currently thinking about the relationship between the act of killing someone and love in the case study of vanitas. vanitas says he will kill jeanne as an act of love, but then says he wants noe to be the one to kill him, and vanitas was the one who killed luna, and the noe couldn’t be the one to actually kill louis. so like, maybe part of this thing for noe and vanitas is that vanitas see himself as capable of loving others (i.e killing someone if the situation calls for it), but he couldn’t really see anyone until noe loving him (ie killing him)?
which is a warped way of thinking about love for sure (romantic, familial, or platonic) but then looking at noe too, who loves people just as deeply but doesn’t have that same connection to death/killing that vanitas does (as we see him struggle to fight vanitas who has no self preservation and goes for the kill), then get placed with the responsibility to kill his new best friend
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.
Vanitas strategically placing three fèves so Mikhail gets to be king is absolutely adorable
i love Luna so much— they’re just so— I love Luna so much
get yourself a boyfriend who will try to kill you and then be unable to and break down sobbing and make you a tarte tatin as an apology
“don’t turn into Roland” killed me
Dante knows Vanitas can bake, hmmmm? from what I recall, Dante is also a good baker. wonder how he came across this piece of information /raises eyebrows/
oh my god
NOOOOOOOO MOCHIZUKI JUN I WAS EXPECTING A FUN CUTE SIDE STORY NOT SOMETHING EMOTIONALLY DESTRUCTIVE
I CANNOT WAIT TWO MONTHS FOR THIS TO CONTINUE
ITS THE CHLOÉ AND JEAN JACQUES IN PARIS ARC IVE DREAMED OF EVER SINCE CHAPTER 43
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
