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The Case Study of Vanitas ep.13 – Winter is Come

Irina

The Case Study of Vanitas is back for its second cour and I couldn’t be happier. I think this should make you happy as well because if it wasn’t, I would just have a Platinum End post on Saturdays and that just won’t do!

I might as well come clean. This episode thrilled me. I’m kinda giddy and all over the place here. I don’t even know where to start! I also way waaaayyyy too many screencaps but what else is new?

Nevermind! I know exactly where to start: the OP! This was a bit of a challenge because I really loved the OP for the first cour. I also recently wrote a post about why OPs are important and all that. So right from the start, the episode had to impress me. And oh man did it ever!

To be clear, I still prefer the OP of the first cour. I like the song better, I found it more fun to watch and most importantly, it had the user fun spot the Murr game. However, this new OP isn’t just good (which it is) it’s carefully thought out to follow the first one.

The composition and scene structure is extremely similar. It’s almost like an extension of the first. Paris in Spring leading into Paris in Winter. It’s obviously been carefully thought out and that makes it way more impressive than it might seem at first glance. I even took a smattering of OP screencaps just to talk about it. So I guess, good start.

I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way. I always have a bit of apprehension when a series I really enjoyed comes back. I guess I’m afraid it can’t live up to my expectations or maybe to my memories. I’m proven wrong more often than not, but I can’t shake that anxiety.

So as much as I was looking forward to The Case Study of Vanitas continuing, part of me was already trying to figure out what I would do if it just sucked. What if the production team ran out of steam or used up all of their magic already? What if it just isn’t the same?

It’s only the first episode, there is plenty of time for things to go awry. But I’m a gerbil-faced optimist and all my fears have been assuaged.

Everything was there, right where I left it! The goofy slapstick humour, even in more intense situations made an appearance. How do you murder someone badly? As did all of our favourite characters… except Roland but he was mentioned a lot! Oh and Dominique, I do hope we get a glimpse of her. The dazzling action sequences were still impressive as ever. The grandiose set pieces and setups might have even outdone what we’ve seen up until now. And of course, most importantly, Murr! We got a decent amount of Murr!

I don’t remember if I was writing these posts for people who watched the episodes or not. That is if I bothered to recap the episodes or just went straight to my thoughts. I think this post is already way too all over the place to try to impose some structure now. Let’s just go for it!

I found that I easily slipped back into the story. Even though The Case Study of Vanitas is a pretty convoluted tale, I seemed to have remembered everything pretty well and knew exactly what was going on. We were on our way to capture or defeat a legendary beast because it may be a malnoment. In any case, it’s very dangerous.

Let me tell you folks, now THIS was a BEAST. I actually whistled. I don’t even know how to whistle but it came out of me at the sight of that thing. That’s how you make a threat properly imposing. And we threw in a psycho pallie for good measure.

I’m on the fence about Astlfo. He was my least favourite part of this episode but I see a lot of potential there. He’s more like a portable obstacle than a character but I can see him making things very interesting in the coming episodes.

As much as I did love that beast part of me couldn’t help but think that ultimately, it doesn’t quite live up to the formless one. Or Charlatan as it is better known. I just think that Charlatan is brilliant as an antagonist. The very concept of it works so well for this series. And of course, it showed up as well. Told you this episode had everything.

As far as setups go, it was great. We are left with a ton of truly interesting questions for future episodes. Like did they really travel back in time and if not, what happened. Who exactly is Chloé? Friend or Foe? Why did the Beast not get caught up in Charlatan’s delirium? And what do all these people want? We also got an absolutely marvellous cliffhanger with Vanitas losing the book and it getting picked up by what appears to be Chloé’s servant. This was all I wanted from the first episode of the second cour and quite a bit more.

I did talk about the OP so let me talk about the ED a bit. I actually did not like the previous ED at all. I thought it was a bit lazy. So it’s no surprise I like this one much more. It’s still not amazing but I really loved how Vanitas (and only Vanitas) stops and looks back straight at the camera in the last second. It took me by surprise and I honestly felt like he was looking directly at me for a second there. It was a cool move!

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