| “ | No. That woman's light will melt and murder you. No. No...! | ” |
—Retrace LXXXIX: Staccato Drop | ||
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Introduction
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Noise (ノイズ, Noizu) also known as Zwei (ツヴァイ, Tsuvai) is a recurring antagonist from Jun Mochizuki's Pandora Hearts. One of the most prominent members of the Baskervilles, Noise is the Contractor of the Chain Duldee. This Chain allows her to manipulate her targets into obeying her orders, and it is with this ability that she forces Gilbert Nightray, the best friend of Oz Vessalius, into assaulting Oz at his Coming-of-Age Ceremony—an event that leads to Oz being cast into the Abyss.
This article contains plot and/or ending details for Pandora Hearts.
Read at your own risk.
Over a century prior to Oz's Coming-of-Age Ceremony, a Baskerville girl formed a Contract with the Chain known as Duldee. This Contract was greatly traumatic for the girl, fracturing her mind and causing her to lose all memories of her past and identity prior to the Contract. Upon realizing her Contractor would not have the mental capacity to survive in her own body, Duldee created a second personality inside her, which the girl would come to call Echo. However, the Baskerville Clan would shun her for this, imprisoning her after discovering she was not the only mind in control of her body. The girl grew to hate herself for her weakness, and would remain alone until her cell was found by a boy named Vincent.
Like the girl, Vincent was considered a pariah among the Baskervilles, his red eye branding him a Child of Ill Omen. He would return to visit the girl to discover the specifics of her condition, her power to control others' bodies, and how it did not affect him. Thus, Vincent named the girl Noise, saying the both of them were "anomalies" and thus could feel normal in each other's presence. Noise would grow fiercely protective of Vincent, regarding herself as akin to his older sister. When the Tragedy of Sablier struck, Noise was dragged into the Abyss with the other Baskervilles. She returns to Vincent after finding he'd been adopted by the Nightray Dukedom. Noise commands Echo to serve as Vincent's attendant, allowing her to reside with the Nightrays despite her Baskerville origins. However, her mental state continues to deteriorate, and her relationship with Vincent sours. She becomes increasingly obsessed with Vincent as an extension of herself, adopting his mannerisms, allowing him to physically abuse her other personality, and implied to have eventually formed a sexual relationship with him.
Appearance
Though Noise is mentally at least in her late twenties, she takes the appearance of a sixteen year old girl. She has shoulder-length white hair, though this is sometimes colored as blue. Her eyes are blue, and unlike Echo's, they are usually wide open, drawn with multiple circles around the pupil to give a wild, almost deranged look. She is 160cm (5'3"). Noise's right bangs are pinned together with a red and gold cylindrical hair clip, ending in a golden chain.
Like her colleagues, Noise wears the traditional crimson cloak of the Baskerville Clan, albeit altered for Noise's preference. Noise's cloak has three notable silver buttons along the front, whereas most Baskervilles just keep their cloak tied around their neck. Noise's cloak appears to be oversized. As she nearly always wore the cloak such that her body and face are concealed, it is unclear what (if anything) she usually wears underneath. However, in her final appearances, she wears a simple white chemise with brown boots.
Prior to the Tragedy of Sablier, Noise had long hair and wore a casual dress.
As the two share a body, she and Echo are identical.
Personality
Noise is primarily characterized by exceptional vulnerability regarding her state of mind. It is stated that, were she not to fragment her own mind through the usage of her Chain, she would quickly go insane and perish. She suffers from memory loss, not knowing her identity prior to being named by Vincent, and eventually losing many early memories of him. As a consequence of this, Noise holds a great fear and hatred towards herself. Though shown to fear violence and the suffering of others in flashbacks, she begins to lash out and grow openly hostile in her later years, particularly towards her other personalities.
After many years of imprisonment and isolation, aggravated by the nature of her condition, Noise lacks a coherent sense of self. She clings to Vincent, having determined the both of them to be "anomalous," and adopts his speech patterns and mannerisms. Though unconcerned with whom he sleeps with, she is possessive of his emotional relationships. She believes that, were he to find "light," he would be lost, and Noise would have nothing left.
Despite her possessiveness regarding his romances, Noise ultimately perceives Vincent as a younger brother. As such, her true desire has always been to protect him. It's her own self-loathing that fuels the violent aspects of her relationship with Vincent. Once she accepts Echo, she gives her blessing to Vincent's relationship with Ada, and says she is glad he found someone he could cry to.
Abilities & Powers
Chain
- See More: Duldee
- Noise has an Illegal Contract with the Chain known as Duldee. When a person is targeted by Noise's Chain, a new entity called Duldum is created which takes possession of their body. Duldum is a fragmentation of the person targeted by Duldee, derived from their original personality. This personality then obeys the will of Duldee, allowing Noise to control her targets. There are several conditions to this:
- Duldum cannot work indefinitely. While the exact duration of Duldee's effects is not specified and is implied to vary, Duldum will eventually pass away within the target's body, releasing them from Noise's control.
- As Duldum is not an entirely new personality, but a more easily manipulated version of the target's, a portion of the owner's will remains. Twice had Noise lost control of Gilbert Nightray's Duldum, once after the new personality became fixated on Oz Vessalius's blood and disobeyed Duldee to seek more of it, and once after Oz attempts to force the Duldum to kill him. In addition, Noise implies that Xai Vessalius's Duldum chose to aid Noise rather than harm his daughter.
- Duldee cannot take control of those who have no will to struggle against her, as in the case of Leo.
- Duldee cannot take control of Children of Ill Omen, due to their immunity to the powers of Abyss.
- Duldee's power allowed Noise to create Echoes, a series of split personalities within her own body. This allowed her to escape the harsh conditions of her imprisonment and slow the deterioration of her mind. Over the course of the series, she allows Echo to take control of her body while she is injured, sparing her the pain.
- Healing: As a Baskerville, Noise's body is saturated with powers from the Abyss and is thereby capable of healing from any wound short of amputation, assuming the attack was not charged by the Chain Killers Mad Hatter or B-Rabbit.
- Hand-to-Hand Combat: Noise has proven herself to be very skillful when having to fight with her hands; often times using her acrobatic abilities to her advantage. Although Noise herself tries to force others to fight for her, she's still trained to outmaneuver her opponents rather easily using her twin blue-bladed daggers.
Equipment
Noise has a pair of twin bladed daggers that she uses as her main weapons. Her daggers have a very similar design to Lottie's knife and the same hand grip color (both are golden), though Noise's daggers are wider than Lottie's knife, thus making them more similar to Echo's twin short-bladed swords.
Quotes
- "Don't interfere, B-Rabbit! I feel bad for you since you finally got your Contractor." (To Alice )
- "How mean. Those people were your colleagues too... You've become such a cruel adult, huh? (To Gilbert )
- "Well then, shall we have a special puppet show performance from Duldum?"
- "It's a pity, but the curtains shall fall here. It's not the same as the scenario I had written out."
Appearances
- Retrace I: Innocent Calm (First Appearance)
- Retrace II: Tempest of Conviction
- Retrace VI: Where am I?
- Retrace VII: Reunion
- Retrace IX: Question*
- Retrace XVII: Odds and Ends (Mentioned only)
- Retrace XIX: Detestably*
- Retrace XXII: His name is...*
- Retrace XXIX: Rufus Barma*
- Retrace XXXIV: Noise of Echo
- Retrace XXXVII: Glen Baskerville
- Retrace XXXIX: Gate of Blackness
- Retrace XLI: Where am I?
- Retrace LXI: Demios
- Retrace LXXXII: Wish
- Retrace LXXXIII: After the Rain*
- Retrace LXXXV: Reverberate
- Retrace LXXXVII: Starting Point
- Retrace LXXXIX: Staccato Drop
- Retrace XC: Clock Tower
- Retrace XCI: Juror
- Retrace XCII: A Story
- Retrace XCIV: Blaze
- Retrace XCV: Vincent
- Retrace XCVI: Disagree
- Retrace XCVII: I am
- Retrace XCVIII: Reverberate (†)
- Retrace CIV: Will
- Episode 1: Innocent Calm
- Episode 6: Where am I?
- Episode 7: Whisperer
- Episode 8: Question (Mentioned only)
- Magical Girl Ill-Omened❤Lacie (Non-Canon)
- Pandora Academy (Non-Canon)
(*) - Denotes that the character did not appear physically, but as a part of another character's memories.
Trivia
- Noise canonically in-universe was given her name by Vincent as a child, as at the time she did not remember her original name, and so Vincent gave her the name "Noise" to match Echo's and reflect the sound of her mournful wails.[1]
- "Zwei" is the German word for "two." Though it is primarily Noise who is occasionally addressed as Zwei, the circumstances of this epithet's use as well as its meaning indicate that "Zwei" is intended to refer to Noise and Echo as a collective entity.
- Noise and her relationship with Echo, particularly reflected in Noise's Contracted Chain Duldee and Echo being a version of Duldum, are directly based off Tweedledum and Tweedledee[2] who are characters from a nursery rhyme featured in Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking-Glass.[3]
- Additionally, Noise's antagonistic relationship with Gilbert is also based off Alice Through The Looking Glass, as Gilbert's Chain, Raven, is based off of the Monstrous Crow[4] that chased off Tweedledee and Tweedledum as they prepared for battle.
- Her likes are, in order, human suffering and Vincent. She dislikes Gilbert.
- She has no particular strengths or skills. She is weak when it comes to small, dark places.
- Mochizuki's comment on her is, from the beginning of publication she was thought of as an antagonistic girl whose sense of self will be steadily attacked and torn apart piece by piece. She is glad that at the last moment she was able to regain her true self.
- Noise uses the masculine first person pronoun 僕 (boku), something Echo points out as being an attempt to mimic Vincent. Upon her moment of actualization in which she regains her sense of self, she switches to the gender neutral first person pronoun 私 (watashi).[5]
- In Tomo Kimura's original translation, Noise's usage of 僕 (boku) led to the mistranslation of her pronouns as "he," which was corrected in the subsequent box set translation. Kimura suggests Noise may be a "male personality." However, Japanese rarely uses gendered third person pronouns, and none are ever used for Noise. The only gendered title to ever be assigned to Noise is おねえさん (onee-san, big sister), a title Noise explicitly identifies herself with.
- See this blog post for information on the choice to identify Noise as female.