You needn’t look too hard to see furious assertions from manga readers that one isn’t allowed to enjoy this anime arc.  I don’t deny the pacing has been pretty rapid, but for me it’s been a fun ride so far.  There have been certain cases (Ushio to Tora comes to mind) where the accelerated pacing of the anime may in fact be a blessing in disguise.  I know that’s hard to accept for manga purists (and I’ve been in that boat enough times to know the waters without needing a chart).  But if the shoe fits – and so far, this season has pretty much been a 10-D for me.

This episode had a hell of a lot crammed into it.  And if I’m honest, for a good chunk of it I was a bit confused as to what exactly I was seeing.  It’s probably not a stretch to imagine that the rapid pacing has a lot to do with that – you don’t cover as many chapters as this season is covering without losing a lot of the connective tissue that makes things clearer.  Yet I did rather enjoy the breathless nature of it, and by the end at least it was pretty clear what we’d been watching.

We even got a retroactive explanation of the seeming time travel aspect of the narrative.  If Vanitas is correct this is a kind of time loop, and I assume the malnomen whose ability he ascribes it to is Chloe’s.  The big headline, though (it wasn’t clear to me until the last act) is that Chloe isn’t the beast.  And neither is Jean-Jacques, which was the first misdirection we were thrown on that subject.  He did give up his true name to Charlatan for the power to defend Chloe, which did give him the ability to transform into a beast.  But it seems he never actually killed anybody – and neither did Chloe.  The “Beast” is, in fact, the church taking advantage of local superstition to drudge up a cover story for their elimination of perceived apostates and enemies of the faith.

A lot of this we know because Jean-Jacques force fed his blood to Noe.  He did so in order to make sure someone remembers Chloe and himself, though it was undeniably handy for exposition purposes.  Jean-Jacques is a vampire himself, abused and disowned by his family over it, so he and Chloe have a lot to commiserate over.  They’re victims, both of them (this is a recurring them in Vanitas no Carte and indeed, Mochizuki series generally).

Vanitas eventually comes to rescue Noe – who gets a vicious cat punch for his trouble – and even blurts out that he was worried about him.  Based on what Noe tells him Vanitas is able to complete the puzzle.  Or so he thinks, but Chloe has one more twist to unveil that he doesn’t see coming.  She couldn’t care less about the Book of Vanitas – she just liked the pretty jewel in the cover – but he has big plans for her World Formula Alteration Device (rather dramatically, it’s controlled with a big organ).  Charlatan gleefully cackles that Chloe is going to erase Gevaudan from existence, and act with Vanitas declares would be disastrous for the world at large.

Chloe plays the last trump.  She’s been working a long con on Charlatan here, her real plan being to use the WFAD to force Naenia to take physical form.  It’s a clever move, and given that it might free Chloe from Charlatan’s clutches I can see why she tried it.  But while things look good at episode’s end, I can’t imagine it’s going to be that easy.  And there’s still the matter of Jean-Jacques, who’s out there doing battle with an unwitting Jeanne, and the Chasseur Astolfo, who’s been assigned to make sure the church’s role in all this stays hidden.  Is all this a lot to take in?  Sure – and maybe it would have been better spread over two episodes instead of one.  But it worked for me, and that’s the only yardstick I can use to measure it with.