Don’t Toy with Me, Miss Nagatoro 2nd Attack – 07 – Ski ga Kirei

Naoto has decided he wants to try ditching his frames for contacts, but after failing to get them in the previous night, he gives up. When Hayase spots the box, she immediately volunteers to put them in for him. A few “is it in yet?” double entendres later, and Naoto is seeing the world—and Hayase—clearly without frames for the first time. When Hayase puts on his frames and flusters him, we learn he’ll do his glasses-straightening tic regardless of whether he’s wearing them.

Ditching the frames means he’s able to do more energetic activities, like skiing. As luck would have it, he and his guy friends are at the same ski slope as Hayase and her friends. The difference is, Hayase and her friends are much better at skiing and snowboarding. That hardly matters to Hayase, who invites her senpai to join him, aweing his friends by being so friendly with one of the “popular girls”.

But again, Naoto is bad, even on the beginner slope Hayase normally wouldn’t bother with. That said, she relishes the opportunity to teach him, and when he steers himself into the sides, creating a sequence of Snow Naotos, she doesn’t laugh but shows genuine concern for his progress, which is slow and, at least to him, not very noticable despite her pointers.

That night, when Naoto and his friends expect to be done with skiing, they spot the popular girls (and guys) going out for night skiing. Again Hayase invites him to join her, but he passes, citing sore legs. Hayase is clearly disappointed but respects his choice and leaves. Gamou and Yoshi then gang up on him, asking him if he’s sure, and he explains he doesn’t want to slow Hayase down from having fun. The other girls assure him that Hayase going at her own pace is not the point.

Naoto suits up and heads out, surprised he’s suddenly gotten into something like skiing, which he wouldn’t expect of himself had he not met Hayase. As he’s practicing, a younger skiier loses control and careens towards a tree. Naoto forgets all his hang-ups and skis beautifully in order to catch the guy before he injures himself.

Hayase saw him do this, and I’m sure she thought it was pretty cool. She’s also surprised to hear him ask her upfront if she’ll keep teaching him, which is, of course, what she wants to do on that slope more than anything. When she notices he’s always looking down at his feet, she skis a bit ahead of him and tells him to keep his eyes on her.

A backlit Hayase, with her black hair shimmering and snow-dappled trees behind her, makes for an undoubtedly arresting sight. Unfortunately, Naoto is overconfident the next morning, and when Hayase tells her friends to watch how far he’s progressed, he faceplants into the side once more.

Back at school, Sana tells Naoto that she got into art school, which was totally expected but something for which Naoto congratulates her nonetheless. Sana then asks her kohai what he plans to do, and he says with a level of confidence that surprises her that he’s going to try for art school too. She chalks up this confidence to “the cat-eared girl’s” influence.

Naoto denies this, but in his head, he looks back at the year he’s known and hung out with Hayase, and concludes that she really has influenced him. But even after all this time, there’s still so much he doesn’t know about her, and wants to know, like what plans she might have for the future.

Maybe he can apply his newfound assertiveness to keep cutting through her teasing smokescreen and ask her about serious things like that. I think if he does, he’ll find she’ll be quite happy to tell him.

Call of the Night – 13 (Fin) – Let’s Talk About Love

While Nazuna plays video games alone (a typical night for her before meeting Kou), Kou is invited to Suzushiro Hatsuka’s apartment, where they’re greeted by three of Hatsuka’s offspring who are completely in her thrall, so much so that they simply stood around eagerly waiting for her return.

It isn’t until they’re ordered to leave and Hatsuka takes a shower and forgets a towel that Kou learns Hatsuka isn’t a woman, but a very, very pretty man. Suddenly Kou has a distraction from the night, which had been turned into a disappointment by his encounter with Anko.

Nazuna heads to the rooftop lounge vamps to report that she may not be turning Kou into a vampire after all. Niko tells her that wasn’t their agreement. Nazuna asks that they spare Kou’s life, but Niko is furious. It’s one thing for her and Kou to take their sweet old time, but to abandon the whole enterprise? Niko won’t stand for it—which means violence is sure to follow.

Hanging out with Hatsuka turns out to have a great deal of value, as he learns that just like humans don’t really know that much about humans, vamps don’t know much about vamps either. For what it’s worth, he doesnt’ believe Nazuna was withholding anything from her, but also doesn’t think it’s likely he’ll fall for her, being an adolescent kid and all.

So he proposes a compromise: Kou will become one of his offspring, so he won’t have to be killed and Nazuna won’t have to face consequences. As far as “falling” for him, Hatsuka will simply use his vampire power to “glamor” Kou, as he did with his other children. But this isn’t about gender for Kou—he simply only wants to fall for Nazuna.

As Kou gets up, Hatsuka asks him what he hopes to do by inserting himself betwen Nazuna and a clearly enraged Niko (the others text him a picture of a destroyed table). Kou simply says he doesn’t want Nazuna to be bored. He wants The Night to remain theirs.

When he arrives at the rooftop lounge, it’s clear a huge fight has taken place, but Nazuna just left. Niko declares ominously that Nazuna “won’t be capable of proper conversation for a while”, and doesn’t want to see Kou. Kou doesn’t care. He wants to see her, and he’ll brave any vampire fracas or cop-infested pedestrian bridge to track her down.

When he does, a forlorn Nazuna is buying a beer at the same vending machine where they first met, with their positions reversed: Nazuna lit by the machine’s greenish light, and Kou looking sinister as hell in the shadows. We learn that all Niko “did” to Nazuna was insist they talk about love, because that’s what Niko likes best.

Niko makes a deal with Nazuna: she and the others will go all out and root for her and Kou, and she’ll do whatever it takes to make Kou fall for her. As long as Nazuna can honor this, they won’t lay a finger on Kou’s feathery little head. And as proponents of vampire propagation, this works out better for them too.

Nazuna insists that “it’s over” but Kou takes her by the shoulders. He tells her he thought life was boring too until he ventured out into the night and met her. Even if she “acted like a know-it-all” who only knew how to have fun, masking her ennui, it doesn’t change the fact that the two of them had a heck of a lot of fun together.

Nazuna admits that she’s had so much fun she’d forgotten the boredom that had been gradually crushing her for decades.By dint of Kou being by her side, even things she’s done before feel new and exciting. Kou says they should then simply keep finding new things to do; he’s determined not to let her ever get bored again.

In response to this, Nazuna gives him a kiss—not a vampire’s kiss to the neck like usual, but an honest-to-god kiss on the lips like the climax of a romantic movie. She’s never been the most comfortable with romance, but in Kou she has a kindred spirit, and they can navigate those uncharted waters together as she vows in her head to become “a vampire worth falling for.” Of course, Kou would be the first person to say she already is.

While this episode could certainly serve as a series finale, I hope that’s not the case. Not only is there apparently plenty more manga to adapt from, but this was by all accounts a very popular and well-regarded anime. I’m hopeful it gets a second season where we’ll have more of Kou and Nazuna feeling their way through what it means to be together.

Call of the Night – 10 – Arisa in Selfieland

Last week was a Seri episode, and from the first scene it looks like this one’s going to be a Kohakobe Midori one. Midori’s in a bind: one of her co-workers at the maid café called out, so she needs someone cute who won’t hit it off with guys and threaten her “Number One” position among the maids.

Naturally, just that person crosses her path in Nazuna. And while Nazuna looks predictably killer in her maid uniform, her way of speaking and the way she carries herself leave much to be desired. It’s nothing like the polished-yet-unembellished grace and cuteness of Midori, causing Ikari Gendo-like reactions in one of her regulars.

Why this isn’t strictly a Midori-centric episode, however, comes down to the maid serving Kou. It’s neither Midori nor Nazuna, but Arisa, who is bright, cheerful, but also quite down-to-earth and earnest, saying she was once the café’s Number One before Midori showed up, but she lauds Midori as amazing. She also notes how even when she’s off she loves to visit other maid cafés to visit her favorite maids.

After closing Midori prepares to take some selfies with her and Nazuna for the café’s social media, and discovers peeping tom photos of the maids have been posted. Midori asks Kou if he’ll investigate and he agrees, always eager to please (even if she’s still a firm “no” for him romantically speaking). While inspecting the photos, all of which are of Arisa, Kou is startled by the sudden appearance of Arisa behind him.

This episode shows that once Kou says he’ll do something for someone, he really hunkers down and gives it his all, meticulously inspecting the photos and determining most were taken in the break room, then lining up the angles where a tom could snap secret pics. I love how he has Nazuna “give him a hand” by flying him up to the otherwise inaccessable balcony.

When Nazuna remarks that only a vampire could come up here to snap pics, and thus Midori must be the culprit, Kou has her pose as a stand-in for Arisa in a test photo…and since it was taken quickly and Nazuna wasn’t quite ready, it’s an awful photo of her. That’s when the light bulb goes off for Kou.

While his confidence that he’s cracked the case plummets with every word out of his mouth, he tests his working hypothesis by staking out the break room from a locker, where he ends up stuffed in with Midori since only one locker is unlocked. There, he tells her all the photos were taken after hours, when Arisa was alone, with no other staff or customers around.

Then they watch through the little locker slot as Arisa sets up a selfie stand at the window, and Kou busts out of the locker. Arisa is caught red-handed. When asked how Kou knew, he says simply that the photos were too nice; too much care was put into their composition and lighting; nothing like the quick and often blurry shots an actual peeping tom might take.

He also notes the lack of truly scandalous shots showing underwear. Sure, he’s incriminating himself as a guy here, but all in the service of justice, so he swallows his pride. But while his male gaze and male perspective helped him pick Arisa, his blind spot is the “why”.

But Midori knows why: Arisa, supplanted as Number One, sought recognition; the means to show she was still popular. But while Midori initially sounds cruel, even calling it an “illness”, Midori says all humans have one such illness or another (like Kou skipping school and staying out late), but it’s okay to be ill.

For one thing, it’s okay because at the end of the day, Kou makes a new friend in Arisa, who stops by the café when she’s not working, both to see her favorite maid (Midori) and to chat with him. Arisa admits to being so obsessed with selfies she’s spent an entire day seeking the perfect shot.

In the back of her mind, she always thought there was something wrong with that, so it was nice for someone (Midori) to say it wasn’t. Call it a vampire’s perspective. She caps off the episode on a heartwarming note, with a group selfie of her, Kou, Nazuna and Midori.

Both Oozora Naomi and Oonishi Saori do yeoman’s work as the voices of Midori and Arisa, respectively, as Arisa shows Kou that there are all kinds of people who go against the grain as he does. I appreciated that things never got catty, but that Midori understood and accepted why Arisa was doing what she did without judgment.

Call of the Night – 09 – Who’s the Real Draggo?

Seri is being overwhelmed by notifications on her phone when she spots Kou. She rushes to pounce on him affectionately, but she’s stopped by Nazuna’s granite knee. Kou tells her Seri wasn’t going to do anything, but Nazuna assures him it’s okay; vampires are tough (as evidenced when Seri slugs Nazuna and the two tussle in the street.

The two vamps are always going to be a bit on edge around each other—especially considering Nazuna’s bond with Kou—but it’s Kou who tracks down Seri and asks her what’s troubling her, as a friend would, because that’s the kind of good kid Kou is. Seri is surprised, but rather than venting to him, they go to karaoke instead.

When Seri warns Kou that she’s super popular and that it’s just gotten to be a big boring drag (she calls all the men she meets “draggos”), and Kou kinda gets it; expressing how he’s annoyed by people believing romance is the “essence of life”. While we don’t get to hear them sing, Kou and Seri have this wonderful natural rapport.

You can tell Seri likes how Kou acts around her, since every other guy acts like the one who starts banging on the door to their room and breathing on the window like a creepy stalker. When Seri makes light of all the draggos she’s had to deal with, Kou tries to get all serious and offer proper advice, when all she wants is for him to brush it off and enjoy hanging out with her—like he does with Nazuna.

When Mr. Draggo enters the room, Seri gets fed up and decides she’s going to kill him “before things get messy”, which is vampire reasoning if I’ve ever heard it. Kou tells her to stop, and Seri asks him to spare her the “killing is wrong spiel”, as human rules and laws don’t apply to vampires. Kou admits that there are times when a vampire might have to kill, but he insists that this isn’t one of them, and protects Mr. Draggo.

The two hide in a dark alley, where Mr. Draggo, AKA Akiyama, seems to snap out of the obsessive trance he was in while near Seri. Akiyama tells Kou how he and Seri met when he fell over while drunk and just hit it off, but he was never arrogant enough to think he ranked that high in her list of people she cared about (nor does he know she’s a vampire).

That soon changes when Seri spots them in the alley, tells Akiyama she’s a vampire, and that she’s going to kill him. Kou stands between Seri and Akiyama and says that’s not happening, but Seri charges anyway, which is when Nazuna, whom Kou summoned via transmitter watch, pancakes Seri into the pavement.

Nazuna is obviously here to keep Kou from harm, but even when Seri promises she won’t hurt Kou, Nazuna asks why she suddenly decided to kill “for once”, suggesting it’s not as common an occurrence as Seri let on. That’s when Akiyama asks Nazuna to lay off Seri, because he was the one who fell in love with her, even though he wasn’t supposed to.

Just as Nazuna has done with Kou so far, Seri never intended to turn Akiyama, but simply hung out with him because they enjoyed each other’s company. The grind of getting people infatuated with her so she could create offspring got boring, and Akiyama broke that monotony. But her unconscious vampiric knack for enrapturing people ended up happening even to him.

Kou stops her right there: if she enjoys having a friend and doesn’t want to ruin that relationship, why kill him? Why not talk through it him first, like the friends they clearly still are? Seri does just that, and when she talks about the fun she had hanging out with Akiyama as a friend, her eyes fill with tears, knowing they’ll never have that again.

Akiyama knows that too, as he’s now in love with her. But that being the case, rather than kill him, he asks her to make him her offspring instead, so they can still hang out and still have that friendly rapport. She does just that, turning him right there in the alley while Nazuna and Kou look on.

Kou can’t help but feel like the situation is a little unfair, seeing as how Seri and Akiyama have what he wants…and naturally, Nazuna senses that’s what he’s feeling, but says it’s fine to take their time for now. After Akiyama is turned (and his eyesight is improved; a nice detail) all four go back for some celebratory karaoke, and Kou notes that he’s having a great time.

This might’ve been my favorite Call of the Night yet. I continue to love how warm empathetic Kou is. Seri is always an absolute delight; I love how she can turn from affable to frightening and capricious to vulnerable on a dime. I fear I’ve fallen for her and become one more draggo, and it’s not for any one quality but because she possesses so many layers.

Akiyama, voiced by the great Yoshino Hiroyuki in a rare toned-down role, is a solid introduction and the show’s first male vampire, and therefore glimpse of what Kou ultimately hopes to become. Loved the stalker fakeout. And as always, both quiet scenes of talking and raucous, concussive action are exquisitely composed and directed. The show is running on all cylinders.

Call of the Night – 08 – Date Night

Kou’s comment about falling in love with Nazuna “no matter how many years it takes” is met with the reaction it is because there’s a rule he hasn’t been told about: once their blood is sucked, a human only has one year to become a vampire. If they can’t by then, they’ll never become one.

Nazuna cheekily pretends she forgot to tell Kou this, then conveniently remembers the debt she owes him for working on Kiyosumi, and kisses him right in front of the other vamps before flying off into the sky. Kou tells Nazuna that he realizes she’s weird even for a vampire, but he’s glad he met her first.

That said, this new time limit is concerning, and it takes Akira spelling it out that after that year is up and he’s not a vampire, he’ll be killed to protect their secrets. Later, at school, Akira comes across Seki Mahiru sleeping at the top of the steps, zonked out from being, you guessed it, out all night.

We learn that Mahiru, who befriended everyone, befriended Akira and Kou when they were all little. That said, neither Kou nor Akira realized that they were actually friends with him, due to his gregarious nature. Speaking of gregarious, Kikyou Seri greets Kou again one night, and while he tries to run, she promises she won’t kill him, and only wants to start off on the right foot.

When Kou demonstrates his middle school innocence regarding romance, she can’t help but serve as his love coach, and suggests he kickstart his relationship with Nazuna by taking her on a date. Naturally, when Kou proposes this, Nazuna isn’t interested, and continues playing her video games. But Kou switches her PSOne off and insists.

The date plan Seri drew up for him would probably work for most couples, but Kou and Nazuna aren’t most couples. Nazuna won’t even pretend to be able to stand the romcom movie they go to, while at the café Kou tries to start a conversation about the movie even though he knows she hated it.

Nazuna suspects someone put an idea in his head, and after reading Seri’s list she snatched from him, decides this is all lame and goes home. Kou lies in bed forlorn, but soon Nazuna taps on his window, not liking how the evening almost ended and suggesting they at least get that bite with a night view.

Naturally, that means one of their patented late night flights, and the “meal” ends up being one-sided, as she sinks her fangs into him in midair for the first time. Nazuna tells Kou that he doesn’t need to over-plan or overthink; they’ve already been going on dates, and she’s enjoyed them. Her attitude makes me encouraged that Kou can indeed become a vampire within the time limit.

Another night becomes a reunion of Kou, Mahiru and Akira when Mahiru spots Kou while hanging out late at night with other peeps. Kou is surprised Mahiru recognized him, but Mahiru says of course he did; they’re friends. The two proceed to get very corny about their feelings when Akira joins them and asks that they please stop. It’s a fun and wholesome all-human interaction.

Mahiru bids the other two farewell as he must meet someone he’s come to like. Nazuna, while looking for Kou, happens to spot him walking hand-in-hand with a lady, and when Kou arrives, she decides that they should hold hands too, with the practical excuse of not losing track of one another.

While Kou idolizes Mahiru as a “perfect” person (his family even owns a flower shop!), it’s Kou who encourages Mahiru to continue his nightly pursuit of love with the story of how he’s been hanging out with his own late night lass. I love how the episode ends with a super wide shot looking straight down at the two couples walking in opposite directions while both experiencing happiness.

Call of the Night – 07 – What’s the Hot Vamp Goss?

While walking along lots of folks earlier in the night, Kou worries someone he knows will see him and wonder what he’s up to. Well, someone does, but it’s Kiyosumi, who fully understands what Kou’s up to and is grateful for his offer to turn her into a vampire. Even she’s surprised how much of a weight that lifted off her shoulders.

She gives him a Coke and the two part ways, and when it starts to pour, he finds shelter under an overhang and witnesses a high school girl getting hit on. She waves to him, and a moment later she’s right there in front of him. She tells him she’s there to get hit on, but it has to be the right person.

I was wondering when one or more of the bevy of unseen characters in the OP were going to show up in the cozy little world that so far has been just Kou, Nazuna, Akira and Kiyosumi, and this blondie is the first of them. The speed with which she sidled up to Kou also had me strongly suspecting her of being another vampire.

It doesn’t take long for that suspicion to be validated, as she lures him to a disserted underpass and starts talking about how things just aren’t exciting and haven’t worked out like she’d liked, and she has no one to talk to about it. Kou, ever the empath, tells him they’re the same.

The moment he says those words, a drop of water falls into a puddle, and the girl is embracing him. Then she says his name and bares her fangs…and gets her arm chopped off by a just-in-time Nazuna.

The light just started to glow purplish pink when the blonde (her name is Kikyou Seri, and she’s voiced by Tomatsu Haruka), and that color remains as Seri pops her arm right back on like it’s nothing and fights Nazuna. Despite her slight frame, Nazuna apparently has a reputation for brute strength.

That’s why Seri didn’t come alone to snatch away the new kid Nazuna’s been hanging around with. Another vampire appears behind Kou, and before he knows it he’s being shot up into the sky, bound who knows where, while Seri keeps Nazuna busy.

The where turns out to be an upscale but otherwise pretty sedate rooftop deck, where not one or two but three other vampires greet the fourth who brought Kou there (Honda Kabura, voiced by Itou Shizuka). They are redhead Hirata Niko (Kitamura Eri),the cutesy Kohakobe Midori (Oozora Naomi), and the neutral Suzushiro Hatsuka (Waki Azumi).

Kou is told the situation: now that he’s aware of the existence of vampires, he has two choices: become one himself tonight, or be killed. He also has the choice of which one of the four of them will turn him, and each one tries their own signature style of seduction while the other three do inner commentary and engage in girl talk.

Kou surprises them not just by not seeming scared in the least about his situation, but in his insistence that Nazuna, the weird, unpopular, unprolific, lilac-haired letdown of the bunch. The conversation is lively, and Kou mostly keeps up; I particularly liked him protesting everyone assuming he was a virgin, only to confirm that yes, of course he is a virgin.

The other vamps main problem with Nazuna is just that she sucks at making offspring, which brings down the whole clan and even threatens their survival. All of them have committed to whatever agreed-upon quota for making more vampires, while she’s kinda just messed around and rejected that whole system. She’s their prodigal daughter.

She hates how they always chat and gossip like a bunch of schoolgirls, while they’re miffed by how easily she blushes and how she hasn’t managed to create a single offspring. But while Kou tells them he’s not sure what liking someone means, he’s quick to dispell their presumption that he isn’t interested in becoming a vampire.

He very much is, and he doesn’t blush even a little when he declares firmly to all of them that his goal is to fall in love with Nazuna so she can make him one. Of course, Nazuna arrives that very moment and overhears, so even though she does an awesome superhero landing that shatters the deck, she can’t keep her face from turning into a tomato, so she just freezes.

It’s all well and good for Kou to want to fall for Nazuna, but the others want to know what she’s going to do to make that happen? She, who goes completely fluorescent at the mere mention of romance. This is where Kou steps up and articulates the mutually beneficial agreement they came to: she gets to drink his tasty-ass blood, and he gets to fall for her and become a vampire.

But Niko and the others still don’t trust Nazuna, given her aromantic history. They want to hear it from her. When she can’t say the words, Kou again says them for her, saying she said if he wanted to fall for her, then whatever; it’s fine.

The vamps agree to let him go, but when Kou says he’ll become a vampire no matter “how many years it takes” that their confusion returns. Something tells me they had a faster timeline in mind. And hey, the sooner the better, seeing as how Kou already has his first offspring lined up on Kiyosumi!

While it largely lacked the nice, laid back, expansive vibes of the earlier, less-populated episodes, this Call of the Night had its own merits, like the wealth of great voice acting and character design, the lived-in chemistry of the vampires, and beautifully composed combat. I also love how their ultra-speed is portrayed with quick cuts and slow-mo.

Last night Kou was in a tight little group of moody broody pals, but tonight he finds himself in a bigger, potentially more threatening, but also enticing world. I’m sure he’ll sleep well!

Call of the Night – 06 – A Private Place

Kou insists he’s not giving Shirakawa Kiyosumi a massage so Nazuna will give her a kiss; no, he’s all about the Murasakis, baby. Last time Kiyosumi came to Nazuna’s she got the best massage of her life. Kou’s is…less so, to the point she’s wearing a distinct “Is that it?” kind of face throughout the course. It leads Kiyosumi to ask how old he is, and when he says fourteen she’s amazed he’s working at such a young age, but sure he must have his reasons.

When she asks, Kou tells her how school was boring and he got tired of it, and how much more fun and exciting the streets are at night. Hearing how he wants to “enjoy the night” reminds her of the first time she went out late on her own, and felt like she was in a special place just for her. From there, the two start to have a lively conversation about their shared love of the night.

When that talk turns bitter when Kiyosumi brings up work and how all the things she has to endure, she starts to tear up, and then her boss calls her, even though it’s the middle of the night she’s expected to answer and go back into the office. But Kou blocks the door, tells her she isn’t going anywhere, and summons Nazuna, who comes through the wall. The massage course isn’t over.

When Kou tells Nazuna to make sure Kiyosumi doesn’t go to work, she tosses her out the window. Kiyosumi has the similar feeling of confusion about what the hell just happened, followed immediately by the terror of falling and the strange feeling of whether this is it.

Kou dives out the window after her and catches her, and the two of them are suspended in the air by Nazuna. As it was with him, it feels like a rite of passage: thinking you’re going to die, and then being plucked from that certain death by a vampire saying “nah, you’re actually not.”

When they land, Kiyosumi asks why Kou did this; he says anything that makes you cry isn’t something you should have to do. This is where their age gap rears its head again, as she tells him he’s still just a kid and doesn’t understand. Adults have to keep enduring, even if something makes them cry.

Then he tells her his dream to become a vampire so he can keep enjoying the night, and it’s so earnest and serious she can’t help but burst into laughter. He Kou walks out into the middle of the road—something you can do at night since it’s not busy—and Kiyosumi joins him, once again feeling that old feeling of doing something wrong but feeling so right.

Kiyosumi tells Kou she hopes he achieves his goal of becoming a vampire, and in turn Kou tells her that when he becomes one, he promises to make her into one too. Nazuna seems taken aback by this, and later reminds Kou that to change Kiyosumi he’d have to make her fall for him, but he’s not worried; “girls tend to like him.”

That lovely character portrait of the overworked businesswoman and her night of enjoyment is followed up by Nazuna greeting Kou in her entryway and telling him to come up with different stuff for them to do. This leads to them going to a nighttime pool, which Kou remarks is “nothing like the pool in P.E.”

For one thing, it’s extremely gaudily and even raunchily lit; for another, the swimsuits are a lot more revealing, though ironically he finds Nazuna’s choice to wear more fabric than she usually does more erotic than her standard swimsuit-like garb.

It’s also here where Kou feels every bit like the fourteen-year-old he is, including rushing to jealousy and possessiveness. When Nazuna decides to tease him by letting two other dudes hit on her, He grabs her and pitches a hissyfit, even though the two guys are totally fine with him.

Nazuna apologizes for teasing by taking Kou on another aerial trip, then dumping the two of them into his school’s pool, which is nice and deserted at this time of night. As we’ve seen from his interactions with Akira and now Kiyosumi, Kou isn’t socially awkward or anything.  But his intense dislike of the other night pool came down to it being crowded and with people too casually trying to make friends with Nazuna.

Nazuna, who after all hasn’t been drinking anyone else’s blood since she and Kou started hanging out, understands his desire for quiet and solitude, where the only two eyes on her are his. Considering how tasty his blood is and how fun he is to spend her nights with, Nazuna seems fine with that. But there’s still something to be said for exploring parts of the night out of one’s comfort zone.

Call of the Night – 05 – Feel Them for Me

This week starts off with a day/night in the life of Nanakusa Nazuna…at least before the sun goes down. It’s not even 17:00 when she sun wakes her (but notably does not burn her). The ensuing events are a glorious festival of boredom as she tries to fill time she’d normally be asleep.

When she’s sick of video games and TV and considering cleaning, she heads out into the night (at just 20:00), plays with a kitty, then hits up a not-busy-at-all bathhouse where she finally releases her lilac locks from her trademark braid loops and laments her inability to see her reflection.

While she asks the desk guy to tell her when her watch beeps, his reflexes are no match for hers (though for a split second when she threw open the bath door he saw her nude, the next split second she’d wrapped herself in a towel). Her coat, sneakers, and long hair make for an entirely new, cute look Kou isn’t ready for.

They head back into the bath (on separate sides, natch) and an inner monologue from Kou ensues. His nights of late have been fun and amazing, but his “heart is always busy” with thoughts good and bad, conflicting and confusing. He’s so busy sifting through those emotions he completely blanks out…until Nazuna gets right in his face.

That’s when he asks her to drink his blood. Because as it turns out, when she does, it clears his head, calms him down, and allows him time to assess the feelings he normally couldn’t untangle. He gets his blood sucked to know his own feelings. But precisely because he’s so riled up, his blood tastes so good Nazuna drinks more than usual.

Not in a discriminating mood due to his fatigue, Kou suggests they rest as the nearest place that says it’s for “rest”…which turns out to be a love hotel. The pink neon lights were a dead giveaway to me, but I didn’t just get my neck drained, now did I? That said, once they’re in the room, the fact Nazuna is jumping on the bed like a kid makes things a little less tense.

Nazuna then reveals to Kou that when she drinks his blood, she can also get an idea of what he’s thinking and feeling from the taste, including the desires he has when he looks at her, a woman. Kou tells her it feels “immoral” to feel that way with a “friend”, but she retorts that enjoying the night the way they are is immoral to most.

Nazuna reminds them they have a deal because his blood tastes so good, and now he knows why: because of the intensity and diversity of emotions hanging out with her creates. She wants to taste all of his fun, pain, joy, sadness, and everything in between.

Another night, Kou’s mind starts churning again, deducing that because she finds his blood so tasty, it means she’s drunk the blood of others in order to compare. Even if he weren’t an open book, Nazuna knows his feelings through his blood, so she teases him for being jealous, but also makes it clear it’s a much more businesslike affair for other men and women since she makes her living…as a professional snuggler.

The whole idea of this is super raunchy, but that’s reductive thinking for someone who has only begun to enjoy the call of the night. She offers a friend’s discount for her services, and he orders the massage course. Not only does he learn something new about Nazuna, which he’s always eager to do, but he learns she’s actually quite good at massage, and using various pressure points to redirect blood and oxygen flow.

Nazuna is about to transition from massage to blood drinking (and the lights in the room suddenly go dark and everything is suffused with that intense, intimate red light) when there’s an unexpected ring of the doorbell: one of her clients. Nazuna has not been working since she met Kou (resulting in her being a little light on funds, but after working on Kou, she’s tired, so she asks him to take care of the client.

…The twenty-four-year-old, raven-haired, stressed office worker client Shirakawa Kiyosumi, that is. Kou is worried about not knowing what to do (among other things), but Nazuna tells him just to emulate what she did to him and he’ll be fine. Also, since she knows a healthy measure of his thoughts and feelings every time she goes to the red well, she offers him the reward of another kiss if he does this for her.

Kiyosumi may ether be throwing her money away tonight, or Kou may be a natural at massage and just not know it. The bottom line is that both the night and Nazuna are opening new doors and new experiences for Kou.

Call of the Night – 04 – Lay Your Troubles Down

Asai Akira can’t sleep. She gets up way too early, and with nothing else to do, simply goes to school early. Her home life seems lonely. There’s nothing for her there but a roof, a bath, and a bed.

For once, Kou doesn’t have to wander all over the city looking for Nazuna; she’s waiting for him in the park. But she doesn’t spot him, so he wanders around anyway. He isn’t ready to see her yet, but when they do meet in the night, he confidently offers her his neck in a way she finds lewd. You see, he believes he’s in love, so drinking his blood now will turn him. He’s ready.

So she drinks his blood as he stands there, half-confident, half-terrified, and…nothing happens. He’s still a human, and his blood still tastes great. Turns out he’s not in love with Nazuna; not yet. Nazuna tells him it’s love’s wild sibling lust. Also, she thinks kissing is just something friends do!

The next night, Akira wakes up before midnight and knows she’ll never get back to sleep, so she heads to school as usual, except she runs into Kou, who invites her to join him in answering the proverbial call of the night. They hang at Nazuna’s for some late-night PSOne games. Nazuna is unbeatable at Street Fighter, while a dating sim leads to talk of bosoms.

Akira was initially worried about what Kou was getting up to of nights, but if this night is any indication, his nights are pretty wholesome. Then Nazuna invites both of them to sleep in her bed, and it’s extremely awkward for Akira, especially when Nazuna drinks Kou’s blood right next to her.

Nazuna tells Akira that Kou’s blood is uncommonly tasty, but Akira wants know know what Kou gets out of their little arrangement. That’s when Kou comes clean about wanting to become a vampire. After all, why keep things from a friend?

When Akira asks if he’s already one since his blood has been drunk, he clarifies that he must fall in love with Nazuna to become a vampire. That causes Nazuna to curl into a ball of embarrassment, unable to handle talk of romance as usual.

Eventually the three settle down for the night, and with rain falling outside and no umbrellas, Akira lies beside them, specifically next to Akira. He tells her he knows she was worried about him so he wanted to show her what his nights are like. She tells him to uncross his arms so he can relax, and when his hand touches hers, she doesn’t mind.

Smiling, Akira tells Kou that he should be what he wants to be, because even if he’s a vampire, they’ll still be friends. She says goodnight and turns over, but her smile remains because she can’t remember the last time she said “goodnight.” It felt good, and with the darkness and Kou beside her and the calming rain outside, Akira finally catches some Zs.

Too many Zs, in fact, as she’ll be late for school. But before she dashes out the door, Nazuna asks if she slept well, because that’s what happens when people are satisfied with their day. Akira must’ve been, for she couldn’t sleep before, but here she did. I wonder if she’ll make it a more frequent thing?

Call of the Night – 03 – Night Fight

While I could absolutely keep watching just Kou, Nazuna, and the night for ten or eleven more episodes, the introduction of Asai Akira doesn’t ruin the vibes. In fact, she brings a unique dynamic: Kou’s only human friend, something he didn’t think he had in her. When he placed the blue watch on the mailboxes, he didn’t mean to place it right above Akira’s, but that’s how she took it.

When Kou was an aloof kid off on his own in the playground, only Akira went to him to see what he was up to. When he said he was fine not joining the others, she joined him instead, and declared them friends. He didn’t object, but he probably forgot that exchange that Akira dutifully maintained. She still considers him a friend, and is glad he’s doing okay.

So Kou begins leaving ever-so-early from his nightly visits to Nazuna’s for some bed-lying and blood-sucking so he can meet up with Akira (who is an early bird to his night owl). Nazuna jokes that he’s going off to see another woman, and immediately senses from his expression that she’d accidentally nailed it. That said, Kou admits in voiceover that he and Akira don’t do much other than exchange inoffensive small talk.

On one such occasion in the park, he asks if Akira is having fun. She puts the question to him, and he says he isn’t not having fun, so she replies that she is. Just as Kou, extremely inexperienced in such things, starts wondering if Akira likes him, Nazuna menacingly emerges from the shadows only to give Kou a friendly pat on the shoulder and congratulate him for doing “hanky-panky”.

She tells Akira her and Kou’s relationship is “purely physical”, and while Akira’s mention of romance (upon hearing Kou call her “Nazuna-chan) once again makes Nazuna blush, she shakes that off by basically marking her territory, sucking Kou’s neck right in front of Akira and announcing she’s a vampire.

At a 24-hour café, the three sit, and Akira tries to grasp the situation. She asks Kou if he’s skipping out on school because of Nazuna. While she may kind of be the reason now, she wasn’t the original reason, which was that he simply couldn’t be bothered with it anymore. Akira feels the same way, especially with Kou gone, but didn’t ditch because she thought she had to go.

She thinks she’d have more fun if Kou were around, so she asks him to come back to school. When Kou doesn’t immediately refuse and seems to hesitate, Nazuna seemingly gets miffed and suddenly splits. Kou follows after her, asking if she’s angry and why, but Nazuna doesn’t feel like spilling it out, and is clearly still mad, so she flips him off and does her vampire warpspeed thing. Kou looks for her all night, without success.

Finally, in that magical in-between time just before sunrise, Kou falls on his face while climbing some stairs, then uses his receiver watch to call Nazuna. She responds, and he proceeds to tell her that while he doesn’t really “get” fights like the one they’re apparently in, but he wants to make up with her. With that, Nazuna suddenly appears, and is once again as honest with him as he was with her, saying she was “ticked off” by him hesitating after Akira asked him to come back to school.

Turns out she misunderstood; Kou hesitated because he wasn’t sure how to tell a human friend that couldn’t go back to school because he wanted to become a vampire. With that cleared up and the two well and truly made up, Nazuna notices the blood from Kou’s tumble, and proceeds to kiss him in order to drink it, remarking that “a lot came out”. She liked how he said human friend, and that it suggested he had a vampire friend too. Kou may not know this since she’s his first, but vampire friends do kiss.

Call of the Night – 02 – Not Just Any Neck Will Do

Kou and Nazuna met quite by chance, so it’s not surprising the next night when Kou looks everywhere and can’t find her. They set neither a time nor a place. Fortunately fortune smiles upon him as Nazuna eventually drops in on him, saying she was busy looking for some rando to drink blood from.

Since Nazuna told Kou before that drinking blood is like eating and “copulating” at the same time, he’s a little miffed that she’d copulate with just anyone, but she tells him that’s just what vampires do. Different necks are like different kinds of food to them.

What matters is they found each other, and Kou wants to make sure it’s easier next time, so asks if they can exchange numbers. Only problem is, Nazuna doesn’t have a phone. Well, she does, but she apparently bought it in the 80s, because it’s almost the size of her boombox.

Nazuna led Kou to her place to find said gigantic phone, and once they’re there, she soon plops into bed after a long night of searching for necks to bite. Kou isn’t sure what to do until she opens the covers so he’ll join her. But the prospect of her sucking other necks sticks with him.

That’s when Nazuna confesses she was looking for him all night too…she was just too embarrassed to say it. Kou accepts her apology, and unlike the last time when he whipped out his neck willy-nilly, here he gets the timing right, and she leans in for a drink.

Both the character design and Amamiya Sora’s voice acting really nail that combination of predation and vulnerability has always made vampires so fascinating. As she dozes next to him, happy as a clam, Kou is relieved and happy not that she finds his blood tasty, but because they both felt the same way: they wanted to see each other again.

The next night they have an equally hard time finding each other, but the inevitably do, and Kou presents her with a solution to her problem that avoids her having to buy a (new) cell phone: a pair of receiver watches. While a desperately dorky thing, I’m not surprised that Nazuna is into it and wants to play with them.

This leads to Kou telling her a story of how he bought a pair when he was younger, even though he didn’t have a friend. Instead of making one, he hid the watch hoping someone would find it, but while it was eventually taken, he never worked up the courage to use it to call that person (or rodent).

Nazuna is right that it’s a bleak story on its face, but Kou is also right that being around people can make some people more lonely than being on their own. The two dorks proceed to have a grand old time communicating and laughing together on their watches, culminating with Kou remarking that they’re like a couple that just started out.

Nazuna puts the perfect capper on the evening by giving Kou another aerial ride over the city lights, this time to a new insert song. At times, the pair look like they’re dancing in the sky, ’cause they kinda are. The puppy love is strong here, and these two are simply the cutest.

Nazuna lands them on the school roof, and even though Kou hates school during the day and has not been going, the night makes it a more enjoyable place to be. Nazuna walks up to him and casually sucks his blood for the first time outside her apartment—and at school, no less! As she puts it, “Talk about indecent behavior!”

But while Nazuna is super casual about drinking his blood, showing a lot of skin, and saying “copulate”, Kou soon picks up that when it comes to love and romance, she gets super-embarrassed, which is how Kou “gets back” at her stolen neck bite by calling her by her first name and adding “-chan”, which turns her beet-red and has her covering her face with her awesome cloak.

On the way home just before daybreak, Kou wonders if the blue receiver watch he left atop the mailboxes is still out there somewhere. Just as he’s dismissing that idea, he gets a signal from his red receiver watch, and a girl in a school uniform and messy dark hair calls him by his name…

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!

Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san 3 – 04 – Tease the Night

The weather is starting to turn in TakaKata Land, but the day Nishikata decides to change to his warmer winter uni, Takagi is still in her short-sleeved summer fuku. We see just how accustomed to losing challenges Nishikata is when she says that because he changed first, he wins a game she had goin on in her head—that doesn’t sit right with him!

He makes up a new game—one he’s sure to lose—in which Takagi loses if she says the word “cold”. He tries to get her to respond in a manner that would sound like the word cold, but as usual she’s too sharp for him. When he tries again, she turns the game to her advantage, drawing very close and asking if she says “cold” like he wants, will he…warm her up?

After the three girls are out of sync due to an undelivered text, Nishikata finds all his usual lunch buddies are out sick (or pretending to be sick), so he resigns himself to eating lunch alone on the steps, which he tries to make the best of but can’t help but feel lonely. Sure enough, Takagi sensed he might be lonely and joins him.

It occurs to me that these two rarely eat lunch together since they each have their own circles of lunch buddies. It’s so lovely to see them just sitting together silently munching away. Then Takagi has Nishikata guess what’s in her onigiri, claiming one of his prized karaage should he be wrong. She wins, but feels bad about taking his food, so gives him one of her crispy lotus roots, acting until the very last second like she was going to feed him, lovey-dovey style.

The next segment involves Nishikata trying to snap a photo of a thrown rock that looks like a UFO in the sky. Takagi helps by doing the throwing, and while she admits she doesn’t really believe, she likes that Nishikata does. It’s part of what makes her adore him. In a lovely whimsical twist, she spots a actual UFO, but he doesn’t see it.

One day the bath in the Nishikata household is inoperable, so he has to use the public baths. Takagi asks him what time he’s going and he tells her, then spends the entire time there either looking for her or wondering why she didn’t come. Then she surprises him by the milk vending machine, admitting she not only came, but came early, perfectly calculating how much longer she’d take compared to him.

Nishikata’s longing for Takagi’s company, even if they were separated by the different sections of the bathhouse, speaks to his growing affection for her and desire to be by her side more often than not. The feeling is obviously (to everyone but him, of course) mutual, as Takagi remarks how they don’t usually walk together at night, and how it obscures their faces.

After Nishikata very foolishly challenges Takagi to a “whose face turns red first” contest— as soon as she leans into him he loses—the two continue their nighttime walk until it’s time to part ways to head to their respective homes. As she departs, Nishikata offers, unbidden, to walk her home, since it’s nighttime and thus not as safe for a young lady.

Takagi is so shocked by his offer, and loves so much how it sounds like something a boyfriend would say, she simply stands there in a perfect blend of befuddlement and delight. Then she thanks Nishikata for the offer and darts off, strategically hiding from him what must be a beet-red face.