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neversetyoufree · 2 years

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I have seen people complain about the VnC anime removing the bi material, but the scene with Domi and the maid was just for laughs and they never interact after that. And the anime still makes kinda obvious Vani wanted that blood drinking due to Noé drinking from Domi, just made it subtler. Personally, I would only complain if they removed Vani's jealous face when hearing Dominoe and his comment at the staircase. The OP, ED and ep 6 show the anime is all for Vanoé. Your thoughts?

Okay, so I realize that you sent this ask all the way back when episode 6 aired, and I'm just now answering it after the whole anime has finished, but bear with me. I actually think I'm better equipped to answer this question now that the anime in its entirety has aired, and we know bones doesn't have any surprises up their sleeve.

Overall, I think this issue could go either way. I don't think that the anime purposefully singled out bi/queer content for removal, but at the same time, I totally get why people have been mad, because a lot of queer content has in fact been removed or handled oddly. Not all of it! But enough to notice. Enough to make it pretty clear that, even if Bones wasn't trying to censor anything, they don't care about conveying VnC's queerness either.

Personally, I wasn't that mad about the removal of Domi flirting with Nox, because I get that it's an unimportant scene that was cut for time, but at the same time, that's kind of the whole issue. Dominique feels pretty undeniably queer when you read the VnC manga, but a lot of that just. got cut for time, and so it no longer feels that way in the anime. She's no longer introduced by flirting with a woman, and we don't hear her talk about how she's "only popular with girls." They do keep in her commentary about Jeanne being cute and rather dazzling, and they leave in the dance, but it still lands differently. The dance has a built-in explanation of her trying to torment Noé a bit, since she thinks he has a crush on Jeanne, and could be argued away as straight if you really wanted to.

So in Dominique's case, I don't think they set out to erase her bisexuality. I think they cut a few small bits about her early on, not realizing how important those moments were for establishing her queerness in fans' eyes, and as a result her anime incarnation feels a bit less definitively bi.

And though it's not an issue of bisexuality, the same thing also happens in the last few episodes with Luna. Because (I assume) it didn't smoothly into the fight without the chapter break, and because they didn't have time, Bones cut the flashback to Luna discussing that they're neither a man nor a woman. I believe we still hear Vanitas call them a woman and Misha call them father, so anime-only fans can at least draw the conclusion that something interesting is happening with Luna and gender, but an unexplained, mildly confusing implication is a very different thing from having a character explicitly say "I am nonbinary," which manga Luna more or less does.

Again, I'm inclined to pin that on Bones simply cutting the scene for time without consideration for queerness, rather than explicit censorship, but still, you can see why people might be frustrated/feel as though it was censored.

Finally, where Vanitas and Noé are concerned, things get complicated, since even in the manga everything is subtext. However, I do think their relationship comes across rather differently in the anime than it does in the manga, and that includes a loss of some of the queer-coding.

I have a whole lot to say about this topic, and it'll get its own post someday, but to summarize, VnC the manga is centered on Vanitas and Noé's relationship, and the anime is much less so. Through a long list of tiny tweaks and small omissions, most of them justifiable in isolation, the anime loses a lot of what makes Vanitas and Noé's manga relationship feel so well-developed and so close. We do get lots of moments preserved (or even occasionally expanded upon) for VaNoé, with your mention of jealous Vani in ep 4 being one of them, but the greater whole they add up to is still different.

I can't exactly call this erasure, since again, the queerness in the original isn't explicit either, but it is something. If anything, I'd say it's just a case of bones translating the original manga to the screen poorly (in this respect), and thus losing some of the original meaning. Not homo/biphobia, but a mediocre adaptation.

So on a whole, I don't think bones has been censoring VnC's queer moments on purpose, but they also didn't do the best job of bringing them into the anime. The openings and endings might be "all for VaNoé," but including a bit of subtext between two attractive, marketable male leads and including explicitly, inarguably queer characters are two very different things. The manga, with the exception of Luna, hasn't gotten to what I'd call explicit, inarguable representation yet either, but Mochijun has certainly gotten closer than bones has.

And as always, I do have to finish with the caveat that I am not Japanese, and at the end of the day, I cannot really speak that much to good representation in Japanese media. The above is how all of this reads to me as an american, but I am coming at all of this from a very different cultural context than actual Japanese queer people, so like. grain of salt. I'm not exactly an authority here.

#another post from the very depths of my drafts folder whoops #someday I'll answer all my unaddressed asks I promise #even if it does take months #vnc #vanitas no carte #vnc spoilers #meta #anime #Noé Arqueueviste #the gay agenda #dominique my beloved #ask #anon

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bookwyrminspiration · 2 years

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would you like to be reminded of the observation you made about sophie while writing that post?

- ed

oo yes thank you for this! As predicted, it slipped my mind, but! now I can talk about the Sophie observation I made during my reread of the entire series--which isn't complete yet, I'm almost done with Flashback, so most of my reasoning is going to come from events sans books 8 and 8.5. Though there may be lines in those books that also contribute to this observation, probably not though

to preface this, I want to first refresh on the fandom's view of Sophie and how we see her. What words do we often associate with her? Overpowered, moonlark, clumsy, arsonist, etc. But! There is a very specific word we've (and I'm including myself in this) used to describe her for a very long time: oblivious. And that...just isn't true. Sophie is in fact incredibly observant in all areas, and that includes things about the love triangle (formerly a square). She knows! She knows all about it and what everyone's implied meanings are, what people have crushes about her, etc. She has been fully aware this entire time! It's not that she's oblivious, it's that she's uncomfortable and doesn't value herself enough to pay attention to it, a completely different thing.

I'm going to pull a few different passages from the series to show what I mean

Nightfall, page 137-138:

"Or maybe you'd rather I put my incredible Empath talents to work and help you solve the complicated square you're always telling yourself is a triangle?"

She shook her head, refusing to admit she knew what he meant.

Nightfall, page 262:

"How long have you known I liked you?" he asked without looking at her.

"Honestly? I'm not sure."

She'd spent so long pretending not to notice, it was hard to pin it down. But it might have also been part of the reason they'd been spending a little less time together--and why they mostly hung out in bigger groups.

Flashback, page 660:

And Sophie realized then...

Those really had been moments.

She hadn't been misreading the situation.

She'd just been too scared to believe it.

___________

I could probably find a few more spots to support my claims but these are the instances that stand out the most in my mind, hence why I'm quoting them. But do you get what I mean?

I mean, Della flat out says in Neverseen that "Alden warned me that you're very perceptive" (80). And somehow despite this and how astute she's been we've kinda labelled her as oblivious so quickly when that really doesn't match with a lot of what we know about her. She tries to consider things from every angle, and that includes wondering if people think romantically about her! She's aware that it's a possible way to interpret their actions, she just tries to avoid that and justify it some other while while knowing what it could mean.

It's possible that Ro calling her oblivious--a character who doesn't know her very well and has only been in 3.5 books compared to the entire 8.5 series we've known Sophie--helped solidify that in people's minds but I don't think Ro's observation is that trustworthy. We can also look at Keefe's short story after Nightfall where they say that Sophie has no idea what she's feeling and he has that "Yeah. I'm an Empath" line that I paraphrased when Ro is teasing him about it. I think that's intending to mean that Sophie is more unaware of her own feelings, trying to suppress them because she doesn't want to deal with that and finds it uncomfortable. But when it comes to the way everyone else acts around her, she knows! She knows!! She blushes and gets flustered and embarrassed for a reason and it's because she's aware of what it means but doesn't want to address it.

So that's the observation I was referring to when I made that post! I've gotten so used to calling Sophie oblivious or unaware because it's one of the main words she's labelled as, that as I was rereading the series it was like??? Okay how did we get there she's very aware of everything? She spent her entire childhood reading people's thoughts and learning how people work (passively), so when that was stripped away she started relying really heavily on observation, and she's good at it! She knows how people work and can use that to deduce things about people without being in their heads!

#sometimes I forget just how smart Sophie is #like I know she's smart but also. she is really intelligent. she's good at what she does #and that's easy to overlook #she is fully aware of all the romantic awkwardness in her life #she just also happens to be full of self-doubt and discomfort and pushes it out of her mind #which is different from being oblivious #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #also forgive me taking a few days to get to this one as I was still reading nightfall when I started and wanted a specific line to quote #from flashback that I couldn't find #so I just...waited until I'd read through flashback enough to find it #it was slightly off from where I thought it was so if i'd tried harded I probably could've found it #but then again reading the whole book is fine too #quil's queries #matt nonsie #ed nonsie #dolentsnows #kotlc character analysis #sophie foster

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