Our story resumes exactly where volume 3 ended, with Noé and Vanitas having (temporarily) infiltrated the Chasseurs organization, suspecting that these notorious vampire haters are responsible for a recent string of vampire deaths. But, as the audience is well aware, neither Noé nor Vanitas are stealthy and their cover is blown before this volume even begins. With a bit of luck though they’ll be a bit closer to finding out what happened to those missing vampires and Noé might even get insight into the human Vanitas’ mysterious and vampire-connected past.
This volume can be thought of as two parts — the first part where Vanitas and Noé are dealing with the Chasseurs and the second part where Jeanne, in an attempt to piss off Vanitas, asks him out on a date (this does actually make some sense in context). Normally I am bored by these side stories but this was actually my favorite part of the volume since it was just so silly, and honestly, I felt like the Chasseurs’ section of the story earlier had dragged a little bit as well. Mochizuki cracks a joke at the end of the volume that her “diet” has failed and to expect future volumes to be close to this length as well because this volume was roughly 252 pages, compared to the usual 120 or 180 pages for a single volume.
Part of the reason why I enjoyed the more light-hearted chapters so much more in this volume was because I am fully on-board with this story and its characters by now. I like the characters and watching their relationships with each other play out; when The Case Study of Vanitas started I was on the look-out for characters who were mere clones of Pandora Hearts characters (since this is only Mochizuki’s third-ever original work, and second-ever series, and since Pandora Hearts had such a large cast I was wondering if she could keep creating original and unique characters). Happily, the main cast has been fleshed out enough for me to see that all of them are their own distinct characters. Some of the villainous side characters here remind me a little bit of some villainous side characters in Pandora Hearts, and I see shades of similarity between some characters, but that doesn’t bother me very much.
I would also like to highlight just how pretty some of the outfits were in this volume (well, except for Vanitas’ coat which continues to be “a dumb thing that clearly shows that Mochizuki has never done any sewing”). I enjoy Mochizuki’s art style in general but the outfits worn by the female cast are simply to die for. I already adored Dominique’s elegant jacket in previous volumes and Jeanne’s date dress is has a number of fun visual elements to it. The next volume will be out later this month and I’m hoping for even more great outfits, in addition to more mysteries and adventures of course!