Call of the Night

Episode 8

The clock is ticking for Ko, who has no more than a single year to fall in love with his night buddy and avoid a grisly fate at the hands and claws of at least five other hot vampire ladies. But more importantly, Nazuna just found diamonds in Minecraft. Despite the imposition of a new time limit, this week's installment of Call of the Night delivers a healthy dose of levity after last week's action-tinged infodump. In fact, this might be the most fun I've had with the show yet.

Seri deserves a lot of the credit for that fun, so I'll give her top billing in this review. Her meddling with Ko could have ended up a one-off thing, but given the reaction she gets out of their chance encounter this week, I think her smile will be darkening his proverbial doorstep far into the future. That scene where he runs into her—from the characters, to the performances, to the rhythm of cuts—possesses the exact cadence of Koyomi Araragi running into any one of the countless women who have owned his ass. It's the little Monogatari-esque touches like that keep Call of the Night so high in my admittedly biased esteem. And presentation aside, Ko and Seri just have fun personalities to squeeze into the same scene. Look at her squee at his tenderhearted naivete. It's adorable.

Of course, Seri's most important contribution this week is filling Ko's poor teenage head with all kinds of classic date ideas guaranteed to irritate his paranormal paramour. It's important to remember what we learned in the last episode. Nazuna, even by askew vampiric standards, is an anomaly: a rude shut-in who loves booze, dirty jokes, and tormenting her friends with her boisterous behavior. And that's exactly why she's wife material. If Nazuna turned me down to strip-mine some diamonds on her modded PS1, I would swoon so hard I'd hit the ground. Ko, unfortunately, is not quite worldly enough to see the appeal here, but that's for the best, because it gives me the gift of laughing at their disaster date. While none of the jokes here are particularly inventive, their delivery and context elevate the material into good-natured japes that ultimately bring the two closer together.

I want to dig a little bit more into that “good-natured” comment and how it reconciles with the show's exploration of illicit nighttime thrills with bloodsucking beasts. To put it another way, I've praised Call of the Night for its hedonistic flirtations, but I also don't think it's incorrect to call the show heartwarming. And for the record, I also don't think it's always necessary to resolve these kinds of contradictions in art. However, if I were to do so, I believe the key lies in Ko's specific goal. Most romcoms would make it so he has to convince Nazuna to fall in love with him. There are entire character archetypes and subgenres based on that foundation, so it'd be the logical way to approach this story too.

Ko, however, wants to convince his own self to fall in love with Nazuna, i.e. he wants to understand and experience what being in love is. That's a much pricklier and more intimate prospect—especially when given a hard time limit. There are, of course, any number of equally trite and melodramatic ways to tell and conclude that kind of story, but so far, Call of the Night has approached Ko's romantic inquisitiveness with complete earnestness. That's where the good-natured vibes come from, and I find those to be very compatible with Ko and Nazuna's overall journey to learn more about themselves and each other, in and outside of Minecraft.

Plotwise, the big development this week swings the focus back to Ko's daywalking friends and introduces a new face, Mahiru. There's not much to say about him yet, besides him being an all-around great dude who apparently shares Ko's predilection for hooking up with sketchy nocturnal older women. But we won't hold that against him. Given Nazuna's undead nature, we're also inclined to be suspicious of this mystery lady of his, but we'll have to wait and see. Moreover, it's nice to see more of Ko's pre-Nazuna life and acquaintances. I like the idea that, as he gets closer to becoming a vampire himself, the audience sees more and more of what his “normal” life was like. And so far, it does seem, well, pretty normal. He had a small but close circle of friends, and both Akira and Mahiru continue to care about his well-being. Akira especially gets a gold star for reading between the lines of Nico's ultimatum. The boy needs someone with at least half a brain looking out for him.

Overall, I think a silly episode like this was just what the doctor with suspiciously sharp canines ordered. Call of the Night has an actual sense of direction now, but ironically, that seems to have honed its ability to loaf around and goof off. And I appreciate an anime that understands when and where to be carefree. Is it clumsy writing, eight episodes into a series, to introduce a life-or-death time limit the heroine conveniently forgot all about? Yeah, probably, but spinning that into a quick jab at Nazuna's expense is more important than worrying about whether or not the plotting is airtight. That's the Call of the Night way.

Rating:

Call of the Night is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Steve's Twitter DMs are open to vampires and vampires only. Otherwise, catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.