Okay I…need to vent about something.
(Vnc manga spoilers incoming)
I really hate how sexual the anime makes the blood drinking scenes. At first it annoyed me, but now I genuinely hate it.
Now, granted, I don’t always interpret the manga scenes properly, so it’s possible they were always that sexual and I didn’t read them right. And yes, I’m well aware vampires and erotica go hand in hand, and blood drinking is often portrayed as sexual. But in vnc specifically I’ve always read them as—while, yes, a bit a weird and hard to get used to, and certainly intimate—something sweet and warm.
And none more than the scene with Jeanne and Vanitas after Gevaudan. That scene, to me, is supposed to remove any weird-hard-to-get-used-to-ness and be something purely gentle and warm. It’s the scene where Vanitas starts to really fall for her, so it’s supposed to be actually romantic. I feel all of that reading the manga.
But then I watch the manga and…it’s just so sexual. That’s the only thing it telegraphs: “hey look, this scene is uncomfortably sexual!” Nothing sweet or romantic. It completely ruins the actual intent of the scene.
I’ve been watching the anime with my parents and my dad walked away from that scene going “and then Jeanne drank his blood—which is basically them having sex.” And I’m like NO. Dear god.
No matter how sexual a scene is, drinking blood is NOT “basically having sex.” And it’s especially annoying when that scene is supposed to be a powerful and sweet scene of him just beginning to fall for her romantically…and the anime reads as then going all the way. It ruins the actual intent of the scene
