My goodness, things are certainly humming along here.  This kind of pacing is a double-edged sword to be sure.  It makes for exciting viewing, but at a certain point you reach saturation and things begin to go a bit beige if you know what I mean.  It probably doesn’t help that this may as well be called the “kitchen sink” arc – almost every named character and mythology element we knew of (and some we didn’t) are involved.  As fun as it is, I do miss at least the occasional quiet moment like we had in the first season.  Mochizuki is rather good at them.

I guess (well, I know) the big nugget here is the true identity of Naenia.  That is, Queen Faustina – or at least her malnomen.  Vanitas apparently had an inkling but not being sure, kept it to himself (much to Noe’s irritation).  As such, Chloe’s little scheme – while clever – is her biting off way more than she can chew even with vampire teeth.  Malnomens have ranks just like anything else and as you’d expect from a Queen, that of Faustina is apparently the strongest around.  Chloe is no match for it – indeed, it’s hard to know just how bad things would have gotten had the WFAD not hit a blue screen of death moment and shut down.

With Faustina going back to spectral form and presumably re-forgetting her identity, the big problem now is Chloe’s malnomen.  It’s hard to keep up with everything but apparently in the act of protecting her it swallows up everything around her, in this case including Gevaudan itself.  I’m assuming the demon wolves are a manifestation of it, and they present a real problem for the villagers – and thus the unconscious Chloe, who’d go on existential tilt if she was the cause of their deaths (noblesse oblige in action).

Fortunately – because why not, almost everyone else is here – Roland shows up, along with chainsaw-wielding sidekick Olivier.  Not for the first time it occurs to me that it’s extraordinarily useful for Noe and Vanitas to have an ally on the inside, and it seems that Roland is very much that by now.  He’s skeptical of this church’s role in the Gevaudan affair (Vanitas’ influence at work, clearly) and makes a counterpoint to (the now unconscious) Astolfo. Roland and Olivier protecting the villagers is what allows the main duo to affect the main job – try and save Chloe (and Jean-Jacques).

Meanwhile, Jeanne is having dreams of her past.  That included her parents apparently betraying vampire-kind, leading to her being pressed into service as a Borreau as penance.  One clear element of Vanitas no Carte is that it’s extremists on both sides, vampire and human, who cause much of the trouble. I’m not clear on how much of what Jeanne does is hard-wired into her and how much is brainwashing, but she clearly has at least some ability to resist orders if she’s motivated enough.  And not wanting to kill Chloe seems like it’d be enough motivation, clearly.