Call of the Night Season 2

Episode 10

It's the big showdown: Nazuna versus Anko. Two ladies with big jackets enter. One lady leaves. Like all good anime battles, the real conflict is internal and emotional. Nazuna is conflicted between her desire to protect Ko and her unwillingness to hurt her first friend. Anko weighs her self-destructive drive against her innate survival instinct, while also venting her inner frustrations externally against her former partner. Both women care deeply about their respective motivations, and that makes their clash an explosive one.

On a technical level, I like the way the anime presents the fight. The schoolyard setting brings to mind Kizumonogatari, and the pacing emphasizes their differing styles. Nazuna does all the typical vampire moves: flying, super speed, throwing large objects, ect. Meanwhile Anko fights dirty, both because she wants to provoke Nazuna's anger, and because it's logically the only way she can hold her own against supernatural strength. It's to Call of the Night's credit how far it takes this matchup's asymmetry without snapping our suspension of disbelief. Seeing Anko run around like a Looney Tunes character injects some levity into the confrontation as well. And sure, maybe Kotoyama was making up rules on the fly, but I think it's more interesting if Anko can hurt Nazuna with a gun. We've already established that vampires don't actually know that much about themselves, anyway, and Nazuna is one of the most rookie of them all.

That one red eye is a powerful look for Nazuna, too. It reflects her divided mental state, and it mirrors the way Anko's eyes are frequently framed, with one normal lens and one lens occluded by light. Duality is a key theme throughout Call of the Night, and Anko's arc is no exception. For example, if we overlap Anko with Ko, Nazuna's two known partners, then Anko's threats to kill Ko become an expression of her suicidal ideations. In simpler terms, she hurts Nazuna as a means of hurting herself. While she outwardly pins the loss of her family on vampires, internally, she feels responsible—not just for killing her father, but for rejecting Nazuna afterwards. Seeing Nazuna cavort around with Ko probably reminded her that Nazuna could have and would have helped her, if she was willing to accept it at the time. However, after ten years, Anko is too deep into her revenge plot to change her mind.

I appreciate that Anko acknowledges her master plan isn't a very good one. It's riddled with gaps and leaps in logic, and after seeing the pandemic response in 2020, I doubt people would stay off the streets for even a week. Her dream of quiet, enjoyable nights can never come—at least on a societal level. Call of the Night's first season, though, provided weekly proof that a variety of good times can be enjoyed during the witching hours. Ko and Nazuna enjoyed plenty of quiet and loud nights together. Nobody is stopping Anko from doing the same except herself. And that, of course, is the main problem here.

Ko, meanwhile, earns his keep as the series' protagonist by proving yet again that he is one smart cookie. Even before Anko sends him that message, he more or less deduces that she isn't in that fight to win it. He also sees through the vampiric bravado masking Niko's and the other's motivations. It makes sense; they all think they have an image to maintain as creatures of the night. But in reality, they're all big softies who would rather drink the night away. Ko wouldn't want to hang out with them, let alone become one of them, if they weren't good people. Anko, too, is only human, and it's by understanding her humanity that Ko is able to track her down and thwart her plans.

Anko ends their battle on a note of wistful romance, confessing that if anyone were to kill her, she wanted it to be Nazuna. As she leaves the gymnasium, though, she wryly states that Nazuna never gave her what she wanted. Those two lines neatly sum up Anko's psyche. She's saturated with regret and takes it out on both herself and others. I think Nazuna definitely would have given her anything back when they met, but I also think Anko didn't know what it was she wanted in the first place. She was a confused queer adolescent, and her family tragedy stunted her growth before she could come to know herself. After a decade's worth of pain, she's ready to end it all.

That brings us to our cliffhanger, which is exactly where I figured this episode would end. I'm especially glad it doesn't cut off a few seconds earlier, because I think teasing the audience that way would have been too sensationalist. Accidentally firing a round into Ko forces Anko to face the consequences of her emotional myopia, and that's the real point of this scene. With most of its threads wrapping up, this Halloween arc is shorter than I remembered, but it probably seemed longer in my memory due to how much internal and interpersonal drama it contains, especially when compared to Call of the Night's previous arcs. And Miyuki Sawashiro once again knocks it out of the park when it comes to giving Anko pathos. This is a fitting climax for my favorite disaster detective, and I can't wait to see her suffer more next week.

Rating:

HIDIVE also posted their English dub of the second season's first episode this week, so I'll give a few notes on that. The good news is that, to my knowledge, all of the first season's dub actors have returned. They did a fine job then, and they do a fine job now. Of particular note, Gabriel Regojo and Natalie Rial give fun and intuitive performances as Ko and Nazuna, adapting to their silly sides alongside their more serious conversations. Unfortunately, the second season's premiere doesn't feature Anko, so we don't get any insight on how Jessica Calvello will take on the detective's turn at the heart of the story. Following up Miyuki Sawashiro's work here puts her in an unenviable position, if you ask me, but I'm eager to hear another voice acting veteran's take on this juicy material.

Call of the Night Season 2 is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Steve is on Bluesky for all of your posting needs. They like Anko Uguisu a normal amount. You can also catch them chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.