saint Germain was a philosopher and adventurer who lived during the 18th century. And this guy was an oddball. Nobody truly knows who he was or where he came from (although there are various theories going around). The Comte constantly lied about his true identity, switching names and personas at the drop of a hat. He made absolutely insane claims about himself, one of which was that he was multiple centuries old; and had strong ties to alchemy, stating he could melt diamonds and create gemstones. Despite his constant lying, people frequently found themselves drawn to the Comte, and thought he was fascinating rather than just a run of the mill charlatan (pun somewhat intended).

And that? That name sounds kinda perfect for the Teacher. Nobody knows where he came from, he changes his name and form at the drop of the hat, he’s centuries old, and he has strong ties to alchemy.

It follows to ask, though— in the universe of VnC, did the Teacher meet the Comte, find him interesting, and take on his name after he died? Or was he actually running around as the Comte throughout the 1700s, just a version of him reimagined as a vampire (similar to the characters we meet in the Gévaudan arc)? If the latter is the case, he’s likely been using this name for over a century by 1889, when VnC is set— does he cycle through a specific set of names/ identities?

Another odd thing to note is that so far, all of the names Teacher has used haven’t really been…. names. “Grandfather” and “Teacher” aren’t really names, they’re more like titles, and “Comte” just means “count”.

And wait. That’s weird too. Didn’t the Teacher already turn down the title of “count” and give it to his kid, Count de Sade? Why would he toss his own title away only to name himself “count” again later?

I think this is an indication of yet another detail on Teacher we see displayed throughout this chapter— he has a Thing with names. I don’t quite know what to call it— a preoccupation? An obsession? Either way, there is absolutely something going on with the Teacher and names.

Chapter 55 shows us that Ruthven’s line way back in Chapter 19– “if anyone calls him by the wrong name, he beats them within an inch of their life on the spot…”— was absolutely not an exaggeration. The Teacher’s grin turns from cheery to absolutely horrifying when Vanitas refers to him as “Shapeless One”, and he threateningly tells Vanitas to not get it wrong the next time.

The Teacher, despite insisting Vanitas call him by the right name, seems to completely refuse to use Vanitas’s name— as a matter of fact, throughout this whole chapter, he never actually refers to another character by their own name. He calls Noé and Dominique “mes chatons”, refers to Jeanne as “hellfire witch”, and calls Vanitas “kin of the blue moon” and “heir to ‘blue’” [more on that second one later].

This insistence on not using anyone else’s name starts to paint a lot of the Teacher’s previous actions in a very different light. In chapter 14, Ruthven says that the Teacher “hated even saying [his] name”, to the point of crossing Ruthven’s name out of every book in his castle. Ruthven seems to take this as a sign of the Teacher hating him, but what if this is just normal behavior for our dear buddy Comte? We do see the Teacher occasionally call Noé “Noé”, but whenever he refers to someone by their actual name he seems to almost always speak in a possessive sense— “my dear Louis”, “my darling grandchildren”. His cute pet name for Domi and Noé is similarly possessive— “meschatons”,my kittens. The Teacher seems to have an intense preoccupation with naming others— and not allowing others to name him.

This is (I think) why the Teacher refused to accept a title and then contrarily chose to include that same exact title as part of his current name. If the Teacher had accepted a title, that would mean someone else was allowed to “name” him— and to the Teacher, that’s completely unacceptable. But if the Teacher is the one who chooses that title, he’s the one naming himself, and that’s ok.

Weirdly, the Teacher only applies this rule to himself and doesn’t extend the same courtesy to anybody else— he’s furious when anyone refers to him by a name someone else gave him, “shapeless one”, but proceeds to almost exclusively refer to others by names he (or someone else) made up for them. “Hellfire Witch”, “Kin of the Blue Moon”, and “Shapeless One” are all quite similar, as they’re all sort of colloquial street names for Jeanne, Vanitas, and the Teacher, but for some reason the Teacher has massive objections to one and is totally fine with using the other two.

Why might this be?

My first thought is that it could be some kind of power/ respect thing. The Teacher sees calling someone their proper name as a sign of respect, and since he seems to solipsistically see himself as above others, he refuses to allow other characters to disrespect him while constantly disrespecting them. But that doesn’t seem quite right to me. The Teacher refers to Noé by his name during the chapter 9 flashback— why would he call Noé “Noé” and then call Luna (whom he seems to like a lot) “Blue”?

Maybe it’s something to do with the Teacher seeing others as possessions/ not quite the same as him? Maybe he sees others as inherently below him, as sentient items he can control? But that feels a bit off too… hmm….

Unfortunately, I can’t really think of another explanation for the Teacher’s preoccupation with names at the moment. I’m sure I’ll have more theories in the future, but for now I think I’m gonna have to leave it as a very weird character quirk we’ll likely learn more about in the future.

With that…. /cracks knuckles/… let’s get into that whole “Blue” thing.

The Teacher and Luna

First and foremost! Comte here might be a very bad horrifying manipulative murderer who psychologically tortures all of our beloved protagonists on the daily, but his take here is based as fuck. Luna is 100% the most beautiful being in this world and I love them and if the Teacher manages to actually bring them back from the dead I will be very very happy (even though they will probably Not Be) and Luna is super pretty and I could talk about how pretty they are for multiple days—

So. There’s definitely something going on with Luna and the Teacher.

Ever since the very first chapter of VnC, the Teacher has shown a strong interest in the Blue Moon. He grins widely when a young Noé tells him that he thinks the blue moon is beautiful, even reaching over to pat his shoulder in a way that seems almost proud. He laughs delightedly when he sees Noé cheerfully tell Domi she shouldn’t be scared of the blue moon. All of the Teacher’s experiments seem to revolve around either Luna or Faustina (who, according to Noé, looks very similar to Luna. ngl I don’t see it but if Noé says so it’s probably relevant).

And, oddly enough, Luna, Faustina, and Comte all have a preoccupation with names.

Let’s put Faustina/Naenia and her interest in hunting for true names aside for now, and just focus on Luna and Comte.

For a while now, I’ve been kinda lowkey wondering if these two character act as foils for each other. They’re both parental figures to our dual protagonists and they’re both exceptionally powerful to the point of being legends in and of themselves. Luna is initially seen as dangerous and cruel, but seems to have been a truly kind and cheerful person. The Teacher, meanwhile, seems to act kind and cheerful but is actually incredibly dangerous and cruel beneath that exterior.

This change in readers’ perception of the Teacher and Luna follows a similar timeframe— in chapter 1 we’re introduced to the Teacher as benevolent and Vanitas of the Blue Moon as evil, we slowly learn more about both parties and how their true natures don’t line up with these initial impressions, and then during the exposition universalle arc we finally get to see both of them as they truly are/ once were for the first time.

The Names Thing just further solidifies Comte and Luna as foils for me.

They both seem to have started out nameless/ without a name they were satisfied with. Comte frequently refuses to refer to others by the names they prefer; while Luna immediately calls people by whatever they want to be called, referring to Mikhail as “Misha” when he tells them the nickname. Comte insists on not accepting any name someone else gives him, to the point of turning down a title only to give himself that title years later as part of one of his names. Luna, meanwhile, seems to accept any name they’re given— “Vanitas”, “Vampire of the Blue Moon”, “Father”. The name Luna ultimately finds satisfying and chooses to keep is a name someone else accidentally gave them.

This now brings us back to that same question from before. Why do these specific characters have such an interest in names? Why are their approaches to names so completely different? Is it something to do with respect? With how one sees themselves in relation to others? With the very first line of the manga, where the Teacher tells Noé that his “true name” is his very being?

If I was gonna pull a wild guess out of a hat, my current guess would be that Luna and the Teacher don’t actually have true names. Maybe Comte is indeed exactly what he’s called by other vampires— a shapeless being, without a true name or known nature. Maybe this is why the two of them are so closely tied to the concept of names— they’re both searching for a metaphorical formula that shapes who they are. Maybe this is why Comte is so upset by the name “shapeless one”, maybe this is why Luna tries on any name others give them.

But that’s just a theory, a manga theory!! Let’s drag my levitating theorist self back on to solid ground and talk a lil more about the Teacher and Luna and what’s going on between them. (*winks in shipper*)

SO. We’ve established that Comte has some sort of connection with Luna. It’s very possible he gave his current form one blue eye just because he liked the color, but considering he also gave Murr this type of heterochromia, I can’t help but feel like it goes deeper than that. I think there’s a very real possibility that Luna and the Teacher have met before, and may have even worked together at some point.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the Teacher’s obsession with Luna feels like it goes a liiiiittle bit beyond the scope of “oh I saw this really pretty vampire from afar one day so I decided to spend the rest of my life studying them and working to bring them back from the dead”. Assuming his line in Chapter 55 is about Luna and not just him… liking the color blue… or talking about some other entity, it sounds like he probably spent a nonzero amount of time with Luna at some point in the past.

For a little while now I’ve had a running theory that the Teacher was the one who gave Moreau the Books of Vanitas, along with Luna’s blood. Comte and Luna working together in the past could explain why he managed to acquire those items. In a chapter 51 flashback, Luna states that they once tried to find out what they truly were, but now deeply regret it. Could they potentially be referring to a time when they worked together with Comte?

With that, I think we can start piecing some puzzle pieces together about Luna and Comte and their past relationship. They likely worked together at some point, but Luna came to regret doing so. Luna never seems to have mentioned Comte to their adoptive kids, but the Teacher often told Noé the story of Vanitas of the Blue Moon and praised him when he said the blue moon was pretty. Luna died, and now the Teacher is trying to revive them.

Suffice to say, Comte seems absolutely infatuated with Luna.

The question is… does he actually feel any love or attachment to them? Or does he just want to possess them?

This is where we once again return to that delightful running theme throughout this post— names. Comte refers to Luna as “Blue”, probably a nickname stemming from “Vanitas of the Blue Moon”. But Comte’s probably been stalking Luna for a long while, watching them from afar while they traveled with the boys— does he really not know about their new chosen name? Not to mention, even if he doesn’t know about the name “Luna” for some reason, why does he have to be contrary and call them “Blue” rather than the usual “Vanitas”?

I doubt Luna minded this name, just like they didn’t mind “Vanitas” or “Father”, but it starts to raise red flags in my brain when it comes out of the mouth of the guy who constantly refuses to call others by their actual names and frequently refers to people in a possessive sense. It could be an affectionate nickname, but it could also be yet another sort of power/ respect/ possession thing. He also doesn’t refer to Luna as a person or a being or a vampire, he calls them the most beautiful “creature” in the world. It’s sus. It’s all very sus.

In addition to this! Even if Comte truly does feel something resembling “love” for Luna, there’s another interesting little knot to this tangled sort of love. Comte’s actions towards Luna feel remarkably and amusingly similar to the way his protégée acts around Luna’s adoptive kid.

(We’ve seen something else like this before, haven’t we? A protégée taking on a lot of the qualities of the vampire that raised them?)

Throughout VnC, Noé and Vanitas both have a bad habit of sacrificing themselves to save each other without putting any thought into how this will affect the other party. In Vanitas’s case, this is largely driven by his own self hatred and belief that he is inferior to or worth less than others.

And in Noé’s case, this is primarily driven by selfishness.

Noé is a selfish character. He loves Vanitas (whether this is platonic or romantic is largely irrelevant to this post so take it either way), and he doesn’t want Vanitas to get hurt. Seeing Vanitas upset makes Noé angry. And since Noé is selfish, if he has to do something to protect Vanitas that goes against what Vanitas wants (@/ slashing Mikhail in the previous chapter), he will do it. “I will never set you free” is, in context, a very moving statement, but looking at the line itself on its lonesome it’s practically scary.

I think, just like Jean-Jacques’s jealousy was learned from Chloé, Noé’s selfishness is something he learned from Comte.

With this I think we can start to parse out a little bit of what’s going on with Comte and Luna. I highly doubt Luna wants to be brought back from the dead— especially not if that process involves Comte manipulating and torturing a group of innocent randos and Luna’s adoptive kids. But Comte wants to bring Luna back anyways, and he’ll do whatever he needs to do to make it happen— because Comte, like Noé, is selfish.

a few more assorted notes

This is the section for fun observations that don’t really fit anywhere else in this meta!

Firstly, the Teacher seems to have to reveal his true “face” in order to manipulate the world formula. The image of his eyes changing color as he slips out of his ordinary form and into his monstrous one is horrifying and I love it, as is his insane amount of power— he seems to literally tear open a portal in the world and walk through it, something on a completely different scale from what we’ve seen so far in the manga.

Interestingly, though, the tendrils surrounding Teacher’s eldritch horror form look completely different from the ones we saw back in chapter 9. They’re actually eerily similar to Ruthven’s black flames, which is… very concerning, but I’m convincing myself it’s just something he taught himself how to do and not an indication of anything else nope nope nope noep—

I do indeed have more things to say about the Teacher, but!!! Those thoughts will be left for part two of this post. With that I think we’ve finally reached…

not the end! (but in conclusion,)

It’s Christmas Eve. I just spent the past three hours losing my mind over a manga character.

I have no regrets.

If you made it this far, holy shit thank you so much for reading this post. Please take everything here with a massive grain of salt— this is all just my interpretation of the manga so far and will likely be proven completely wrong as we learn more about Comte and Luna in the future. If you’d like, please tune in for Part 2, coming soon to a vnc tag near you (hopefully I can get it written today but uhh…. hmm…. various preexisting conditions may get in the way of that), which will include my thoughts on Vanitas, Noé, and basically any part of the chapter I didn’t go over in this post (including, rather upsettingly, yet more Teacher).

Thanks again for reading, and happy holidays!

update: here’s a link to part 2..!

a somewhat coherent breakdown of VnC 55 (part 2)

No. 70 is (maybe possibly) Louisette

Back when chapter 48 was first released, I remember a theory going around the vnc community about No.70 being Astolfo’s younger sister. And, just like the whole ‘Dante is Ruthven’s son’ thing, I remember sorta just going “nahhh No.70 is prolly just another chasseur we haven’t met yet”. But the other day I was rereading the chapter, and something just clicked for me. Something started to make sense about it.

Let’s start from the beginning.

[but also before we do that, one PSA: throughout this analysis I will be referring to Astolfo’s younger sister as Louisette! This is a fanon name I’m using partially for convenience and partially because I’ve referred to her as Louisette so often I frequently convince myself it’s canon. With that, on with the theory!]

Way back during the Gévaudan Arc, I wrote a short analysis of Roland and Astolfo’s relationship (I would link it but I genuinely cannot find my own posts). I had a lot of faith in it at the time, but then chapter 46.5 came out and my meta got both its kneecaps shattered. I had thought that Astolfo hated Roland for arriving on scene too late to save Louisette, and believed this Roland- hatred was a coping mechanism for Astolfo’s own grief and intense guilt. But in Chapter 46.5, it turns out Astolfo once wholeheartedly admired Roland and saw him as a god. Huh?

Suffice to say, I was very confused when 46.5 came out. How could Astolfo go from such passionate admiration for Roland to completely despising the man? How could Astolfo go from the happy looking child we see in Georges’ memories to the crazed, guilt- ridden killer of the Gévaudan Arc? Well…

What if Louisette didn’t die?

When thinking about the vampire incident, Astolfo says “My sister had stopped crying. Little by little, I felt the warmth leaving her hand.” This line is definitely written to make it sound like Astolfo’s holding the hand of a corpse. But what if Roland had actually arrived just in time? What if the magical technology of the Chasseurs saved Louisette from the brink of death? They have drugs that make them powerful enough to compete with vampires and world formula Geiger counters, maybe they also have things like adrenaline and blood transfusions and CPR.

Louisette living through the near death experience would perfectly explain Astolfo’s initial admiration of Roland. During that same flashback from before, kid Astolfo tells Roland that he doesn’t care what happens to him— he just wants Roland to save his sister. If Roland had managed to do so? He would’ve instantly skyrocketed past god as a deity in the kid’s mind. Astolfo wouldn’t just have respected Roland, he would’ve worshipped him. Louisette living would perfectly explain his huge smile and complete worship of Roland so soon after the vampire incident.

And Louisette living would also explain Astolfo’s downward spiral after this brief period of happiness.

What if, after a few months or even years of relative peace with the Chasseurs, something strange happened? What if, one day, Louisette disappeared?

I’ve always found this one panel from Chapter 47 a bit strange. During a flashback, Roland warns a young Mikhail about the “scary maze” under the chasseur compound. He’s smiling, but there’s something strained, maybe even upset, behind it.

Maybe Louisette disappeared in this same area— the area Moreau coincidentally describes as the “perfect spot”— and the Chasseurs assumed she’d wandered into the maze and been unable to find her way out. This could explain Roland’s slightly strange expression; along with why Roland ended up in this section of the compound in the first place and how Olivier was able to find Roland despite his typical inability to figure out where the guy’s gone.

This disappearance might explain Astolfo’s complete 180 when it comes to Roland. Maybe the things Astolfo constantly criticizes Roland for (he’s childish, he’s a a fool, he doesn’t have a work ethic) somehow led to Louisette disappearing on Roland’s watch. Astolfo’s god failed to protect his sister— his god failed him.

So, at this point in our strange game of connect the dots, Louisette’s been nabbed by Moreau. What makes me think she’s No.70 specifically?

Back during the flashback in the Gévaudan arc, Astolfo remembers that his sister had stopped crying. In context, this serves as an implication that she’s dying, too weak to even cry. But what if Louisette stopped crying because she’d literally lost the ability to speak? What if, like No.70, she was mute?

While speaking to Mikhail during the chapter 48 flashback, a young Vanitas wonders if something so horrible had happened to No.70 in the past that they’d lost the ability to speak (implying No.70 has been mute the whole time they’ve been at the lab). The ordeal that the Granatum family went through sounds like exactly the type of thing that might provoke this kind of reaction. Vanitas notably avoids using pronouns when referring to No.70, purposefully not telling the audience their gender. We even see this similar sort of black mist screen tone during Astolfo’s flashback and Vanitas’s musings on No.70 (although I will admit that last one is barely even evidence ;;._.).

So! I think it’s possible Louisette survived her ordeal at the hands of the vampires, was kidnapped by Moreau while in the Chasseur compound, and became the mute No.70 we see in Mikhail’s memories.

I’m not really sure where Louisette’s story might have gone from there. Had the Chasseurs found her wandering the lab, they likely would’ve killed her to cover up Moreau’s experiments. This could be a fascinating way to potentially change Astolfo’s feelings towards the faction and/ or turn Roland completely against the Chasseurs in the future.

I also think Monsieur Spider Louisette would be cool as hell but this just seems insanely unlikely and since there are already like fifteen different characters I think Monsieur Spider could be im gonna leave that theory on the floor where it belongs

In Conclusion,

Thank you so much for reading this rather messy vnc analysis!!

This whole post is basically “I’ve connected the two dots/ you haven’t connected shit” taken to its breaking point, and despite liking this theory I’m still pretty sure I’m wrong here. Every single point I’ve brought up in this post has a very logical (and much more Occam’s Razor- friendly) alternate explanation— Astolfo could just be grinning in Georges’ memories because he’s training to kill vampires with the dude who killed the vampire responsible for his family’s death, Astolfo could despise Roland because he learned Roland didn’t believe all vampires should be eradicated, Roland could be haunting Moreau’s “perfect spot” because he remembers other unnamed orphans disappearing from the area.

(not to mention about a month after I initially wrote this theory I came up with a new theory on No.70’s identity that I like way better; link at the bottom of this post)

So!! As always, please take everything here with a massive grain of salt. Hope you enjoyed and see you in the next one!

Fun Fact

Throughout VnC, Astolfo has acted as a foil to Vanitas. Just like Noé says in chapter 45, they could’ve easily been in reverse positions in life if not for the tiny butterfly-effect style changes that made Moreau choose Vanitas and not Astolfo to be his 69th test subject.

As children, Vanitas and Astolfo both watched at least one of their parents get killed by vampires, leading to an intense hatred towards the whole species. They were both trainee chasseurs, they were both highly protective older brothers, and they were both genuinely good people who fell prey to a truly horrifying situation due in large part to their own kindness and desire to help and protect others. They both trust Roland a surprising amount despite hating him, carry around a lot of guilt and hatred, and believe that they’re directly responsible for their parents’ deaths.

And, well. If Louisette survived the vampire incident, then disappeared in the catacombs… this would just add yet another branch to the comparison tree— Astolfo and Vanitas both fully believed that their younger sibling was dead, when in fact said siblings were kept alive by some dubious third party.

Fun Fact #2

i ramble on a lot, but my only true criteria for whether a character is no.70 or not is them having the letters L O U I and S in their name. in my next post i will talk about how Jeanne’s adoptive mom louise is actually no.70–

no. 70 is louis

no. 70 is louis

“I haven’t written any crack theories in a while,” I said to myself.

This is what my brain responded with.

And slowly, somehow, this idea turned from crack into something I’m legitimately starting to think is the case.

The Teacher.

This theory hinges on one thing and one thing alone— the Teacher. We know he’s told Mikhail he can bring the dead back to life, and he seems to have saved Mikhail from the verge of death in the past (it’s even possible that Mikhail actually did die, and the Teacher brought him back). If the Teacher can actually bring Luna back after they turned to dust, it’s very very likely that he might have been able to do the same with Louis.

It follows to wonder… is this something that the Teacher would actually do?

For a while now I’ve considered the Teacher’s… er… disposal of Louis to be the natural conclusion of a finished experiment, but I’m starting to realize that Louis’s continued existence actually does hold some value to the Teacher. His experiment on Louis is complete, but whatever he’s got planned for Noé (and potentially Domi as well) is absolutely not over, and Louis would be a very high value piece to have on the board when it comes to those two. If the Teacher actually can bring people back from the dead, wouldn’t it be wasteful of him to just toss Louis’s ashes away rather than attempting to bring him back?

With that, we have the very first piece of this messy, insane puzzle. The chances that the Teacher just disposed of Louis’s corpse when he could potentially use it to manipulate or observe Noé and Dominique in the future seem very very slim.

So now let’s try to fit some more puzzle pieces together.

The Timeline

We’ve established that the chances of Louis not being… entirely… dead are, while maybe not high, definitely existent. But what’s all this talk about him being No.70?

First and foremost! If Louis isn’t dead, but the Teacher wants Domi and Noé to fully believe he’s dead, he’s gonna need somewhere far away from the two of them to store the kid until he can use him again. If Ruthven has access to those magic Jeanne clone pods the Teacher must too, right? Couldn’t he just shut Louis into one of those for a little while? But that kinda doesn’t feel like the Teacher’s style— why should he stash Louis in a pod when he could be performing yet another experiment?

We know that the Teacher has a great interest in the Blue Moon clan. He sends an Archiviste out to find Vanitas in Paris, he brings Mikhail back from the dead, the cat he potentially ran experiments on has one copper sulfate blue colored eye [link to a discussion on that at the bottom of this post]… it feels like almost all of his experiments revolve around either Naenia or Luna. So it follows to assume… if a human scientist somehow got access to a vial of Luna’s blood and multiple Books of the Blue Moon, the Teacher would be the first to notice, and he’d be absolutely fascinated by what was going on there.

Come to think of it, it might actually be possible that the Teacher was the reason why Moreau acquired those objects in the first place. Out of all the characters we know of in the series so far, the only one who I could logically see somehow acquiring the Books and Luna’s blood (short of Luna themself, and they’d absolutely never give those things to Moreau) is the Teacher. The Teacher sounds genuinely excited about the mere existence of a Book of the Blue Moon back in his letter to Noé in chapter 1, but I think this could absolutely just be him faking excitement as a way of maintaining his persona and staying in line with who he wants Noé to see him as.

With that, let’s start building a timeline here.

The Teacher has a few Books of the Blue Moon, and some of Luna’s blood, and he’s messed with both items a bit, but his experiments keep coming up short. He can’t open the Books, as he isn’t a Kin of the Blue Moon. He also has a newly reincarnated Louis lying around somewhere, hidden from Domi and Noé. And now he hears about this human scientist who’s running strange experiments on humans, trying to turn them into vampires.

Isn’t that just perfectly serendipitous?

Maybe the Teacher decides to pay Doctor Moreau a visit. He flatters Moreau, tells him he’ll give him the Books of Vanitas and Luna’s blood for his experiments. He’ll even throw in a vampire kid for free— all Moreau has to do is not kill the kid, and he can do whatever he wants with the rest.

No.70

So there’s a lot of parts of this theory that make sense. The Teacher reviving Louis? Makes sense. The Teacher giving Moreau Luna’s books and blood? Absolutely horrifying, disturbing, I hate it so, so much… but also makes sense. The only thing that doesn’t quite fit is the idea that No.70 is Louis. Wouldn’t it make so much more sense if No.70 was Astolfo’s younger sister Louisette, or some other random kid?

Let’s start with what we know about No.70. They arrived at the lab after Vanitas, but before Mikhail. Their gender isn’t specified, and Vanitas never says if they’re a human or a vampire. Vanitas speculates that something horrible happened to them in the past. We never see their neck or head. Oh, and they can’t speak.

This definitely all seems like stuff that could point to No.70 being Louisette. However, all of this evidence could also indicate that No.70 is Louis.

We know that while the Teacher seems to be able to bring people back from the dead, he can’t fix what’s already broken about them. He can’t repair Mikhail’s missing arm. And if, hypothetically, someone’s vocal chords were damaged when their head got cut off… maybe the Teacher couldn’t fix them.

No.70 also seems to be given some level of special treatment at the lab. Unlike Vanitas and Mikhail, they’re able to wander around freely at night. They’re clearly still being torturously experimented on, but they seem to have a modicum of freedom that the other test subjects don’t get.

It would also make a lot of sense for the Teacher to want to place Louis at the lab as an observer. One of my theories on Murr (again, linked at the bottom of this theory) is that the Teacher is somehow able to see what Murr sees out of one of Murr’s eyes, using the cat as a sort of living alchemical bug he can observe Noé through.

If the Teacher could do that to Murr, the Teacher could probably do that to Louis as well. If the Teacher was going to give Moreau the Books of Vanitas and Luna’s blood, he’d want to be able to observe what was going on there at all times, right? Sure, he could probably shapeshift into a mouse or a fly and sneak into the lab without any trouble, but that would take up a lot of time and effort. It would be so much easier to just have an observer wandering the lab at all times, someone he could check in on at a moment’s notice.

The Teacher needs somewhere to put the newly revived Louis. The Teacher wants to give Moreau some little presents for a horrifying and deeply disturbing experiment. The Teacher wants to observe this experiment.

The solution is clear.

Whew! So! I think we’ve established some things! I think I’ve made an actually shockingly half decent case for Louis being No.70! It follows to wonder… what happened to him after the destruction of the lab? The Teacher wouldn’t have just brought Louis back to the castle, where he could run into Noé or Domi at any time. The Teacher wouldn’t have just left Louis to the Chasseurs, either, as they likely would’ve killed him for a) being a vampire and b) being proof of Moreau’s crimes. No, actually, I think something else happened.

We’ve established that Louis can’t speak. There’s a character in VnC who only seems to be able to speak when they’re using a voice box.

We’ve established that Louis is connected to Moreau. There’s a character in VnC who seems to frequently appear around Moreau.

We’ve seen Louis fight before. There’s a character in VnC who uses the same melee style slashing attacks.

Hell.They’re even introduced in the same chapter.

If I was going to make a guess, I think Louis becomes

Monsieur Spider.

I was expecting this section to be crack. Hell, I was expecting this whole theory to be crack.

But once you start seeing the parallels, you really can’t stop.

They clearly have similar fighting styles. Monsieur Spider seems to speaks with a voice box (all of his dialogue uses a blocky, mechanical lettering rather than normal text). There’s the purposeful parallels in framing and composition between the two (as seen in the panels above). When Noé hallucinates a man inviting him to Charlatan during the Gévaudan arc, the man (sitting in a very Louislike pose, and saying something quite in line with Louis’s philosophy as a child) has horns— just like Monsieur Spider.

Y’know who else is associated with horns in VnC? Dominique, who wears them during the Bal Masqué. Dominique, Louis’s twin sister.

Of course, there’s a problem with this theory. Monsieur Spider doesn’t seem to like Noé very much. As a matter of fact, he seems very interested in killing Noé. He’s angry when Noé gets in his way at the Bal Masqué and seems genuinely upset when Ruthven fails to murder Noé in the cafe. This doesn’t seem in character for Louis, does it?

But look a little closer, and you’ll start to see it.

Monsieur Spider refuses to call Noé by his name when he tells Ruthven about his interruption at the Bal Masqué, despite almost definitely knowing it. In fact, he flinches when Ruthven says Noé’s name. He seems almost unnecessarily emotional whenever Noé is thrown into the equation, especially when compared to the cold and blank way he discusses Moreau. He has to desperately hold himself back from interacting with Noé when he helps Moreau escape from the lab.

Whenever Monsieur Spider shows emotion, it’s always because of Noé.

Now that sounds very in line with the Louis we know.

I think it’s very likely that Louis, just like our other reincarnated boy wonder Mikhail, has some level of amnesia when it comes to the past (specifically when it comes to how he died). It’s possible that his memories were damaged by his head getting chopped off (along with the whole reincarnation thing), or maybe the Teacher messed with his memories on purpose. Either way, I don’t think Louis remembers any specifics about Noé and Dominique (and if he does, they’re probably buried very deep under layers of suffering and hatred). All he knows is that he feels something when he’s around Noé, and he desperately wants to get rid of that feeling.

Hence the whole killing Noé thing.

And with that, I think our timeline is complete! Louis died and was brought back by the Teacher, who took him to Moreau’s lab along with Luna’s blood and the Books of Vanitas. Louis then spent some time as Teacher’s observer in the lab as No.70, and escaped from the lab with Moreau after the Teacher’s experiment reached its conclusion and Vanitas and Mikhail were saved by Luna. Louis then likely stayed with Moreau, and eventually became Monsieur Spider.

The Storytelling Angle

Whoof. I feel like there’s some very stronk proof here. But if you need a lil more evidence to convince you that these three very different seeming characters are actually one and the same, this section is for you.

First and foremost…. Mochijun has actually done something somewhat similar to this before (albeit in a way more obvious fashion) in Pandora Hearts.

When Oz comes back from the Abyss in Book 1, he and the readers both believe that only a short amount of time has passed since he was thrown into the Abyss. Mochijun capitalizes on this by introducing the readers to Raven, a character with a striking resemblance to Oz’s childhood friend Gilbert, but who is established as a different character both age and personality wise to build up to the big reveal. A few chapters later we get the emotional reveal that Raven is indeed Gilbert, and ten years have gone by.

I can’t help but feel like something similar is happening with Noé and Louis in VnC, just in a very different way. One of the most obvious clues as to Raven being Gilbert in PH (besides his physical appearance) was his strangely intense attachment to Oz, despite seeming to have only met him a few days ago. We see something very similar going on with Monsieur Spider when it comes to Noé (just in a very negative sense of “intense attachment” rather than a positive one).

In addition to this, and focusing more on VnC as a story… I can’t help but feel like Louis being alive would throw an absolutely delightful wrecking ball into the story.

Even though a lot of insane batshit crazy stuff has gone down during the Exposition Universalle arc, I can’t help but feel like after it’s all over, our characters will genuinely come out of it as stronger people with stronger relationships with each other (and with themselves @/ Dominique).

Noé and Vanitas have withstood the ultimate test of their friendship, culminating in what’s basically their equivalent of a love confession (and Vanitas sobbing into Noé’s chest, and Noé finally bloodying his hands to protect Vanitas, and them both desperately trying to save each other’s lives but refusing to abandon each other, and—). Dominique and Vanitas, Dominique and Jeanne, Dominique and Noé, and Jeanne and Noé all have some great moments where they rely on each other, learn from each other, and save each other while facing off against Mikhail.

Dominique in particular has absolutely transformed throughout the arc, finally starting to deal with her repressed self hatred and her intense survivor’s guilt. Hell, I’m actually able to picture Dominique confessing her love to Noé with a smile on her face, telling him she knows he doesn’t feel that way about her, and accepting that this doesn’t mean she’s inferior to Jeanne (or Vanitas). It feels like like Domi is truly on the road to becoming the best version of herself and she’s absolutely stunning and beautiful and Jeanne’s in love with her and so am I.

But this is Mochijun we’re talking about. Mochijun, queen of suffering and angst.

Wouldn’t it just be perfectly in line with her writing style if, in this moment where it seems like Dominique has truly grown and become stronger, all of it came crashing down with the reveal that Louis isn’t actually dead?

Wouldn’t it be fantastically painful if, in this moment where Vanitas and Noé seem to be connecting more than ever, their bond growing stronger than ever… Louis came and threw a wrench in it?

The End (for now)

And with that I think it’s high time we wrap it all up!!

Before we get to the very end of this post I do want to mention— there’s actually a solid bit more I want to talk about when it comes to this theory, but this post is already way longer than I wanted it to be. So!! There may or may not be a part two coming in the future. I will try my absolute best to get part 2 out… uhh… in the next…. uhh… increment of time or so!!

As always, please take this theory with a massive massive grain of salt. There is a compelling case out there for Monsieur Spider being Johann. While I do not consider the anime canon to the manga, it’s extremely likely that the anime version of Monsieur Spider is indeed Johann (which bodes quite ill for this theory). I do still have a lot of faith in the evidence I’ve presented but the simple fact that Johann Spider is (90% likely to be) canon in the anime knocks the wind out of my sails a bit. This post has a Lot of speculation and it’s very very possible that I’m completely wrong on all accounts here!

Thank you so much for reading this theory/ meta/ analysis/ insane rambling thing!

Fun Fact

murr sus

(1) Murr and the Teacher can be in the same place at the same time

vampire eye rings: power and rewriting the world formula

The number of rings vnc’s vampires have in their eyes has confused me for a very long time. We know vampire eyes are the key to vampires’ abilities to manipulate the world formula, so it follows to assume that the rings have some sort of meaning, right? Right?

It seems like the normal number of rings is one, as a majority of the vampires we see in universe have eyes like this (including but not limited to Noé, Chloé, Jeanne, and (usually) Luca). But then there’s also vampires with no rings— the beastias, for example, and all of the de Sade siblings, and Amelia; and then conversely there are vampires with a lot of rings, like several members of the senate and Luna; and that isn’t even mentioning the vampires with black eyes like Nox and Manet and Jean-Jacques, and the colored sclera some vampires have—

Suffice to say we have a lot of raw information and very little tying it together. For a while, I had absolutely no clue what the eye rings meant or what they did.

But! While I was doing my usual average completely normal and non obsessive staring at Ruthven one day, I noticed something.

After Ruthven loses his right eye, the number of rings in his left eye changes.

Back when Ruthven meets Chloé, he’s almost always drawn with normal one ringed eyes (albeit with colored sclera). There are a feeeew panels where it kinda looks like he has more rings, but looking closely at them it’s pretty much impossible to tell if that’s due to his eyelashes, sclera, or actually him having more rings. However, in a vast majority of these flashback panels, it’s very clear he only has one ring in each eye. The first time we definitively see him having more rings than normal is right after he loses his right eye.

Similarly, current day Ruthven’s eye ring count tends to fluctuate a bit. He’s occasionally drawn with just one ring in his eye, but he’s usually shown with more, particularly during his appearances in more recent chapters.

So… what does this mean?

Let’s start off with something well on the beaten track. I think this change in Ruthven’s eye solidifies the idea that sclera color is something separate from ring count when it comes to vampire eyes. Loki and Lord Paldence both having black sclera implied this beforehand, but Ruthven’s rings changing while his sclera remain the same seems to further this eye-dea (I’m very sorry).

Stepping off the track and onto the rails now… let’s talk about why Ruthven’s eye rings changed. My first thought was that it occurred due to Ruthven’s left eye attempting to compensate for his missing right. Maybe the rings have something to do with vampires’ ability to see and alter world formulas, and Ruthven’s left eye is now working double time to try and make up for his missing right eye. Come to think of it, we never actually see Luna’s left eye, do we? Maybe that has something to do with why they have multiple rings in one eye as well?

But no, that doesn’t make any sense either. We see two other Senator dudes with multiple rings in their eyes, and neither of them is missing an eye. We also never see Baby Noé’s right eye developing multiple rings to compensate for his injured eye as a child.

…or do we.

(I don’t have the voice or the talent for YouTube essays so please just mentally hear that in a dramatic YouTube essay tone of voice)

When we see Noé before he comes to Altus, before he meets the Teacher, before his eye gets injured, he doesn’t have any eye rings.

This isn’t just a missed detail in a random tiny background illustration. It’s shown in both the anime and manga (both digital and published editions, yes, I had to check). Noé did not have eye rings when he was staying with his grandparents. The first time we see him with one ring in his eyes is when he meets the Teacher— aka, when his left eye is injured.

I think I’ve been thinking about this all wrong from the start.

What if having one ring isn’t actually the “normal” number of eye rings for vampires in VnC— what if having one ring is actually unusual, and just seems common due to the large number of extremely powerful vampires we see in VnC?

Let’s go back to those one-ringed characters I listed back at the start. Noé, Chloé, Jeanne, Luca. Thinking about it, all of them are exceptionally powerful vampires capable of large scale formula revision (we don’t really see Chloé do anything destructive on a Luca or Jeanne scale, but she’s able to use that magic piano and break Ruthven’s curse, implying she’d likely be able to if she tried).

If anything, Noé seems like the odd one out. The only formula revisions he can do seem stock standard (increased durability and speed, heightened senses and perception); and the one unique revision he can do is quite weak compared to the things we see Luca and Jeanne do, took a lot of training for him to master, and makes him sick when he does it to boot.

So with that very long wind up in mind, here’s my theory on vampire eye rings.

Vampires’ eye rings correspond to a vampire’s ability to see and manipulate the world formula (tldr, how powerful they are as a vampire). The average vampires (Amelia, Catherine, Mina, Noé) have no eye rings and minimal ability to change the world formula. Vampires with exceptional abilities (Chloé, Jeanne, Luca, Ruthven) have one ring. After that, the more rings, the more powerful a vampire is (e.g. queen Faustina).

Vampires who lose or injure one of their eyes, like Noé, Ruthven, and possibly Luna, often end up gaining rings in their uninjured eyes to compensate for the loss of the other.

There are also exceptions to this rule, like the Beastias and the De Sade family, who likely have very distinct types of eyes (whether inherited through blood, like the de Sades, or given to them somehow, like the Beastias) that overwrite the usual rings system.

Of course, there’s one pretty big problem with this theory. When Noé recovers from his injury, he ends up with one ring in both of his eyes, rather than just in one of them. I do have a potential explanation for this, but I will warn you that we’ve now reached the inevitable part of all of my theories where we go off the rails and into the world of wild speculation.

Here’s my theory— a small number of vampires are able to “strengthen” their eyes by temporarily putting out one of them. This is likely very difficult and dangerous to do (since we know from Veronica that powerful vampires can see through things like masks and eyepatches), but if a vampire manages to render one of their eyes temporarily unusable, both of their eyes will gain rings as their working eye attempts to compensate for their unusable one.

I don’t think this sort of thing actually changes a vampire’s inherent abilities that much (as, while Noé does seem to be stronger than the average vampire, he never does anything on the same scale as the other one ringed vampires we see in VnC), but could definitely be used as an intimidation factor over other vamps. And this absolutely sounds like the sort of thing the senators we see with a bajillion eye rings would try. Vampire society is built on superstition and politics and playing the game of thrones posturing… if a vampire like Lord Paldence thought he could get ahead by purposefully injuring one of his eyes, increasing the number of rings he has in both, I could absolutely see him doing it.

I think this theory could also lend a very amusing edge to the De Sades’ lack of eye rings. The De Sade family absolutely cares about status and reputation, but we do know they’re often viewed as capricious eccentrics by a lot of vampire high society. There’s something so damn neat about Antoine, with no eye rings, perceived as less powerful and clearly playing it up by acting humble and friendly, completely manipulating Lord Paldence despite his five hundred eye rings.

the end (for now)

And with that, we’ve finally arrived at the end of this theory!! Thank you so much for reading this rambling meta theory analysis thing. As always, please take everything here with a massive massive grain of salt— it’s very possible that vampire eye rings are like, feckin sharingan or something and Noé and Ruthven just gained more eye rings after experiencing something deeply scarring / traumatic or something to that effect. This is all just complete speculation based on me spending way too much time staring at this manga.

Thanks again for reading and see ya next time!

TLDR

I don’t usually include TLDRs in my posts, but this was a very long and rambly one, so here’s the basic gist!

• Vampires’ eye rings seem to correspond to their ability to manipulate the world formula/ their “power” as a vampire. Most vampires have no eye rings; powerful vampires have one; after that the actual change in power is unclear, but having more rings seems to be perceived as having more power.
• There are exceptions to this rule, like the Beastias and the De Sades.
• When a vampire loses the ability to use one of their eyes (permanently or temporarily), their working eye gains rings in an attempt to compensate for the missing one.
• Vampires MIGHT (this is intENSE sPECULATION) purposefully temporarily injure one of their eyes in an attempt to gain rings in both eyes and be perceived as more powerful.
• thanks for reading pls take this with a grain of salt because I’m probably wrong