The Case Study of Vanitas: Things to Remember

Valid Criticism vs Misunderstanding the Source Material With Vanijeanne

Hey guys, so my Vanijeanne opinions are bad and wrong and likely contentiousness so apologies. I am however very willing to have conversations with both those who love it and those who hate it as long as we can remain civil. With that out of the way I want to talk frankly about the ship including my personal opinions on the ship itself and what I think mochijun is trying to do with this relationship.

Because shipping is quite fraught in fandom spaces I feel it's often hard to have meaningful conversations about these types of relationships, especially when (like in Vanijeanne's case) the opinions are quite split. But inherently the ships are an important part of some narratives and that's most definitely the case with vnc. Not just because the series literally asks "What on Earth is love?" only 12 chapters in but because romantic/sexual feelings are inextricably linked to the main characters and their development. As one would expect with a vampire series. So it's worth having these conversations.

The reason I want to talk about Vanijeanne in particular is because it's the explicitly romantic relationship that has seen the most on screen change, and because it works so well for some people and is utterly despised by others. For me personally I think that in certain small aspects of their relationship the writing falls short, not enough to ruin it entirely yet enough to make it unpalatable to some.

We'll start with the most hated scene in all of vnc: the chapter 4 kiss. I've been through my opinions on it in my chapter on the prevalence of assault in vnc. To summarise, my interpretation is that we are supposed to recognise it as bad and as assault but the framing of the scene is jarring and muddies the message we are supposed to take away from it.

Pulling back from vnc a bit I think the scene is viewed unfavourably or with suspicion to a degree because it takes place in a shounen manga/anime. I think most anime fans have seen female characters put into specifically sexual situations they are textually uncomfortable with for the sake of fanservice/comic relief. Women getting spied on in the bath/locker room is a disturbingly frequent occurrence in my experience.

(On a completely unrelated tangent read witch hat atelier if you want to see a criticism of how nonconsensual voyeurism is harmful and disrespectful. It's addressed in one chapter but god it was validating).

So I can't blame people for viewing a scene like that and their knee-jerk reaction being that it was a particularly sleazy attempt at fanservice and getting a female character to be 'cute' or flustered. I have literally seen multiple people say that the anime made it clear Jeanne liked the kiss because she was blushing and I... The damage done to people's reading comprehension by using a blush to communicate a character is tsundere/flustered. On that note Jeanne is not a tsundere and I swear to God people better stop describing her as such. If a blush means someone 'liked it' you better fucking ship Ruthven/Chloé and Naenia/Chloé too (though they didn't have Chloé blush during the anime kiss for some reason and yes I am bothered by that choice).

I had a picture here of the Jeanne and Chloé blushing during the aforementioned encounters to illustrate my point but wattpad nuked it for violating community guidelines so please just imagine those scene instead.

Ah romance

Part of what makes the vanijeanne kiss scene more than simply gross fanservice (aside from an argument that it isn't really framed as fanservice) is that as the series progresses we find out that assault is a thing vnc is interested in depicting to varying degrees and that vanijeanne's relationship is intentionally messy. Of course, you won't know that after only seeing the kiss in isolation. But even the kiss scene isn't presented in a juvenile way like a lot of scenes that are just cheap fanservice. It's raw and sexual in a way that's blatant. It isn't pretending to be innocent by no touching happening. It's not even just a nonconsensual peck on the lips, Vanitas definitely shoved his tongue in her mouth. Uncomfortable as it is I appreciate that vnc at least commits to it. Problematic doesn't automatically mean poorly written.