If you needed a reason not to trust cats, this episode might give it to you. Nothing is said explicitly, but there is an impressively strong implication that Murr, the grump who has been with Noah all this time, is actually his teacher, Dominique and Louis’s grandfather, a Marquis de Sade. Although he says that the way Vanitas met him before is that of the Earl of Saint Germaine, there are many indications that he is hiding a very important truth, which we see in three main ways: His eyes are the same color as Murr’s. , calls everyone “kittens”, and in the last scene we see of Murr, he walks with a black kitten wearing a blue ribbon… after Monsieur le Comte has taken Mikhaïl with him.
Yes, Mikhaïl appears again in battered human form to make a final plea to Vanitas to join him, and yes, “mes chatons” isn’t out of the realm of possibility for a vaguely unsettling pet name, but it makes a lot of sense if it’s actually Murr. He must have been following Vanitas and Noé’s every move to intervene when he does, subtly influencing them to lead to the moment of confrontation with Mikhaïl, or at least making sure they didn’t do something foolish like die. before his plans come true. Whether or not he’s been counting on our heroes forming a bond, he’s up in the air, but if he was, he seems to have known Vanitas better than Vanitas knows himself. It’s clear he’s playing the long game, even if precisely what his goal is remains uncertain.
But if this final confrontation does anything besides solidify Noah and Vanitas’ relationship, that would be to finally start Vanitas moving forward again. The best symbolism of that is in the final ending theme, where instead of stopping to look back, Vanitas continues down the beach with Noah, signaling that he’s finally put the past behind him. Her hourglass earring also plays a role, as it has all this season; the close focus on him when Vanitas explains to Mikhaïl that the dead cannot return is indicative of the fact that he knows Luna’s time is up. She can’t just flip the hourglass and bring them back, and maybe keeping the hourglass charm was her way of remembering that. Time comes to us all, and if Vanitas has taken it upon himself to keep the curse-bearers’ vessels from running out too quickly, he does so for the one whose time ran out too soon. He doesn’t have Mikhaïl’s childish optimism. Instead, he has been trapped in anger and regret, and it was Noah and Jeanne who helped him out of it, making him feel things that he had relegated to a box in the corner of his heart. It’s not that he has changed his goal, but now he has it clearer, and when he finally takes Noah’s hand, it’s him accepting that he has to move on.
Dominique has a similar moment of self-realization when she’s trapped in the grayscale confines of her own mind. She could easily have become another Mikhaïl, but instead she makes the decision to finally step out of the past. She is in mourning again when we see her in the dining room with Jeanne, but maybe this time she comes out naturally, as herself and not as someone she thinks she needs to make sense of the life of her dead twin. she living off of her. for and like him. Domi deserves to be happy, to have people she loves as herself and to be herself. As a child she couldn’t process Louis’s death; As an adult, and with the help of those who love her, she can live again, as Dominique de Sade and not as a shadow of her brother.
Wish there was more? Yes, of course, but we’ve caught up with the manga now and I’d rather wait years for a third season that can faithfully follow it, because this has been an extraordinarily good adaptation and a strong story that I want to see continue as the author wrote it. For now the sun has come out after the rain and we can feel confident that Noé, Vanitas, Jeanne and Domi will carry on. It’s a good place to stop, especially as we know the story is far from over.
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Vanitas Season 2 Case Study is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.