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The Case Study of Vanitas ep.8 – Read the Room

Irina

The titles of these posts are quickly just becoming whatever I scream at my TV while watching The Case Study of Vanitas that week. I think this one really hits the mark.

I’ve also started to play the spot the Murr in the OP game. I think I managed to spot a Murr in every scene that had any of the main characters in it, except for the cathedral and the museum scenes. And for the Arc de Triomphe scene, I thought I spotted him under the subtitles so that still needs confirmation. I already thought the OP was very fun but this little game makes me impatient to play again.

It’s not really a big chock that something is amiss in Vampire Paris. After all, they do have a plague on their hands. That’s usually a bad omen. So I can’t say I was particularly surprised to learn of the queen’s condition, but I wonder why Vanitas is showing his hand so early. Well he never does show his hands and his gloves are real weird but you know what I mean. And now he got himself thrown out of Vampire world and separated from his beloved Jeanne without even a second thought about it. Something is most obviously up.

I mean even Noé noticed it and he’s not exactly the quickest on the uptake.

Still, I don’t think those bridges are quite reduced to ashes yet. I think the Vampires are going to need Vanitas, or at least his book, sooner rather than later if they want to solve their Charlatan problem.

It was very interesting that Ruthven assumed Charlatan (or whatever physical form they have) to be a shared hallucination of the cursed vampires. Like a symptom of the curse rather than a cause. I wonder how far they’re going to take that. Maybe it’s cyclical, Charlatan is both.

It was actually a huge episode. We found out a deep secret about vampire society. Although it wasn’t said, it does imply that there is political turbulence as well as everything else that’s going on. I think Vanitas and Noé are still working for Orlok but only because they managed to get out of there before he killed them. We were also introduced to the concept of dham or dhampir, basically half humans, half vampires. This really bolsters my assumptions that the vampires of this universe are born and not made. But it also adds this other dimension. Noé didn’t even know about them. They must be very rare or taboo for some reason. I can think of a couple of reasons.

But two lore-altering revelations are for babies. A show like Vanitas has at least three per episode and that last one came in the form of new and most menacing antagonist yet, Paladin Roland Fortis.

This doesn’t have anything to do with this post but I’m just going to put it in. Controversial opinion: Hellfire is the best Disney movie song.

Roland’s character pulled a bit of a bait and switch. I have to admit, I completely fell for it. I even wrote in my notes: oh cool, another dork! And he might still be one just not quite as thick-headed as I thought. So far Vanitas and Noé have been able to sway the hearts of all their adversaries but I wonder if they have a chance here. We did see Roland crying for their souls and if that was genuine, he might come to realize that Noé is a pretty nice guy and not a monster. Not sure about Vanitas though, he probably will stop feeling bad for him.

But it’s tough to tell with religious characters. If they go the fanatic route, he might be unwilling to listen. Either way, it’s a very exciting cliffhanger. I can’t wait to see what happens next, and of course to count more Murrs. The show specifically told us they sent him back. Love it!

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