×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Call of the Night
Episode 13

by Steve Jones,

How would you rate episode 13 of
Call of the Night ?
Community score: 4.6

There's a post that makes the rounds now and then that says something to the effect that you shouldn't trust any of your brain's judgments after 9pm. The theory's sound, but I could never get it to stick in practice, because my brain doesn't even unlock its courtroom doors before 9pm. The after hours are just naturally conducive to a nice big think. I can't muse on the inexplicability of existence when there's all those UV rays in the air. I need a chill breeze and cricketsong. And I believe the protagonists of Call of the Night would agree with me. Both Ko and Nazuna do some separate soul-searching this week, spurred on by last episode's spot of friction between the two. Like it or not, they both have growing up to do. Whether they grow together or grow apart, however, is something they are in control of.

Ko gets a lot of help from Hatsuka, who earns the distinction of carrying most of this season finale on his impeccably svelte shoulders. Hatsuka's a fun character for lots of reasons—every vampire we've met has their own distinguishing set of eccentricities—but in this moment I appreciate him the most for injecting some queerness into Call of the Night. Vampire stories with LGBT characters and themes have a long, long history, so this is overdue if anything. Nonetheless, it's nice to see Hatsuka so comfortable in both his own skin and his own clothes, as he acts equal parts playful and frank around Ko. While he probably doesn't intend to mentor Ko in his scene, Hatsuka's forthrightness inspires our hero to think and feel outside of his own limited purview. And night thoughts, at their best, should always aspire to stretch beyond their comfort zone.

Throughout this scene, Ko demonstrates what makes him so likable a protagonist, and he earns himself the title of Worldest Sanest 14-Year-Old to boot. Seriously, I appreciate the show's acknowledgment that he is only 14 and he's quite allowed to be overwhelmed by even the most normal of relationships, let alone one with a weird vampire who enjoys retro games. However, that doesn't stop Ko from being a paragon of maturity here. For one, Call of the Night gets a prize for delivering the most low-key version of the “shower surprise” scene that I've seen in a good while. Ko's a bit shocked by Hatsuka's gender at first, but he moves past it and admits, with zero consternation, that he's still attracted to Hatsuka. He even manages to fluster the flirt. Good lad!

Ko's thoughts about gender don't end there either, as he muses on the gap in understanding between men and women while trying to understand Nazuna's point of view. Again, this is perfectly normal adolescent confusion, and it harkens back to what made him quit school in the first place. However, Ko's experienced a lot since then, and even though his instinct is to blame things on gender differences, he reconsiders that thought almost immediately. Man or woman, human or vampire, or anything in between, we're all still people, and it's people who are piss-poor at understanding each other. All relationships have to contend with the walls we construct around our hearts, but that doesn't make them futile efforts. Love is a way in which we come to understand others, and ourselves, better. There's a lot that attracts me to Call of the Night (and a lot of that is Anko-related), but these moments of patient thoughtfulness really elevate the whole story.

Speaking of understanding ourselves, let me take one last opportunity to emphasize how much I love this series' take on vampire lore, i.e. having Hatsuka straight up admit vampires really don't know anything about themselves. That's so smart! I mean it! None of us are born with perfect knowledge of all the intricacies of our species. We just learn shit from the people who raise us, and a lot of that shit ends up being wrong anyway. And consider the vampires we've met so far. Do any of them seem like they'd be good at raising another person? Now imagine a long lineage of bloodsucking disasters stretching back into antiquity, and you'll paint a good picture of why they don't know jack about their powers or weaknesses. Hell, biochemists, for the longest time, thought 98% of our genetic code was junk because it didn't make proteins. Then they learned that DNA has a lot of other functions besides coding for proteins. That is to say, none of us ever fully understand anything. We piece together our fluctuating mental models of our own individual universes based on an inexact ratio of evidence and vibes. If you're doing science, you probably want to skew towards evidence. But if you're creating and/or consuming vampire fiction, then embrace the vibes.

On that note, there was no logical “good” place for this season to end. The manga isn't over yet; this episode doesn't even bring us halfway through the currently published volumes. However, I am a sucker for bookending, so I think Call of the Night concludes this season about as appropriately as possible: with a chill callback to the premiere and a sense of renewed promise. The point here, as Niko puts it, is that Nazuna and Ko's relationship and arrangement really haven't changed. What has changed, however, is their awareness of it. They're not passive companions anymore. They've actively chosen each other, and they've actively chosen to support each other. So it's perfect for their roles to be reversed here, with a devilishly grinning Ko yanking Nazuna out of her depressive slump. It's still too early for them to be lovers or vampires together, but right now, what they can be is comrades linked arm in arm—and sometimes mouth on neck, sometimes tongue on tongue.

Call of the Night was my most anticipated summer anime, and this adaptation nailed it with its thorough comprehension of the manga's vibes. While it's not a transformative take on the source (which, to be fair, stands plenty well on its own artistic merits), the anime's flourishes of sight and sound more than justified its existence. And I'd be delighted to see the same crew return for a second season. As much as I enjoyed watching and reviewing these episodes, the manga's best material still lies ahead of us, and I'd love to be able to holler about it on this platform again. For now, though, it's about 11pm, and I think I'm going to take a short walk outside.

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.


discuss this in the forum (93 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

back to Call of the Night
Episode Review homepage / archives