Now that we've gotten four of them, I think I have a much better understanding of what Mochijun is cooking with this door series. It's all about emotional honesty—how each character interfaces with their interior self and how they do or do not share that self with the outside world.
Mémoire 64—Dominique
Domi's door is closed, but she's poised to knock as she looks back nervously at the reader.
For a long time, Dominique has been actively repressing most of what you might call her "true self." She's deeply traumatized and struggles with her self worth, and she's coped with those troubles first by trying to become her dead twin brother, then by crafting a theatrical, de Sade-ified version of "herself" to playact as. Her true feelings and vulnerabilities have been buried deep down, enough so that she's never breathed a word about most of them even to Noé, her closest friend.
However! Following her suicide attempt, Noé and Jeanne's subsequent words of affirmation, and her harsh awakening to her own latent anti-dhampir tendencies, we've seen her making an active effort to change all that. She wants to take Noé's words to heart, to find value in herself and to interact with the world as Dominique, rather than just as "a de Sade" or as a subpar substitute for Louis. Domi's "door" has been closed both to the outside world and to herself for a long time, as she's been unable to let herself exist without a mask of performativity, but now she's finally knocking on that door and trying to see who and what she might be should she crack it open.
Even the flower petals drifting in front of the door echo the petals she throws whenever she makes a grand entrance in peak de Sade form. They're the embodiment of the artifice that has thus far been blocking her honest self-expression from both herself and the outside world.
Mémoire 65—Dante
Dante's illustration is much more straightforward than Dominique's. He stands square toward the readers, looking on sternly in front of a sealed door, because he is an utterly closed book. Much of what he projects to the outside world is a construction intended to bolster his customer service and protect him from the public's hatred of dhams. He also refuses to trust or open himself up to vulnerability with anyone who isn't a dhampir, even though his bond with Vanitas runs deep enough to make that stance feel like brazen denial.
And even among the other dhampirs he's close to, he's something of a hero figure and an unofficial leader. He's not one to willingly reveal the softer, less self-assured parts of himself to them. His gruff exterior (which breaks into outright anger and hostility when provoked) is a protective shield that guards the vulnerable parts of himself that he keeps sealed away.
The one caveat I'll give to all that is that this illustration came at the beginning of mémoire 65: before Vanitas convinces him to accept help and before the events of the circus. I think you could argue that Vanitas has gotten him to open the door a bit since then, or at least pushed Dante to realize that Vanitas managed to pick the lock when he wasn't looking.
Mémoire 67—Ogier
Ogier's illustration features him gesturing the viewer toward a wide open door with a smile on his face, welcoming them in. This captures the attitude he projects to the outside world—Ogier of Sphene is a cavalier open book with no internal conflict to hide. However, there is no "true self" behind the open door that Ogier draws attention toward. There is just another door, and another door, and likely another door after that were the illustration to continue. The "honest face" that Ogier presents is substanceless; it's artifice all the way down.
Ogier believes that there is no such thing as a "true" self. Everyone has a role to play, a mask to wear, and all that matters is how well they play it. As far as he's willing to acknowledge, there is nothing more to him than his mask, his performance, which is why there is nothing but more doors beyond his door.
In truth, though, there is absolutely more to Ogier than the role he plays, the face he puts on to the world. He may not think it matters, he may brush it off and think it might as well not exist, but it's clear from mémoire 67 that he feels some amount of frustration and displeasure with his role. He has to push himself to keep acting, has to reassure himself nothing else matters. There is a human being behind the mask. And I think that's what the curtain is there to remind us of. Even though he may state that there is no man behind the curtain, even though he may attempt to believe it himself, we the audience know that there really is something real and raw and vulnerable hidden past Ogier's artifice after all.
Mémoire 68—Béatrice
Of all the characters featured so far, Riche seems to be the most genuinely open, and we see a real open door in her illustration as a reflection of that fact. There's no reason so far to believe that her "true self" is anything other than the face that she shows the world.
That said, Riche's "true self" is somewhat shy, awkward, and easily frightened, and Dante and Johann go out of their way to keep her from harm's way (which has the side effect of often keeping her out of the plot). That means that, though she's entirely herself, Riche hasn't had much chance thus far to actually act as herself. She's all internal with little impact on the world to show for it, and this current arc marks the first time where we see her coming out of her shell and placing herself on the stage where all the big action is happening. That's why we see her peeking out from behind the closed side of her door—her honest self isn't locked away, but it's also just now starting to step out into the wider world.
It's also worth noting that her bat, a signifier of her status as Machina's dham, is the one thing fully in front of Riche's doors. Riche may not attempt to hide her true and vulnerable self from outsiders, but nonetheless, outsiders will always read her as a dhampir before they recognize her as an individual person.
I made a post after mémoire 67 proposing that one of the central themes for this arc would be the idea of the "self" as performance—an examination of types of affectation. And now that we're another chapter into the arc, I'm even more certain of that. Domi, Dante, Ogier, and Riche all have very different relationships to the ideas of "true selves" and performance, and as the arc goes on, I suspect we'll see even more characters' relationships to these ideas expressed through the imagery of a set of doors.
It also doesn't escape me that all of this riffing on identity and personality as performance vs vulnerable emotional honesty is happening in a series where
The main character has the power to see others' memories, arguably giving him the power to see someone's "true self" more comprehensively than anyone else ever could, should he choose to explore to their depths
The main antagonist has the power to completely rewrite people's selves without their consent
and I'm eager to see if/when we'll be connecting back to either of these larger ideas.
