Vanitas no Carte S1E1-2

This review was comissioned by @Marta Ayanami.


Vanitas no Carte, or "the Case Study of Vanitas," is an ongoing shonen manga that started in 2015 and received its anime adaptation courtesy of Bones Studio in 2021. All I knew about this one going in was that the comic it's based on is female-authored, and that it involves vampires. @Marta Ayanami seems to like them some vampire animes.

Unfortunately, I personally am not quite able to recommend this particular vampire anime based on these two episodes.

I'm focusing on the word "anime" for a reason, here. There's just *something* about this production that seems badly garbled, and I don't know if the problem lays in the localization or in the adaptation, but either way I was left with the impression that something was getting caught between me and the story. That doesn't apply to all the problems I had with opening episodes "In the Event of Rusty Hopes" and "In the City of Flowers," to be clear, but it applies to many of them. So, take the rest of this post with that caveat in mind.


The series is prologued by a vampire legend. As in "a legend told by vampires." Vampires have always typically spawned on nights when the moon glows blood red, and their eyes glow red in the dark to reflect their lunar blessing. However, one night long ago, there was a vampire named Vanitas (literally "vanity") who was birthed by the light of a rare blue moon, and whose eyes glowed blue in the darkness.

Ditto bokoblins, lizalfos, and stir-fry ingredients.​

Vanitas was shunned by the rest of vampirekind, being banished into a lonely existence in the wilderness. Vanitas had his revenge eventually, though, as he lived on to scribe a cursed tome that had the power to warp the minds and bodies of red-eyed vampires and turn them into maddened, monstrous, blue-eyed devourers of their own kind.

Also, Vanitas has an effectively creepy little kid voice as he speaks of his vengeful curse in this sequence, which is cool and appropriate.

Then we jump to the story's present, and I start getting confused.

Apparently, we're in an alternate history version of the nineteenth century, with big fancy luxury airships flying people around Europe. And...the story cannot seem to decide what role vampires play within this world and how they're seen by the living.

Early on, some passengers aboard the ship see gruesome news coverage of a rumored vampire attack, and converse darkly about whether vampires really are back from extinction to plague the world again. A few of them trade unverified anecdotes about their great-grandparents having had experiences with the last vestiges of that ancient threat.

And then it turns out that not only are vampires still living among humanity in decent numbers, but also that there are government agencies tasked with keeping friendly relations with them, and these agencies don't seem to particularly be operating under utmost secrecy.

Also...everyone knows that there are still professionals in charge of hunting vampires in case they ever do show up again. And...those people seem to know the truth. And they operate, well, not OPENLY, but their existence is hardly a secret.

Another weird detail is that vampires are apparently harmless by default. They have an easy time controlling their bloodthirst, and their needs are seemingly low enough that they can feed themselves without causing serious injury. The stigma surrounding them seems to mostly come from the history of individuals going mad from the blue-eye curse and going on rampages. But for some reason, even though that knowledge isn't a secret, most people don't seem to know it. I guess maybe this is just supposed to be an example of fantasy prejudice and ignorance in action, but...I don't know, something about the way it's portrayed makes me go "huh?" instead of "yeah, that's people being people alright." This may be my fault rather than the story's, but...well, there are other things LIKE this that make me not think so.

Anyway, the plot. Aboard the fancy airship is a well-dressed young vampire named Noe, who - while quietly avoiding attention as the humans around him freak out over the news - meets another vampire passenger named Amelia. When Amelia is targeted by a mysterious vampire-hunter who breaks into the airship and targets her, Noe rises to her defence...only it turns out that Amelia is succumbing to the blue-eyed curse, and the "hunter" who just violently broke into the ship and lunged at her like a murderous psychopath is here to heal her.

She, um. She was traveling to Paris specifically in order to meet this guy. Did he not know that she was about to walk up to his office in a few hours? Maybe she didn't tell him.

But anyway, big stupid fight as Noe defends her from the person trying to help her and they do a bunch of anime moves at each other without trying to explain themselves. Finally, Amelia succumbs to the curse while they're fighting over her, and Noe ends up standing back and letting the "doctor" do his thing before she can transform into a giant blood monster thing. He heals Amelia and turns her eyes back red again, using an immense leather tome bound in clockwork; the Tome of Vanitas. Noe, it turns out, was on his own way to Paris hunting down a rumor connected to that legendary book, so if his attention hadn't already been gotten it is now.

And...from this point on, Noe and the holder of the tome - a human with bright blue eyes who claims to be a mortal descendant of the original accursed author - are stuck being a buddy comedy-action duo together. How this happened, exactly, I'm not sure. Even after rewatching.

The next plot point, starting off the following episode, involves the local Parisian vampire authority - the cheekily named Count Orlok - wanting to confiscate and destroy the tome because of the threat it poses to vampirekind, and wanting to execute Vanitas Junior for owning it. He also, apparently, has Amelia in captivity, and is going to euthanize her for having the blue-eye curse. Even though her eyes are red again now, and even though Noe and Vanitas Junior were the only ones who saw her succumb in the first place. And...he's willing to let them prove that the book can be used for good and that Amelia shouldn't die if they go cure another rampaging accursed one that Paris is struggling with. Which means letting them continue running around in his city with the evil book unsupervised.

They find and cure the target, and some other local vampires see them do it. And then attack them because they don't believe the book can be used for good. Even though the only reason they were drawn to the scene was because they saw the book being used for good. They have a fight scene, but the battle is ended by the lead duo managing to convince them to give them a chance by...letting them do the exact same thing they already saw them do on yet another curse-sufferer.

-____-

You see why I'm still sceptical of exactly how and why the humans at the beginning have it wrong?

Also, just to keep score: that's two fight scenes in a row over the same kind of misunderstanding, starting and stopping for the same reasons. Along with the two examples in a row of "I don't believe what I just saw (or DIDN'T just see, in Count Orlok's case), do it again!"

It's a mess.

It's a mess with good production values, that I'll say for sure. The voice acting is top notch. Animation is great (at least, except when Bones is doing the same style of superdeformed aside that FMAB was full of.

It's even more intrusive here than it was in that, somehow). The music is really exceptional. The fight direction is great. Everything else about it is good. I just feel like the writing is being fed to me through a wood chipper, and I don't know whose fault - localizer, adaptor, or author - that is.

This isn't helped by the fact that our lead duo are still very much finding their footing. In particular: Vanitas Junior is incredibly annoying.

He's got the reckless, overbearing, constantly-fucking-things-up-for-himself-and-his-companion-and-then-blaming-them-for-it schtick that works for a lot of characters, but in this case there's no emotional core backing it up. It's *implied* that there's more to him than this. He's clearly got some complicated feelings about his legendary ancestor, and he's motivated to risk his life saving people from the curse, after all. These two episodes give us no insight into his internal world, though, which means no opportunities to really empathize with him. And, in the meantime, in the absence of an anchor of connection with this guy, all he's got for us is "annoying, overbearing git who I want Noe to push off a rooftop or something."

I would be amused at Vanitas Junior's character design being the most archetypically "vampiric" of the lot, despite him being the only non-vampire main character. But like...his ancestor is a vampire, he apparently lives mostly as a member-ish of the vampire community, and I'm still so confused about where things are at between humans and vampires in general in this world that any humor intended here kind of gets lost in the middle.

Noe, meanwhile, is uh...longsuffering, I guess? Kinda prissy maybe, except when there's a fight scene happening? I don't know. He kinda just gets dragged along in these two episodes.


I could probably find more to talk about in these first two episodes, but overall they're so bewildering that I can't really put together anything substantial about any more of the content. I can describe more details, or talk about the visuals and music a bit more, but...I feel like I wouldn't have much to say *about* it beyond the surface level.

As it is, I feel like I'm failing to do them justice in this review, but like...I also feel like they didn't do THEMSELVES justice when I tried to watch them. I can't say "bad" though. I feel like I'm watching something good, or at least interesting, but like it's been through a game of telephone.

I do strongly suspect that the manga this is based on is much more coherent than what I just saw. And also, I have a feeling that the show figures itself out much more in the following episodes. Right now though, I just feel like a weird, colorful parade went passed my window too fast for me to catch many details, and I'm left staring down the street after it going "huh?"