English Dub Season Review: The Case Study of Vanitas Season Two

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Noe and Vanitas head to Gévaudan in order to investigate the return of the famed Beast. After much trouble, they find an angry girl named Chloe and discover that even though she isn’t the beast, her plan is beastly enough, with the potential to destroy the area. After putting a stop to her plan, the duo heads back to Paris where Vanitas and Jeanne deal with their feeling for one another. Later, Vanitas’s younger brother Mikhail shows up with an ultimatum: let me suck your blood or die. But Vanitas has some surprises up his sleeve to deal with this threat and ultimately he and Noe triumph together as they look toward the future.

Our Take:

The Case Study of Vanitas is still a strange mishmash of a show. In last year’s review of the first season, I wrote that the series throws a lot of things together in hopes that something watchable will be born out of the chaos, and I have to say I still agree with most of that sentiment. The second season has plenty of crazy moments that sometimes struggle to hold together. But at the end of it, I do think I understand Vanitas and the underlying core of the show a little better.

When the season began, I was excited. The thought of leaving Paris behind to go to the countryside of Gévaudan for some good old fashioned witch hunting sounded intriguing. Unfortunately, the show didn’t stay with that vibe for long, quickly dropping suspense and mystery for exposition dumps and flashbacks, which is one of the same problems I had with the series in season one. Either the original manga has major pacing problems, or this adaptation really dropped the ball on that front.

Even with some of the weird jumps in the Gévaudan storyline, it was still my favorite part of the season. Chloe had the potential to be an interesting character, and even though the show lost sight of her towards the ending of her arc, I’d mark down the Beast of Gévaudan as the most enjoyable part of the show as a whole for me. Because what immediately follows are some of my least favorite episodes.

After the Beast arc, we are ‘treated’ to a couple episodes about Jeanne and Vanitas being in love. It’s really dumb and boring and silly. It feels totally out of place admit all the bloodshed and carnage, too, but that’s just a trademark of the show at this point. The wild swings between tone are a feature, not a bug. Or at least, that’s what the creators would like to think. I really wish this whole Jeanne/Vanitas thing had been dropped in favor of devoting more time to the finale arc with Mikhail, but alas, it seems like the show needed to insert this to give certain audience members an alternative to Vanitas and Noe.

That final arc with Mikhail’s arrival definitely feels undercooked. There’s so much going on between his arrival and Vanitas’s history being revealed that it’s easy to lose track of everything that happens just in the space of the final three episodes. But despite having a scattershot finale, I do think the show got across what it wanted to get across, which is the effect that childhood trauma has on us and the bond between Noe and Vanitas.

On the animation front, I enjoyed some things about the production. The visuals are crisp and colorful, with interesting character designs—at least for the men. The female characters tend to have the same baby-ish round faces and features, which further enhances the feeling that the show is targeted to a certain kind of market that doesn’t care about this sort of thing as long as the two male leads are around. While the show looks nice enough, I was never really blown away by any of the sequences or direction. On the whole, I’d say it’s a fine looking show and that’s about it. The dub is pretty good for the most part. Vanitas’s voice always annoys me, but I think Zeno Robinson does a great job channeling the character and Stephen Fu plays the sidekick role suitably well.

The Case Study of Vanitas is not really a show for me. It’s kind of like candy—bright and colorful on the outside but without much substance or deeper flavor within. There’s plenty of erotic blood-sucking that goes on, too, if you’re into that kind of thing. Season two had the potential to be more exciting than season one, with its Gévaudan setting and deeper dive into Vanitas’s history. And I think it was better than season one, mostly. But it definitely has it’s fair share of scenes where I couldn’t help thinking, “Yep, same old Vanitas.”