Insomniacs After School – 10 – Feeling the Spark

Ganta finds himself in Isaki’s house when he and Kurashiki-sensei come to inform the parents of the training camp. That’s how he meets Haya, Isaki’s big sister. Haya immediately sets a tone by introducing herself with a ridiculous fake name and claiming that Isaki is a clone of her. But what’s not a joke is that she’s joining them on their trip as a chaperone.

Isaki and Haya’s sibling chemistry is wonderfully complex (I’m a middle child, so it’s also relatable) and beautifully performed by the voice actors. So too his Ganta’s soft-spoken father, who reveals that his wife simply walked out in the middle of the night. He also mentions a time Ganta wore shoes that were too small because he didn’t want to trouble him.

Kurashiki’s face upon learning these things is worth a thousand words. Shiromaru’s face is a lot simpler when seeing him off. It could be she’s just naturally shy and averse to eye contact, but she could also have a little crush on her “little protégé”, who she admits has quickly improved his photography skills. Her advice to Ganta is not to get too hung up on taking the perfect photo of a starry sky, but simply listen to his heart.

If and when he feels a spark, that’s when he should hit the shutter, and when he’ll create truly great photos. As he and Isaki go shopping for camp gear in Hanazawa, Ganta feels that spark whenever Isaki is in the viewfinder. And the gorgeous, loving way she’s drawn and animated, you really can’t blame him!

Haya isn’t just their chaperon on their trip, but also their driver. When they arrive at the sisters’ vacant grandmother’s house, it’s a little stuffy, but it has an engawa that opens up to the sea, and Ganta and Isaki are able to have a quiet little moment together before Haya is yelling about toilet paper. She proceeds to act as an agent of chaos throughout the evening, getting Ganta to say Isaki’s name, and drawing on Isaki’s napping face.

But there’s a method to Haya’s madness: she drew on Isaki to delay her on purpose, so she could speak to Ganta one-on-one. Growing up, Haya was constantly being neglected in favor of the smaller, younger, and far more fragile Isaki. Resentment was Haya’s constant companion.

Haya, who is surprised when Ganta says he knows about Isaki’s heart, then asks if it’s true “what she heard” about Isaki trying to hook up with him. He answers honestly that he’s not sure he can take her words about him being “special to her” to necessarily mean romantic love. Haya is impressed by his answer, but then warns him not to get involved with her sister.

She says Isaki already knows how “different from the norm” she is and doesn’t need anyone feeling sorry for her. Ganta, turning direct and serious as he fights back his blushing, assures Haya he’s never once felt sorry for Isaki. Instead, he’s thought she was cool (which she is) and is someone who “shines very brightly” in his eyes.

Haya learns what it means for someone to shine in his eyes when Ganta invites her to look into the camera and she sees the dull podunk town she despises looking gorgeous and idyllic. Isaki then tells her sister Ganta’s pretty amazing.

The next morning, Haya is off. She says she’s going to meet up with her boyfriend, and maybe she is, but she’s also leaving because she saw and heard all she needed to know get a good measure of Ganta. That said, she still orders Isaki not to tell their folks she split, and the sisters end up waking Ganta up with their rambunctious roughhousing.

Haya doesn’t treat Isaki like this because she hates her sister; quite the contrary. As she prepares to drive off, she tells Ganta one more story: of how she watched with resentment as her shrimpy, slow sister ran in a race and was helped to the finish line by her peers. Watching her be pampered and cheered on made Haya sick.

But then Haya saw Isaki bawling her eyes out into a tree, saying “this sucks”. At no point did Isaki feel like she was being pampered, or like how she was being treated differently. So from then on, Haya vowed to be the one person in Isaki’s life who wouldn’t treat her like a pity case.

Isaki also never tells anyone about her heart problems. I doubt she’s even told her girlfriends, as close as they are. But that she told Ganta tells Haya a lot about how Isaki feels about him. There’s love, but also trust. And so in a simple little ceremony, Haya has Ganta high-five him, serving as a tag-out. She’s leaving Isaki in his care.

After Isaki appears to give Haya a curt goodbye, Haya drives off, and Isaki and Ganta are alone at last in the rural peace and quiet. Only they’re late for their bus, so they have to skip breakfast and end up in a mad scramble to gather all their stuff—an adorable little preview of their future domestic life.

Call of the Night – 01 (First Impressions) – Carpe Noctem

Now that’s what I’m freakin’ talkin’ about! Call of the Night is a pitch-perfect vampire rom-com from start to finish with a keen understanding of how to set tone and atmosphere, and the entire episode takes place over a single night—one of my favorite settings, being a night owl myself.

The infrequent scenes from Yamori Kou’s ordinary middle school life are shot relatively normally, but the light (and indeed, normalness) of those scenes feels oppressive, while the sprawling, shimmering night feels like a release. Kou doesn’t get things like “crushes” and “confessions”, but this place? This time? He gets it.

Surfing the web for remedies to his insomnia, many bring up booze as a surefire way to eventually lose consciousness, so he walks up to a very brightly-lit beer vending machine, and just as he’s making his selection, a sinister figure wreathed in shadow sidles up to him, questioning his legal age to purchase alcohol.

But the girl is only playing around; she has no intention of snitching. Indeed, she tags along with Kou as his night continues, passing by three older dudes who took the advice of the internet and got rek’d. Kou is awed by how she can so casually high-five strangers, but that’s what the night is all about: it’s a time of freedom; of casting off inhibitions and living.

When Kou is starting to feel a little tired, the quirky lilac-haired girl invites him up to her place, a sparse studio with a futon on the floor. The girl disrobes—as in, removes her robe, not all her clothes—but reveals, well, a revealing crop top, which catches the romance-averse Kou off-guard and makes him wonder what this girl’s intentions are.

She tells him: there’s nothing in the world wrong with two people simply sleeping in the same bed together. Even though the weird girl remains very much awake and basically stares at him the whole time, Kou can’t help but feel far more relaxed with her beside him than no one at all.

Kou is also good at pretending to be asleep; so good that the girl assumes he is, the light suddenly changes from deep purplish blue to warmer fuchsia, she bares her fangs and sinks them into Kou’s neck. For those not paying attention, yes: this chick is a vampire.

If a series is going to spend so much time at night, it had better know what to do with light, shadow, and color, and boy does Call of the Night ever know. Some scenes even reminded me of Fantasia. When Kou wakes up with blood on his neck, her fib about a giant mosquito doesn’t hold water (or blood).

That said, he keeps his head as the girl causally admits what she is, though he wonders why he hasn’t become a vampire. Here’s where the two find they share something in common, besides a love of the night: while some vampires go around making a whole mess of offspring, she’d…rather not. Just like Kou would rather not participate in all the junior high drama.

Perhaps it’s because she feels as comfortable around him as he does around her, the girl lets slip a truth about vampires: one way to become one is to have your blood sucked by a vampire you’re in love with. One thing I love about this girl is that she can get just as frazzled talking about this stuff as Kou.

She redirects the conversation to ask him how his first night “taking a step outside the norm” felt, out here in the place furthest he can hope to get from the things he thinks are a pain. He asks her formally to let him fall in love with her, but she promises nothing. She’ll just keep sucking his blood; if he wants to fall for her, he can go right ahead.

Now that they’re in agreement, they exchange names—her’s is Nanakusa Nazuna—and she resolves to “infuse more night” into him and his blood, which she maintains tastes best at night, just before going to bed. To that end, Nazuna kicks him off the roof of her high-rise apartment building…only to catch him in the blink of an eye long before he hits the pavement.

Thence, Nazuna princess carries Kou on aerial tour of the late night cityscape, flipping him upside down for an even more unique perspective. As he simply sits there in her arms in quiet but intense awe at what’s happening, Nazuna seems to take a great deal of pleasure from it as well.

And that’s the key to this: for as traditionally horny as vampires are depicted and as revealing as Nazuna’s garb is, this is a surprisingly sweet and innocent love story in the works. It’s about two outsiders in their happy place, staying up late and embracing the freedom of the night. With this banger of a premiere, the summer season has finally kicked off in earnest!