The Spring 2021 Manga Guide

Call of the Night

What's It About? 

When Nazuna invites Ko to spend the night at her place in an abandoned building, he's stoked! But then he awakens to kisses on his neck with a little too much bite to them... Is it just the delicious taste of his blood that makes her meet him night after night for late-night adventures, conversation and...naps? Or something else? Then, when a cute girl from Yamori's past shows up and competes for his attention, his budding relationship with the undead is put to the test! (from Viz Media)

Call of the Night is drawn and scripted by Kotoyama and Viz Media has released its first volume both digitally and in print for $6.99 and $9.99 respectively

Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

There's something lurking beneath the surface of Call of the Night. What that is isn't clear yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the whole story is something of a metaphor for depression and introversion. Ko, the protagonist, had been doing all right in life until he hit fourteen, at which point his lack of interest in romance suddenly became stressful socially (right there with you, buddy), eventually leading to him developing insomnia. With his parents basically checked out of his life, he began walking at night and not going to school, but his perambulations aren't really helping with his problems.

Then he meets Nazuna.

Nazuna's a vampire, and she's nominally after Ko's super tasty blood, but once again, there's something else simmering beneath the surface. She has no interest in turning Ko into a vampire (which would require him to fall in love with her), but she does seem invested in his emotional well-being, something she's possibly unaware of. Certainly her aversion to discussing love and falling into it seems to hide more than just a cultural difference between vampires and humans; it's more like she's gleefully and frantically making double-entendres and sex jokes because she's trying to cover up something more personal. Since, as far as we've been told, vampires in this story's mythos can only reproduce when they drink the blood of a human who's in love with them, thus turning the human, that would imply that Nazuna fell for a vampire at some point in her past and ended up the way she is now. Since she's clearly older than Ko by her actions (she looks like a teenager, and I don't think that's an accident), she may be trying not to turn him because she's already been through that herself, and now she regrets it.

Are they friends? Something more? It's not clear, nor is it obvious if Ko's sudden proclamation that he wants to become a vampire is due to him actually wanting to become one or to a need to prove that he CAN fall in love. It's Ko's underlying emotional issues that are really driving this story, though, with the vampire thing serving more as the vehicle for them. To a degree he can read like he's just got a case of the fourteen-year-old oh-woe-is-mes, but flashbacks, as well as his fixation on falling in love and understanding what that means, indicate that there's more going on here.

So even if you come for the bloodsucking, Call of the Night is not your typical vampire story. Figuring out what tale it's telling is much more the draw.

Lynzee Loveridge

Rating:

Ko is still in middle school but he's got a lot on his plate, emotionally speaking. Social interactions, especially romance, seem foreign to him. Presumably the pressure of 'faking it' has finally caught up to him and he's developed a bad case of insomnia and has dropped out of school. One night, he makes a spur of the moment decision and decides to sneak out. That's how he first crosses paths with Nanakusa, a vampire he decides to fall in love with as that's the only why she can turn him into a vampire, too.

I am, in my weary age, a bit ambivalent to supernatural romance, and my experience with Koyotama's works is limited to a few episodes of Dagashi Kashi. That said, I found Call of the Night a great entry into the subgenre. Kotoyama is a great stage setter here, and the descriptions of the particular thrill of sneaking out at night are spot on – at least based on my limited experience of “doing things I wasn't supposed to” around Ko's age.

The manga's central conceit is less “vampire shenanigans” and more Ko's progression out of a depressive spell. The first volume doesn't let on to what actually drove Ko to give up the daylight hours, only that he rejected at least one girl's romantic interest and was socially chided for it. The kid seems frustrated with social expectations that make little sense to him and his decision to become a vampire is likely driven by a desire to be free of them forever. Day and night are juxtaposed as “functional” and “dysfunctional”, and the introduction of Akira further drives this home as she attempts to draw Ko away from his delinquency and back to the world of the living. It's an interesting quandary to consider: is complete rejection of societal norms and embracing the quiet stillness and freedom of the night foolish, or just another way of living?