Tag: Call of the Night

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Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: Hell is Other Vampires in CALL OF THE NIGHT

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.

Call of The Night is a show about living outside of social norms. It has been basically since day 1. Modern vampire stories lend themselves particularly well to this sort of thing, and that might be why the glove fits Call of The Night so well. But whatever the reason, it’s difficult to read the show’s tale of complex nocturnal relationships as being about anything else.

For Ko, vampirism has always represented an ideal exit strategy from the expectations of diurnal society. Vampires do not have to go to school, and since they (presumably, here as in most fiction) live very long lives, there is no need to truly manage one’s time wisely. After all, there can’t be any future problems looming over your head if “the future” never really comes.

In its past few episodes, Call of The Night has raised the obvious counterpoint to this idea; what about the vampires’ own social norms?

Recent episodes have established that as Ko is to humanity, Nazuna is to vampiredom. Nazuna is, in her own way, a social outcast as well. She’s apparently never turned another person, she’s unwilling to seduce people in order to do that, and in general she simply doesn’t seem to get along with the other vampires we’re introduced to very well. In fact, one could easily argue that Nazuna is more of an outcast than Ko is; at least Ko’s classmates seem to like him. The other vampires only just tolerate Nazuna, and that’s after learning about her and Ko’s unique situation. Before that point, one of those vampires, Kikyo Seri (Haruka Tomatsu), actually tries to kill her—and Ko, for knowing too much about vampires—marking the first genuine threat in the entire story.

Things work themselves out, sort of, but we also learn that Ko only has a year to become a vampire before being turned becomes impossible. “Failing to qualify,” as one of the other vampires puts it. What was once a choice has now been turned into a requirement, and worse, one with a time limit. The other vampires do not explicitly tell Ko that they’ll kill him if he can’t manage to turn in that time, but all evidence points to this, since then he’d be a human who knows too much about them with no way of turning into one himself. Once again, Ko finds himself up against a societal wall; expectations imposed, with consequences if they’re not met. (Rather severe ones, I must say.)

This, understandably, makes Ko anxious. Since now he feels like he needs to fall in love with Nazuna rather than just wanting to. He even tries taking her on a date, at Seri’s suggestion, but it pretty quickly falls to pieces.

Ladies, has your man ever left you feeling like this?

Things are only salvaged when Nazuna lifts him into the night once again; trying to fit anyone else’s ideas of what their relationship should be inevitably fails. It’s only on their own terms do Nazuna and Ko truly work together, not just as a couple but even just as friends.

All this said then, the question asks itself; is becoming a vampire really all it’s cracked up to be? Nazuna certainly doesn’t think so, and there is some implication that Seri may not, either. But there’s also a lingering hint that Ko may not have to face this looming problem alone.

In the most recent episode, 8, we’re also introduced to Mahiru (Kenshou Ono). Mahiru is a jovial, all-around friendly sort of guy. Ko really seems to like him, arguably to the point of a crush, and he makes a good first impression.

(I think every middle and high school has at least one guy like this. In my high school it was a stoner dude who was extremely tall. His name was Mitch, and I hope he’s doing well nowadays.) We find out, though, that Mahiru has also been seeing someone after dark, with the broad implication that he, too, may be in love with a vampire.

It seems like that for all Ko has used nighttime as an escape, his problems are not content to stay out of the shadows. As always, I am intrigued to see where the series goes from here, as it enters its final stretch.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 5 – Well, That’s a Problem

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

In its fifth episode, Call of The Night refocuses on its first thought as a creative work. Namely, that Ko is down absolutely awful for Nazuna, and is maybe a slight bit in denial about it. Just a smidgen. The series recenters the two’s dynamic here, as after several episodes of also palling around with Akira, she’s entirely absent from this one. Thus, it’s just Nazuna and Ko.

The episode actually opens in Nazuna’s apartment, where we learn that the vampire version of waking up in the middle of the night is waking up in the middle of the afternoon. (This is where the show puts its allotted few scant minutes of actual daylight per episode. I have noticed that in restricting its usage of normal sunlight so heavily, Call of The Night basically inverts the usual day/night dynamic of most anime of this sort. It’s a neat trick.) Here, she does things like miss a FedEx delivery, paly a video game she’s not really that invested in, and other such Normal Things for people who are teenagers or young adults to get up to.

She seems a bit lonely, underneath that teasing vampire facade, but perhaps I’m just projecting a touch. Most importantly, she visits a bath house, and from there the episode’s plot springs.

You see, she’s only in the bathhouse for a little while when she gets a beep from Ko. As such, she leaves in a hurry, and when she meets Ko, her hair is all down and soft-looking.

This causes Ko to become self-conscious of the fact that, oh yeah, this pretty lady who sucks his blood every night is attractive, and he kind of falls down the stairs of being awkward and being aware that you’re awkward but not really being able to do anything about it for the remainder of the episode. When Nazuna sinks her fangs into him, perhaps finding his squirming cute, she actually bites him so hard that he cries out in….well, I’ll leave cries out in what up to you, dear readers. Suffice it to say, this is the hardest that the series has yet leaned into the whole “bloodsucking as sex” metaphor.

Sometimes I feel obligated to try to come up with clever captions for these pictures, but I really don’t know how I’d make this more of a sex joke than it already is.

Would you believe the two end up at a love hotel by accident? Yes, just like that episode of My Dress-Up Darling from earlier this year, and I’m sure I’m neither the first nor last person who will compare the two. But while I found that episode to be one of MDUD’s weaker forays, this episode—and this part of it, in particular—is surprisingly nuanced. More or less; Ko is definitely attracted to Nazuna, he knows that, and she knows that. Apparently, drinking someone’s blood lets a vampire get a sense of their thoughts and feelings via taste. This is a weird and cool bit of worldbuilding tossed in here, perhaps as a metaphor for Nazuna’s being generally more experienced than Ko is.

More to the point; Ko feels bad about his attraction, because he does genuinely consider Nazuna a friend, and those feelings rest uneasily together in his mind; he feels like he’s, to quote the subtrack directly, doing something “immoral.” Nazuna, interestingly, waves the entire notion off. Be immoral, she says. That is what nighttime is for, after all. The only thing she cautions him against is “being lazy about [his] emotions.” Feel anything, but feel honestly.

It’s hard to know if the show herself will still be backing her up there in six weeks, but it certainly is for now. Later on, the topic of conversation turns toward other people whose blood Nazuna has sucked, and Ko, perhaps predictably, gets a bit jealous. (She tells him, in an apparent attempt to make him less so, that she also sucks women’s blood. One might call her bi-neck-sual, if they had a love of awful puns, and I very much do.)

Nazuna also reveals, upon taking Ko back to her apartment, that her job is actually how she meets most of the people whose blood she sucks. What is her job? Well, she is a “professional cuddler.”

Yeah, really. I did not know this was a thing either. Maybe it isn’t! Who knows?

What that seems to entail is a kind of non-sexual prostitution where she wears a slightly revealing nurse getup and gives people massages or the like while lying down with them but, pointedly, without actually doing anything beyond that. Frankly, I am a little torn here. Part of me thinks this is a bit of a cop-out. There isn’t anything wrong or immoral about sex work and I feel like that might’ve made more sense given the episode’s whole theme. On the other hand, it might make Ko and Nazuna’s relationship seem even dicier than it already is, so maybe it’s fine that they didn’t go that route. Who can say?

Nazuna proves herself to be pretty knowledgeable about massage work. (Watching this part of the episode honestly kind of made me want one myself. I do have pretty stiff shoulders.) She’s also, as we’ve long known, very adept at relaxing Ko, and just when she’s about to sink her teeth into him yet again, her door bell rings, and the episode’s denouement makes an abrupt swerve into cringe comedy.

The person at the door is one of her regular customers, and Nazuna is—or at least claims to be—far too tired from massaging Ko to actually help her out. So, Ko will have to do it in her place, using the knowledge Nazuna’s imparted to him.

Cue the credits!

Yes, on that particularly odd cliffhanger, today’s episode ends, promising next week’s will be perhaps a bit heavier on the wacky hijinks side. (Although honestly, who knows? This show is a bit hard to predict.) Overall, I like this episode. I know some folks find Nazuna and Ko’s relationship rather unpleasant, but for my part, I think the show manages a decent job of selling it as being good for both of them. This episode serves as a sort of back to basics, while also progressing that relationship along. The night keeps calling, why would Ko stop answering?

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 4 – Isn’t This a Tight Squeeze?

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

And we’re back, just like Akira walking to school.

I feel that, over the course of my coverage of Call of The Night so far, I’ve painted the show as a sort of choose-your-love interest dichotomy for protagonist Ko. Nazuna, the vampire, and a very literal child of the night on one hand. And Akira, who is comparatively normal, is more straightforward as a person, and is also, you know, actually Ko’s age, on the other.

This isn’t entirely wrong, I don’t think. But it’s also not the whole picture, and “Isn’t This a Tight Squeeze?” complicates that dynamic in some interesting ways. It’s also probably, by only just a hair, the show’s most suggestive episode so far. But as in the premiere, these plays as conventional sexiness don’t really scan as such. (To be fair, I’m not the target audience here. I feel the same about any number of romance-oriented pop songs.)

The episode opens on a short introductory scene, where we see Akira attending school. (Once again, the series adheres to its loose rule that she’s the only one who gets to spend any time in actual, full-on daylight.) There, a teacher lectures a student on the importance of a proper sleep schedule. Maybe a bit on the nose, but it does bring this episode’s central twisting of the dynamic to the forefront. Because the night after that schoolday ends, Akira finds herself unable to sleep, and joins Ko in hanging out with Nazuna after dark.

But we’ll get back to that. Ko himself is in a bit of tizzy given the events of last week’s episode. He spends the first third or so of “Tight Squeeze” replaying them in his mind. He and Nazuna kissed, and he can’t get that kiss out of his mind. Does this mean, he wonders, that he’s already in love with Nazuna? Is there really any way to be sure? There’s even a faintly ridiculous scene in here where he catches sight of a couple kissing on a small walking bridge and freaks out a bit, howling that it’s the first time he’s ever seen two people kiss before. (This seems very dubious to me. Not even his parents? Not even just….other random people while he’s been out and about before?)

One person, at least, is of the opinion that he’s overthinking it: Nazuna herself. She does bite him, of course—Nazuna rarely seems to pass up an opportunity for a sip—but nothing happens. When he spills the beans about what’s been on his mind, Nazuna suggests that he’s probably not in love, just horny. That much is probably correct, but her follow-up to that, where she says that thinking about love and lust seperately is “unhealthy”, is absolutely hilarious coming from her. Reflective, I think, less of any real assumption the show is working off of, and more of a truly stunning lack of self-awareness on Nazuna’s part, given her love of sex jokes but inability to handle actual romance talk without getting flustered. (In fact, Nazuna mentions that their kiss last week was her first kiss, too, despite waving it off as just something “friends do.”)

We meet back up with Akira the following night—which seems to make that introductory bit a flash-forward, you don’t see those too often—unable to sleep and deciding to hit the town at the bright and early hour of 11:30PM, with the rather silly notion in her head that she’ll just stay up and go to school when it opens. (There’s a very interesting, but extremely blink-and-you’ll-miss-it bit of environmental character building as we see her get out of bed. Namely, the space under it is tiled with those foam puzzle piece tiles you see in kindergartens sometimes. Indicative of an inner childishness, perhaps?)

Or perhaps she just likes the texture of foam. You decide!

In any case, she obviously meets up with Ko, who of course takes her to hang out with himself and Nazuna. There is an abrupt smash cut from his invitation to he and Nazuna raging at each other over actual, no-trademark-avoidance Street Fighter II. The sheer contrast is hilarious.

The remainder of the three’s little sleepover is interesting. The show again makes a not-great joke about how Ko doesn’t like to be, ahem, bitten in front of his other friend. They also play a dating sim, where, even in the confines of a very primitive virtual world, Nazuna can’t bring himself to go to school, which leads to the tsundere character getting testy with him. At another point in the game, a quiet busty girl shows up, to which Ko has a much more positive reaction. Nazuna rags on him for this, and it’s pretty funny.

The real telling moment near the end here, though, is when the three of them are all laying down together. A weird experience for Akira, to be sure. But the conversation the two have here is legitimately sweet, with Akira essentially accepting that Ko prefers hanging around with Nazuna at night to going to school during the day but promising to still try to get him to go now and again.

Somewhat amusingly, as the two talk about studying, the framing of the shot seems to really strongly imply that the only thing Ko is studying at the moment is Akira’s legs.

Someone on the show’s production put their entire soul into this sequence.

That note is probably the first time in a while that Akira has really felt like a viable romantic option for Ko. But, at the same time, they could also easily just stay friends, too. The question of who he’ll end up with seems less important than ever as the episode draws to a close. The real value here is in the little moments.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 3 – A Lot Came Out

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Literally speaking, Call of The Night is about a boy who’s down bad for a vampire. But more abstractly, and perhaps more importantly, its main theme, at least so far, seems to be otherness. I mentioned this a bit back in episode one, but “A Lot Came Out” really hones in on the concept, through a number of techniques both related to its actual narrative and more abstract material like its visuals.

To wit; this episode formally introduces Akira Asai (Yumiri Hanamori), Ko’s one actual human friend and, as one would expect from a pretty ordinary schoolgirl, she’s mostly active during the day. Despite that, Call of The Night never steps outside of its nocturnal purview; the only times we get to see actual daylight are during flashbacks.

Both ends of twilight are fine for present-set storytelling, but never broad day. That’s a forbidden zone that I doubt the show will ever breach unless it’s trying to one of a few very specific things.

What does that have to do with being an outcast? Well, as previously discussed in this column, a vampire can be a symbol for almost any kind of “other” in a narrative. In the creature’s roots as a being of the horror genre, this was used to stir up fear, but nowadays, as in Call of The Night, using vampires as a kinder (although not without some issues) metaphor for anyone who lives outside of one’s established frame of reference is fairly common. Ko, in his desire to become a vampire, has basically already committed to the choice of eventually joining that “other.” I imagine that much of the rest of the series is going to be testing that resolve. There are a lot of ways Call of The Night could do this (in future episodes look out for Ko running afoul of curfew laws or something of the sort, it almost seems too obvious not to do), but here it takes a fairly simple form. Akira, as a normal high schooler just like Ko himself, is representative of the kind of normal life that Ko is leaving behind.

Maybe that’s all fair enough but you’re wondering what actually happens in the episode. Thankfully, that’s pretty easy to explain; Ko and Akari reconnect after years of not talking to each other and start hanging out. Nazuna gets kind of jealous and she and Ko have a minor fight. They make up at the end, roll credits.

The devil (or vampire, as it were) is in the details, though. In flashback scenes that establish how Ko and Akira first met as young kids, Ko notably avoids playing with the other children on the playground. Instead, he studies a line of marching ants, finding their hurried resource-collecting amusing in its own way. (I’m not saying he’s definitely supposed to be neurodivergent, but when the shoe fits….) Akira, who converses with him and eventually joins him in his observation, comes across as a kind girl in this flashback, but they’re clearly coming from different places. This leads to some confusion when they meet again in the present day.

Which isn’t to say that she doesn’t like him, mind you….

When the two get back in touch (via the whole watch situation from episode 2), they start meeting up regularly. Akira gets up very early to go to school, you see, which conveniently lines up with Ko’s nocturnal schedule. In fact, between Akira and Nazuna, Ko is well on his way to building an entire nighttime social circle. But, there’s the small bit of trouble in paradise that, because Ko is now hanging out with two people, not just one, he has to cut into his time with Nazuna a bit. The episode doesn’t spell this out until the very end, but it’s obvious that this makes Nazuna a bit jealous. She ends up confronting the two, and any pretense at keeping the whole “vampire” thing a secret evaporates when she promptly sucks the blood out of Ko’s neck right in front of Akira. (If this entire dynamic sounds slightly uncomfortable to you, it’s that way in the show itself as well, although thankfully not to the extent that it ruins the scene or anything.)

The three hit up a restaurant to hopefully hash out their differences. (Which, frankly you could boil down how far removed Nazuna is from Akira or even Ko, yet, by pointing out that while Akira gets a full breakfast and Ko just gets a coffee, she gets a cartoonish-looking stein of beer.) Nazuna and Akira have a brief but fairly tense conversation, during which Akira also makes the mistake of inviting Ko back to school. This ends with Nazuna abruptly leaving after asking Akira why, if she’s really such a good friend of his, she hasn’t reached out to him in the past few years at all. (Akira, it’s worth noting, does not respond. Although arguably she doesn’t really get a chance to. My assumption is we’ll circle back to her side of things again next week.)

It’s telling that after Ko picks up her bill (classic vampire dick move, that, leaving a restaurant without paying), he rushes after her. We can think of Akira and Nazuna as representing two, roughly, different approaches to life. Whether we should boil that down to something as simple as “straight and narrow” vs. “dangerous but wild” or look at it in a more nuanced fashion will hinge on where the show goes from here, but when he sprints out the restaurant door, it’s very clear that Ko has already made his choice.

Ko and Nazuna’s little fight ends when the two meet up on a random rooftop—this show loves random rooftops—and the two have this exchange, which is worth reproducing in its entirety, if you’ll forgive the avalanche of image embeds.

And that really is the thing. No matter what else happens, Ko has already committed to going “over to the other side.” Despite what anyone else might think, and despite his own reservations. Nazuna likes to tease, but her and Ko’s relationship, while they definitely are also friends, is also much more involved than a simple biter / bite-ee thing, whatever you choose to map that to. (Although her constantly cracking jokes about how their relationship is ‘purely physical’ certainly pushes the viewer in a….certain direction.) As they resolve their differences, Nazuna notices that Ko’s bloodied his lip from tripping up the stairs to the roof. And then, in defiance of contemporary romance anime and manga structure, and in what I genuinely think is a pretty bold move, this happens.

A make up turns to a makeout, Nazuna flies off as the dawn breaks behind her, telling her “friend” that she’ll see him again tomorrow. A stunned Ko can only retort that “friends” don’t normally, you know, kiss and such.

Now to be fair, maybe—and it’s a huge maybe—vampires and humans have different ideas of what constitutes ‘romance’, and it is definitely not impossible that the show will try to walk this back. But I rather doubt it will try to do so with any substantial force. As mentioned, Ko has already made his choice. The show is called Call of The Night, after all, and only one of the two girls he spoke to in today’s episode is nocturnal.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 2 – Do You Do LINE?

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Last week, while covering Call of the Night‘s debut episode, I made mention that Nazuna is, in a way dangerous. Or at least, representative of dangerous things, in a way that’s fairly inherent to her being a vampire. I stand by that, because last episode still, you know, happened. But what was also evident even then, and is far moreso this week, is that she’s also a bit of a doofus.

What this episode really cements is that Nazuna and Ko have a great dynamic. They’re a pair of verbal pinball flippers. It’s always hard to convey banter as a positive quality in writing, but the fact that the back-and-forth of sex jokes and general endearing dumbassery doesn’t get old mostly speaks for itself. For instance, there is Ko’s attempt to get Nazuna to give him her phone number, which runs into some of the usual problems one might expect when trying to hook up with a vampire.

Using this specific term places Nazuna in the same realm of dorkdom as Pearl from Steven Universe. Truly, no mean feat.

Perhaps more relevant to the show’s actual plot, Ko here reaffirms that, yes, he is actively trying to fall in love with Nazuna so that when she bites him he will become a vampire. Given that he’s a teenager one would think this would be easy, but hey, some hearts are pickier than others. On the third hand, though, it’s not like Call of the Night is shy about pairing these two up pretty hard already. They spend the first third or so of the episode looking for each other (which eventually leads to the phone exchange above, since neither of them have any easy way to contact the other).

When they do eventually meet up, Nazuna again invites Ko over, and the framing is still less than subtle.

The episode’s second plot revolves around the two trying to find some way to keep in touch, given Nazuna’s lack of anything that can use a modern cellular network. Ko eventually hits on the idea of using….toy “transceiver” watches with walky-talkies in them.

This odd little detour has more underlying implication than one might expect. Sure, they spend a while fiddling with them—playing hide and seek, basically, an apt display that they’re both immature in their own ways—but then Ko reveals that when he bought them as a kid he hid one away as part of a longwinded ploy to be able to talk to someone new, only for one of them to simply go missing. That’s honestly kinda depressing! Which Nazuna actually points out (with a signature lack of tact).

Perhaps the most revealing moment though comes when the two take a short flight to Ko’s school, where Ko manages to do some pretty amazing deduction about his new friend. Noticing that she makes a ton of sex jokes but gets flustered at discussion of actual romance, he has this thought.

It’s a little too early to say if he’s right (although, I think so), but if he is; that’s a pretty impressive target to hit considering his own lack of experience. It’s also maybe a smidgen unrealistic, although, then again, teenagers can be awfully perceptive in their own way.

As the episode ends, Ko heads home, and shockingly, his toy watch goes off. Before he can fully process the question of who could possibly have the missing watch and why, someone who seems to know him spooks him from behind. (Not unlike what Nazuna did last week.)

The introduction of another person into the show’s core dynamic this early is an interesting thing. But, really, you could see it coming even if there weren’t other people asides from Ko and Nazuna in the OP animation. The Sun always comes up eventually.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

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Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 1 – Night Flight

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

Ko Yamori (Gen Satou) is having girl problems. Quite the opposite of the many heartbroken protagonists who litter his genre, Ko has recently turned someone else down, on the grounds that he doesn’t really understand what “love” or wanting to date someone actually are yet. Through a combination of resultant bullying and just plain ol’ feeling bad, this has made him want to stop going to school. So, he does. He skips class by day and walks about town late at night. The city is neon-on-black and blown out around him as he absorbs the relative tranquility of a small playground and rambles to himself.

Scrolling post-sundown social media (never a great idea), he gets it in his head to try drinking, despite being only 14. He finds an alcohol vending machine—did you know those were a thing? I certainly didn’t—and, more than a little paranoid as he does so, slips a few coins in. The machine emits a yellow-amber glow all the while, almost sickly in its illumination of the scenery.

He is then promptly jumpscared.

That is Nazuna Nanakusa (Sora Amamiya), nighttime socialite, owner of a pretty cool cloak, and vampire. The specifics are less important than the broadstroke; Nazuna turns Ko’s life on its head over the course of their single night together, which takes up the entire first episode, with not a single second of concession to the morning after. She chats up drunk salarymen, she teases and prods Ko, she says she likes to help people who can’t sleep at night solve their problems.

She takes him to her apartment.

Sadly, she does not climb up the side of her apartment in lizard fashion.

An aside; Call of the Night is somewhat new territory for this site. Despite being the holder of the seasonal romcom slot like previous Let’s Watch subjects My Dress-Up Darling and Kaguya-sama: Love is War!, Call of the Night is not particularly similar to either, and it would be a mistake to lump them together simply because they’re part of the same genre. Call of the Night‘s pedigree is older, and puts the series itself in a more sensible context. After all, people being attracted to vampires instead of (or in addition to) being afraid of them stretches back to the very dawn of popular vampire fiction. They’re nothing new in anime, either, with more or less popular titles that are about or prominently feature a vampire love interest including, just off the top of my own head, Rosario+Vampire, Vampire Knight, Actually, I Am…. / My Monster Secret, Seifuku no Vampiress Lord, Vampeerz, etc.

These span several different genres, but what all have in common is that the vampire is portrayed, at least initially, and in line with their origins as a creature of the horror genre, as something dangerous. Something that warrants caution. This is true of Call of the Night as well, even as Ko himself throws that caution to the wind not long after discovering Nazuna’s true nature and he decides he wants in on the whole “vampire” thing, the framing never lets her seem too innocent for too long. For every cut that depicts Nazuna like this, where she says something goofy or outright dumb.

There’s another that portrays her like this; a predatorial-in-the-animal-sense midnight stalker. She’s a vampire. Let her bite you.

Now, while danger can certainly be scary, it can also be salacious, and unsurprisingly that’s the angle that most of Call of the Night‘s more intense scenes take. Even less surprisingly, the attempts to play up Nazuna’s conventional sex appeal don’t work nearly as well as those that focus her vampiric features. The former are simply too clean. There’s a shot in here where the camera rotates around her body in an attempt to show off her midriff and it just looks absurd. (What is she, a sports car?) This is without mentioning what looks a lot like airbrushing on parts of her body, it just all looks too silly to take seriously.

The latter though? Well, there’s an old joke in some circles about how you can tell when they get someone who’s “into feet” (or into whatever) to animate a given scene. I think Call of the Night‘s team has someone who’s into teeth.

If they could only nail one, though, it’s actually better for it to be the latter. Ko, after all, is not so much attracted to Nazuna yet as he’s attracted to the idea of becoming a vampire, as is established not long after Nazuna reveals that she is one. We need to see this stuff through his eyes for that desire to make sense on a literal level (and on a less literal one, depicting some kind of temptation only works in any context if you can successfully convey said tempting). Fill in your own vice or vices here; is “vampirism” code for sex? Drugs? Booze? Just the general nightlife experience? There’s no reason it can’t be all of the above, and by keeping the metaphor fairly broad and open to finer interpretation, Call of the Night‘s first episode mostly succeeds in its aims of making Ko’s attraction to Nazuna—or perhaps more, what Nazuna offers—understandable, in spite of some minor flaws.

Call of the Night does also zero in on one particular thing. Nazuna, at one point, asks Ko why he thinks people stay up late in the first place. It’s a rhetorical question, and she provides her own answer.

This is an interesting notion, and certainly one that maps to why a lot of say, millennials like myself stay up too late, but the way Nazuna plays it is even more interesting. Later in the episode, Ko expresses that he knows he shouldn’t be doing “something like this”—that is to say, this whole skipping school and staying out at night bit—in the first place. Nazuna, who seems to have taken an interest in him despite herself, responds to that thought by hovering above the ground, and asking him this.

The question pierces the thematic heart of Call of the Night in general. How does Ko feel about all this? He says to himself, remembering back to the incident at school, that he tried to do the right thing. Nazuna cuts in—literally invading the flashback—to ask why he even cares.

It’s clear that Nazuna, for whatever reason or reasons, wants to bring him over to the very literal dark side. He can be a creature of the night too, if he wants to be. And that is, abstractly, what the show says for anyone; the only requirement for being an outcast, after all, is that you are cast out. Ko, at least in his own mind, already has been. The freaks come out at night, the question for Ko—and more broadly for anyone—is simply whether they feel they fit in more with them, or with the normal folks who thrive while the Sun’s up.

On another level; the extent to which Nazuna is a shamelessly bad influence adds further knots to the already twisty question of how “okay” any of this is. But personally, I’m less interested in the question of if Nazuna’s actions are in some way moral and more in the question of if this resonates both with its intended audience and more generally.

That’s a question that it will take the rest of Call of the Night’s thirteen episodes to answer, so for now, it’s an open one. But! I think this first showing is promising. Toward the end of “Night Flight”, the episode earns its title, as Nazuna gives Ko the thrill of his life whether he wants it or not.

She kicks him off of a roof, and lets him panic mid-freefall for a moment. Of course, she swoops down to save him, picking him up and carrying him away as ED theme kicks in.1 In that moment, Call of the Night is pure black magic. If it keeps figuring out how to do that, it has nothing to worry about; the night is still young.

1: Also called “Call of the Night”, and after which the manga was originally named. I did not know this when I wrote the article and have updated the phrasing here and added this footnote to reflect the reality of the situation.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Announcing the Summer 2022 Let’s Watches

That’s right, we’re doing this in style now.

I’ve changed my methodology for these a few times over the past couple seasons, but this time it’s very straightforward. After voting myself to break a tie (something I’ve not had to do in any previous community poll, things were much closer this season than they’ve been in any past season), I took a screenshot of the final vote tally at around 10PM last night (I checked again this morning just to make sure nothing had changed, don’t worry). I will be covering the top three shows, because honestly, I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what to cover this season. Putting it in the fans’ hands is a simple and practical solution.

Why don’t we make it a bit of an event? Here are the winners, starting from the third-place winner, and working up to the first.

Third Place: Call of the Night

Filling in the “exceedingly horny rom-com” gap that must have been left in all your hearts following the end of My Dress-Up Darling a season ago, Call of the Night is an interesting one. I read a very small bit of the manga for this, back when it was new. I liked it but failed to keep up with it (I am very bad at keeping up with manga), so I’m going into this just-shy-of-blind. Still, what I do know is promising. Take the Sentai blurb, for instance.

Wracked by insomnia and wanderlust, Kou Yamori is driven onto the moonlit streets every night in an aimless search for something he can’t seem to name. His nightly ritual is marked by purposeless introspection — until he meets Nazuna, who might just be a vampire! Kou’s new companion could offer him dark gifts and a vampire’s immortality. But there are conditions that must be met before Kou can sink his teeth into vampirism, and he’ll have to discover just how far he’s willing to go to satisfy his desires before he can heed the Call of the Night!

Sentai Filmworks

That’s really quite a lot to fit into your high premise. And it’s not like vampirism as a metaphor for coming of age—especially the less wholesome parts of that whole process—is anything new, but I do think this really has the potential to be something special. Whether or not it will actually deliver on that is another question, of course.

I do also want to point out the involvement of Tomoyuki Itamura in the director’s seat here. Just earlier this year, he wrapped up his work on The Case Study of Vanitas, a completely different horny vampire anime. That show is very good (if certainly not without a couple issues), so it gives me hope that Call of the Night will similarly be so. I suppose we’ll all find out together.

Coverage begins on July 8th. (If you’re reading this the day it goes up, that’s a week from today.)

Second Place: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

Ahahaha. Oh no.

This one getting as many votes as it did quite surprised me. If nothing else, you can take its presence here as evidence that I didn’t tamper with the vote in any way, because I actually wasn’t planning to watch it at all, at this point!

I love the original Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer manga. It’s one of my favorite action manga full stop, actually, and that’s mostly because of its deep characterization and solid thematic core. But it’s also because Satoshi Mizukami is a goddamn genius, and everything he draws is gorgeous. The only other anime he’s ever had a strong hand in, Planet With, did manage the incredibly tall ask of translating his distinct visual style to animation. Because of that, it managed to stand out in a year that was absolutely stuffed with great anime.

But that was in 2018, four years that might as well be four centuries ago, given all that’s happened since. Now, it is 2022, and the Biscuit Hammer adaption is being handed to a studio of little note (NAZ, they did Sabikui Bisco earlier this year alongside the similarly named Studio OZ), a director who is basically a total unknown (Nobuaki Nakanishi), and a series compositor best known for an utterly infamous flop (Yuuichirou Momose, of My Sister, My Writer notoriety). Combine that with the utterly hideous key visual sitting at the top of this entry, and a pair of trailers best described as “absolutely terrible” and “okay I guess”, and this one is going to be an active challenge to get through, barring some miracle. It would not be the first time that Mizukami has drawn blood from a stone, but no one should be expected to pull that sort of thing off twice.

I guess we’ll find out if it really is that bad or if all this doomsaying will look foolish twelve weeks from now soon. Coverage begins on the 9th.

First Place: Lycoris Recoil

What is Lycoris Recoil?

The interesting thing about an original series that’s yet to premiere is that it can, in our hearts and minds, be literally anything. Lycoris Recoil has had Key Visuals and trailers and all the usual accoutrements that come with being a TV anime in the modern day, but no one really seems to have a good grasp on its character. Will it be lighthearted? Dark? How big of a role does the cafe` we know is a central setting point of the story play? The chrome pistols and spider lilies in the above KV art certainly imply something sinister is going on, and “Lycoris Recoil” itself is a two-language pun combining the scientific name of the spider lily with just one inevitable consequence of firing a gun. But all of these things raise more questions than they answer, and we’re all going into this show with little to go off of but our own notions about what makes art interesting.

To me, this is fascinating. I can recall an upcoming original series capturing the public imagination in this way twice in recent times. The first time, we got Wonder Egg Priority, an anime I dearly love, but that’s an opinion that puts me firmly in small company. The second, we got Sonny Boy, which I also really like, and is also divisive (although much less so). Putting Lycoris Recoil in that company is probably attaching unrealistic expectations to it; if you want my earnest guess, I’m thinking this will be more of a piece with anime like Princess Principal or the underrated RELEASE THE SPYCE than either of the aforementioned. But honestly, who knows?

Well, we will pretty soon. Lycoris Recoil premieres tomorrow. Coverage will begin then, barring some unexpected circumstance.

See you then, anime fans. But, as a parting item of interest, here is the entire top half of the poll, if you’d like to see what else got a lot of votes. I am particularly surprised at how well Uncle From Another World did.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.