Vanitas no Karte Part 2 Episode 2

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So that happened lol. Honestly… I’ve been waiting for this scene to be animated since reading it in the manga. But man this series can get horny on main real quick at times lol. After the unfortunate intervention of Naenia and Astolfo’s interference, Vanitas is left poisoned and without the book of Vanitas. He probably would have been left to most likely freeze to death if Jeanne hadn’t shown up and gotten him to the random cabin… which was a bit out of nowhere. While in the manga, Jeanne was guided by her memories of coming to that cabin when she was a kid, so the fact that they cut out that important tidbit made the scene feel rather convenient.

This had to be one of the bigger scenes for Vanitas x Jeanne. Especially since Jeanne went above and… beyond with trying to help Vanitas with his fever. And I think it was nice that this interaction had no blood sucking involved surprisingly enough. Since they easily could have gone down that route if Vanitas hadn’t sucked the poison out himself lol. Not to mention they were just able to talk to each other without any sort of their usual animosity (mostly on Jeanne’s side). And I think it was a good step in their development to be just honest with each other without any facades getting in the way whether it be Vanitas’ obnoxious bravado or Jeanne’s reluctance. They were just able to be honest with each other and it’s a side that Jeanne probably hasn’t really seen of him before. Though I do think it was rather sudden for Jeanne to just spill her past with Chloe and the current struggle she’s dealing with of being a Bourreau. I guess you can just chalk it up to her allowing herself to be honest with Vanitas after the trouble she got him into. Though the build up to how they got to this point does feel rather clunky.

But I’d be lying to say that I didn’t enjoy the ahem rather “interesting” scene between the two when Jeanne is just constantly taking the initiative. Which basically turned their current dynamic on its head as it was always Vanitas who took the lead. While it was all to save his life… the creator just could not help but make it as steamy as possible lol. And I admit, it is very amusing to see Vanitas lose his composure after being such a smug gremlin that he is. I had a pretty good laugh watching Vanitas “attempt” to sensor Jeanne’s near naked body with his hands… despite the fact he left just enough room for him to still see. Boy PLEASE. And just the added little scenes that weren’t in the manga had me cackling. Not to mention at the start of the whole thing of Jeanne just blank face telling Vanitas to strip and his response of just going “wut” in French lol. That part tickles me every time I see it whether it be in manga form or animated form heh.

Noe ends up finding himself in a predicament himself and that whole scene was… uncomfortable to say the least. He meets the two residents of the castle, Chloe and Jean-Jacques who are odd to say the least. However, things go from odd to foreboding real quick when Noe finds himself face to face with Naenia again, seemingly working with Chloe for currently unknown reasons. However, one can assume that’s it’s no good. Due to being in possession of both Noe and the Book of Vanitas, Vanitas and company are making haste to reach the castle to deal with the Beast. At this rate, everyone’s destination is to the castle so all hell is most likely going to break lose again when they all arrive with some mysteries that need uncovering on all ends. Especially in regards to Jeanne’s past and Chloe herself.

And while Astolfo is still awful, his situation still intrigues me. Despite the scene being brief, it is made very apparent that Astolfo must have endured something terrible considering he seems to be trying to keep himself together. He’s incredibly shaken from what he saw in the Charlatan parade… which was sadly broken when his peer comes in yelling for him. I wish we got a little more time to dwell on this instead of just breaking the ice with some comedy.

Unfortunately, while I did have a fun time with the Jeane x Vanitas moments, this episode did feel rather rushed as I felt like there was still hardly any time to breathe during the dialogue and hardly any pauses to let us just ruminate on what has been said. Not to mention it just felt really weird to have this conversation at the beginning of the episode when it feels like it should have been in the middle or something. The timing of it all just felt really off somehow. Like we learned quite a bit of information too quickly. We hardly had time to really wonder what Jeanne’s reasons were and were thrown at our faces a little too soon. So far, this part of the season feels like they’re trying to go from point A to point B as fast as they possibly can to fit everything in. Which is a big shame because the Vanitas and Jeanne moment felt too soon and almost forced at this point. Since there wasn’t the proper build up to this moment and it just happened… just like everything else in this series.

I went back and looked at the chapters this episode covered and they rearranged a lot of scenes and took out several scenes, making the pacing feel rather weird. So yeah… not sure what bones is doing with this series or if they really care about it since I did also notice a lot of reused shots and animation. It’s fine to reuse shots and animation from time to time, but if it’s too obvious, then my immersion is broken. I blame Digimon 2020 for this newly developed pet peeve.

I’m still debating whether to continue covering this series or not, but I admit I am getting a bit annoyed at how fast paced this part of the season has been so far. This is an extremely long arc that spanded 18 chapters while the other arcs have been much shorter than that. So I’m not sure what bones is thinking with how they’ve been adapting this arc so far.