English Dub Review: The Case Study of Vanitas “Promises”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Jeanne has had enough to Vanitas’s advances, and she thinks she knows just how to put him off the trail for good. Thanks to some helpful advice from Dominique, she plans to confess her love for him, which should in turn make him tire of her immediately. But the jig backfires and she finds herself falling for Vanitas’s charms. Meanwhile, Noe meets with Lord Ruthven and gets more than he bargained for.

Our Take:

Vanitas returns with another dubbed episode from Funimation this week. Promises is the eleventh episode of the season, and it finds the cast taking a break from the thrills of vampire/human/enemy hunting in exchange for some good old fashioned romance. (Well, maybe not ‘good’ or ‘old fashioned’, but still.) Vanitas finally gets somewhere with Jeanne and Noe gets somewhere with Ruthven that he never expected.

It’s kind of nice to have a change of pace with this one. The last several weeks have been spent underground on the hunt for one or another foe, from the church’s vampire hunters to the evil scientist Doctor Moreau. So letting that drama take a backseat while a new kind of drama of the heart takes centerstage was a good switch here I think.

That’s not to say that I enjoyed the romantic aspects of Jeanne and Vanitas, though. His behavior towards her has been pretty creepy at times, and seeing her fall all over him now, even if it starts out as part of a plan, is pretty cringy. There’s no real suspense, either, because the whole plot line is basically ‘Jeanne acts tough, but is secretly soft and that’s funny’ over and over again. To be honest, none of the the characters in this show strike me as having much chemistry, and Vanitas and Jeanne are one of the least spark-flying couples I’ve seen so far. I’m not saying that others won’t appreciate it, but this specific pairing doesn’t do it for me.

Speaking of pairings, Noe and Lord Ruthven sure make for an interesting one. We haven’t seen much of Ruthven since the big party, but here he takes Noe out for lunch in hopes of having a conversation sans Vanitas. A good idea, really, but unfortunately it turns into less of a lunch outing and more of a do or die test. Ruthven quizzes Noe about where his true loyalties lie and the vampire answers honestly, saying that vampire or human, good is good and bad is bad. It’s an answer I liked, but sadly Ruthven did not and he attacks Noe.

Normally Vanitas would be all about saving his friend, but he is doing some, er, bloodletting of his own with Jeanne. In one of the most exciting parts of their storyline, she gets hot and bothered due to seeing a bloody knee and proceeds to bit through Vanitas’s forearm. It’s a little too on the nose as a sexual metaphor, and it doesn’t really seem healthy for these two people, who are clearly very troubled, to take out their frustrations on each other like this. I’m all for exploring a more romantic side of the show, but I wish the options for couples were more to my liking.