#we see Vanitas’s blue and Domi’s magenta (yes this color is part of Jeanne’s usual outfit; but…

[digital-dhampirs]

vnc episode 11 thoughts

The penultimate episode of VnC season 1 has aired and I have feelings about it! This is actually the first time I’ve done an anime episode breakdown/ review type thing, and I was considering just doing a full season review after the final episode comes out next week, but I have a lot of thoughts on episode 11 specifically. So! Let’s get started.

one quick spoiler alert— this review contains spoilers for manga events that don’t happen/ haven’t happened yet in the vnc anime; and will probably spoil parts of episode 12 of the anime. proceed with caution..!

VnC season 1 episode 11 is based on chapters 19 through 21 of the manga. We see the entirety of Vanitas and Jeanne’s date, which, while having a handful of janky animations and proportions, is a very fun time.

The voice acting is all around fantastic; Domi and Dante’s interactions are great; Jeanne is pretty. The chibi sections are adorable (especially Jeanne eating snacks). The music that plays when Dante notices the pair on their date is fantastic, and so is the music when Jeanne spills her full plan to Vanitas.

There are a lot of little details that got cut from this date scene, along with two more major things we’ll get to later, but in general you don’t miss them too much. Domi telling Jeanne about a fable her grandfather once told her, Domi saying she only has experience getting romantic attention from women, Dante sharing candy with Domi, Domi telling Dante everything that led up to the date…. a handful of these little character details (mainly revolving around Domi) got chopped, but none of them are too important. The date moves at a pretty breakneck pace for a lot of the episode (the scene where Jeanne almost gets hit by a car is especially guilty of this), and these details likely woulda made it too cluttered and fast paced.

Speaking of pacing, there’s one part of Vanitas and Jeanne’s date where things seem to slow down— the scene where everything goes to shit and Jeanne very nearly attacks a human. Jeanne drinking Vanitas’s blood is fantastically ominous and dark, and I would say it was absolutely perfect… if not for the two parts of that scene that the anime left on the cutting room floor.

Firstly, they left out Vanitas’s vision of Mikhail after promising Jeanne he’ll kill her. This scene is so short and so significant and I think it coulda easily been thrown in after Vani’s promise.

To break down why that one other thing was omitted from the date scene, we first have to go over the other half of this episode— Ruthven’s encounter with Noé. As a warning, this is the section of the review is where I go full on salty manga fan. don’t worry, I still love this anime, I’m not gonna say it’s inferior to the manga even though it is, and this is all just my opinion! here we go

In my opinion, the cafe scene was by far the weaker half of the episode. I love chapter 19 of the manga so damn much, and while the anime did at least a solid portion of it justice, it also left out a lot of fascinating exposition and made the decision to chop this scene up into little pieces to play concurrently with the date storyline, leading to (((IMO) a much weaker scene in the anime.

Firstly, and similarly to the date scene, we lose a handful of interesting little details in the anime’s version of chapter 19. We don’t get any exposition on the shapeless one’s past or standing in vampire society, and we lose the hug pillow line and Amelia’s lil crush on Noé. And most importantly, the way the anime has the date and cafe scene run concurrently means we miss out on the thrilling final few minutes of Noé’s encounter with Ruthven, which will likely occur in episode 12.

I really dislike how the anime chops up the cafe scene. It messes with the episode’s general timeline (Jeanne and Vanitas are still on their date in the afternoon and it’s night by the time they retreat to the abandoned studio, while Ruthven and Noé’s conversation takes place entirely in the morning, but the anime flips between the two like they’re happening at the same time) and makes things feel quite rushed.

Not to mention… the “swear” scene at the end of chapter 19 adds a Lot to the blood drinking after Vanitas and Jeanne’s date. The anime scene is still really well done and horrifying in a good way, but it’s missing that extra boost of “oh holy shit what’s going on what did Ruthven dO” that Ruthven’s curse brings to the table.

I really do find myself wondering why the anime chose to purposefully save the end of Ruthven and Noé’s interaction for episode 12. Did they think including the scene and then immediately going to the date would be too abrupt a shift in tone? I do think the way the general tone of the episode across its two storylines stays pretty consistent, starting out fluffy and cheerful and slowly turning more dark and creepy, is very nice. Was there just not enough time to fit all of the cafe scene in? Did the showrunners want some sort of Olivier style “things are worse than they actually are” red herring cliffhanger? Or did something else entirely happen?

Either way, I’m pretty disappointed by the pacing and two big cuts from this episode. But! Regardless! This episode was still enjoyable. The music and voice acting is consistently great and the episode’s consistent tone across both storylines was a big plus.

I beliiiieve the final episode of the show will wrap up the events of chapters 19 and 21, and will probably tackle chapter 22 as well. I’m up in the air on chapter 23, because while the ending of chapter 22 seems like a very decent ending to a season, the events of 23 directly correlate to stuff that happens in 19, 20, and 21… I guess we’ll find out next Friday! Either way I can’t wait to see more of Roland and Olivier, Mikhail’s introduction, and the conclusion of Noé and Ruthven’s confrontation!

fun fact

Jeanne pretty