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neversetyoufree · 9 months

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in the last ep of the anime, i noticed that it cut out to the ending directly before vanitas could actually take noes hand, and i wondered if that was referencing what noe said about vanitas at the beginning.

Oh that's such a good catch! You're absolutely right anon, and I think we can take your idea even further than that.

I've talked about this in a previous post, but VnC's running refrain of Noé reaching for Vanitas's hand is really symbolic. Noé has saved Vanitas from literally falling multiple times, but their entire relationship is also one big metaphorical outstretched hand. Vanitas is "falling" down toward his inevitable doom as he self destructs via his revenge, and Noé is grasping out desperately as he tries to catch him and save him from that fate.

"That day when I didn't grab your hand" (which I assume, along with killing him, is what you mean by "what Noé said about Vanitas") might refer to a future event in which Noé will literally fail to catch Vanitas. But more importantly, it's a reference to the larger truth. By Noé's definition of salvation—in terms of preventing his death, Noé is going to fail to save Vanitas. No amount of reaching out can prevent his ultimate fall.

Within this metaphor, then, the scene on the rooftop after the amusement park can be summed up simply. It's the scene where Vanitas finally lets himself reach for Noé's offered hand.

I mean this in three ways.

The first way is the literal way. The scene ends with Vanitas reaching up to take Noé's hand and be helped to his feet. And despite the sheer frequency of Noé reaching out for or trying to catch Vanitas, this is only the second time we see Vanitas actually reach up and take Noé's hand to be helped of his own accord. The only other time is in the catacombs, right before he decides to tell Noé about Doctor Moreau for the first time.

In the catacombs, Vanitas taking Noé's hand works as a symbolic gesture of trust and an acceptance of Noé's help with the Moreau case. Noé has been forcing his help on Vanitas up until this point, staying up late by the door just to follow him out, but taking his hand is the moment that Vani starts to willingly bring him into the fold. The literal is never just literal with these guys.

The second way comes when Vanitas tells Noé that he's "given up on making him do what he wants." As I said, Noé has spent the entire manga reaching out and trying to save Vanitas from his "fall." One major facet of that is his recurring refusal to let Vanitas isolate himself. He makes a willful declaration of staying by his side when Vanitas tries to dismiss him in the bell tower, and when Vanitas tries to cut Noé out of his life by the blade of a knife, Noé comes back with "I will never set you free." Vanitas wants, or at least claims he wants, Noé to leave him the hell alone, but Noé says no every time.

"Giving up on making Noé do what he wants," then, means that Vanitas has finally let himself accept that he wants Noé by his side. There's no more pretending he doesn't want his help or his presence. No more trying to shove Noé away every time he's upset. At least in this moment (though we'll have to see if he holds himself to it), Vanitas has admitted that he wants Noé and Noé's supportiveness in his life.

Mochijun even uses a flashback panel to be sure we know exactly what Vanitas means here. It's that important.

Giving up on trying to push Noé away is one very significant way in which Vanitas has accepted the metaphorical outstretched hand. He's admitting he wants Noé, and Noé's presence means the presence of love and help. It means the end of self-isolation as a maladaptive coping technique. Of course he's going to reach up and accept Noé's literal offer to help him to his feet in the same scene that he finally tells Noé he'll stop trying to get rid of him.

The third way is, of course, when Vanitas says that he wants Noé to be the one to kill him.

Now, this is not how Noé wanted Vanitas to interpret his outstretched hand. Unlike his loved ones, Noé does not see killing and being killed as a way to show love or to save someone. His offer of salvation is meant to be an offer to save Vanitas from his self-destruction. But Vanitas does not want to be saved that way. And given that the manga begins with the statement that Noé will kill him someday, we know that Vanitas cannot be saved by Noé's definition.

However, Vanitas does not share Noé's definition of salvation. I don't know if Vanitas himself could even put words to his personal idea of salvation. But we know from multiple examples that it can sometimes include the gift of a kind death to prevent a worse life. That's the kind of salvation he offers when he returns a curse bearer's True Name despite knowing that it will kill them.

I have a lot of thoughts about the kind of salvation Vanitas could find in Noé, but for the purposes of this scene, this idea of a preferable death is a big one. Vanitas would rather die than lose his humanity, and this is an extremely vulnerable thing for him. Saying that he wants Noé to kill him is, in his own way, accepting Noé's unspoken offer of salvation. He's saying "I want you to be the one to save me in the one way that I can accept."

Vanitas cannot envision a life for himself, and thanks to the way Luna's Mark is rewriting him, it's likely that a long life as his human self would be impossible even if he weren't suicidal. But though it's still not healthy behavior, his request for death is, in his own terms, taking up the hand that Noé has extended. It's a grasp for salvation by a man that cannot admit that he wants to be saved.

And that brings me back to your original point, anon. Because Vanitas reaches up for Noé's hand, and that is incredibly important, but in both the anime and the manga, we do not get to see him take it. The meaning of this depends on what definition of salvation you analyze the scene through.

By Noé's definition, we know that Vanitas cannot and will not be saved. As he says in the beginning, Noé is going to kill him someday. There will be a day when he will fail to grab his hand, and Vanitas will finally fall to the gravity of his doom. So in that way, it makes sense that even in the most optimistic of scenes, we have to cut away before Vanitas can actually take Noé's hand. He might be letting himself reach for it now, and that's a good thing, but Noé is never actually going to be able to pull him up. To show us otherwise in a scene so full of symbolism and foreshadowing would be a lie.

However, as I keep saying, Noé's definition of salvation isn't the only one at play. As much as Vanitas's death will not be prevented, the fact remains that he is still finally letting himself reach for salvation in some form. So perhaps we can cut away as soon as he starts to reach not because he'll never be saved, but because the thing that matters in this scene is the reaching itself. Noé has become a supportive constant in Vanitas's life. He's just reaffirmed that he won't change, that he'll continue to support Vanitas from beside him.

We don't need to see Noé take Vanitas's hand once he starts reaching because that is a foregone conclusion. It's Vanitas's decision to reach that needs the emphasis of being the final shot, because that's the heart of the moment.

In the manga, Vanitas reaches up, and we cut to the sunlit sky. This whole scene, in addition to the running thread of reaching hands and salvation, has an overarching symbol in the end of the rain. Vanitas and Noé's horrible fight was in the storm, the rain patters to its end as they make up, and the sun breaks through the clouds as they reaffirm their pledges to one another and Noé re-offers Vanitas his hand. It's simple but effective pathetic fallacy.

So to that end, Vanitas reaches up to take Noé's offer to help him stand (reaches up to take some version of his promise of salvation), and we cut to the sunlit sky. Noé has brought the sunlight back as he offers his hand to Vanitas. Joy and light and hope return as Noé's love for and desire to save Vanitas are reestablished. Then Vanitas reaches toward that light, and we cut to the sunbeams to make sure you know just what he's reaching toward.

This works well for the end of a story arc! The weather symbol has been a constant throughout the whole amusement park arc, so of course the chapter that marks its end has to be capped off with an image of the clouds breaking. It's a closing note that pulls together Vanitas's reaching for salvation, the weather symbolism, and 55.5's general tone of relief.

Meanwhile, the anime switches things so that we see the sunbeams first, and then Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the final shot of the whole entire show. And for once, I actually really like this little change! The manga's order of images works well as a resolution for its chapter and its story arc, but the anime's version works really well as a possible end for the story overall.

The VnC anime may or may not ever get another season, so for the foreseeable future, Vanitas reaching for Noé's hand is the end of the show. This gives that shot a lot of emphasis. In fact, it kind of makes it the meaning of the whole thing.

Noé spends the whole anime reaching out and trying to offer a hand of salvation to Vanitas, and the final shot of the whole thing is Vanitas letting himself reach up to take it. We don't end on the shot of their clasping hands, but the shot of the reaching, because Vanitas's decision to accept some form of salvation is the thing the whole show has been building towards. It's the decision to reach up that makes the whole story.

So though they go about it in very slightly different ways, the manga and the anime are still both making meaning out of the simple act of Vanitas reaching. That's the core of the whole thing.

And overall, though I've framed "we cut away because Noé won't actually be able to stop his fall/grab his hand" and "we cut away because the decision to reach is the important part" as two opposing interpretations, I actually think their co-existence is key. Vnc's whole story is a conflict between Noé and Vanitas's definitions of salvation. The tension of their relationship isn't "will Noé find a way to save Vanitas from death?" (He won't). The tension is "will Noé find some other way to save Vanitas before his death?" and "will he be able to recognize that alternate salvation as salvation if/once Vanitas claims it?"

VnC is a story about a doomed man who might in some way be saved. Chapter 55.5 cuts away before we see Vanitas actually take Noé's hand because he is doomed to fall someday and not reach that hand when it matters most, but also because the thing that matters in this scene is that he decides to reach up at all. Vanitas is going to die, so any hope and optimism in his story must make peace with the doom of him. His healing from his trauma and accepting love and help happens while he is hurtling rapidly toward his ending. That's the beauty and the tension of Vanoé's relationship (and the beauty and tension of VnC as a whole).

So to answer your question anon, yes. We cut away before Vanitas reaches Noé's hand because, as we're told in the beginning, he will not ultimately reach Noé's salvation. But at the same time, the whole point of the rooftop scene is that Vanitas does want to accept some kind of salvation, and he just might manage do it. It all depends on how he can be saved.

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