Hello folks, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m feeling a certain yearning for the wild side, a clamoring for deviant adventure that can obviously only be sated with some Call of the Night. Granted, our featured nightwalkers aren’t exactly the most intimidating of creatures; in fact, they spent most of their last encounter debating the significance of a first kiss and also playing Street Fighter. Nonetheless, their dissatisfaction with daylit society and slow progress towards mutual trust have been an overall delight, a charming slow burn of romance and incidental escapades.
Through both its careful color design and the anxieties of its main cast, Call of the Night has been articulating a poignant sense of dislocation within modern society. This fundamental loneliness is balanced by the tentative intimacy shared by Kou, Nazuna, and newcomer Akira; none of them are quite sure where they belong, but all of them are desperate to not be alone. All that plus a heaping helping of sensually charged imagery makes Call of the Night a natural continuation of director Itamura’s Monogatari-forged expertise, and a show I’m always happy to revisit. Let’s not waste any more time then, and see what Nazuna and her human companions are up to!
Episode 5
We open on a shot that emphasizes the limitations of Nazuna’s world. She lies alone on her futon in an empty room, the sunlight glaring down on her like a prison guard leering through the bars. Though Nazuna does her best to frame her existence as one of indulgence, deviance, and absolute freedom, it is persistently made clear that her life is actually defined by strict rules and extended bouts of isolation. The night is hers, yes, but humanity inhabits the daylight; her world is a lonely one, possessing few of the opportunities or amenities that ordinary humans take for granted. No wonder she’s so eager to foster her own little nocturnal community
The first thing she does upon waking is grab her watch, a gift from Kou, a connection to a world beyond this lonely room
“It’s still late afternoon.” Only so much you can do when you’re trapped within a single-room apartment with just a PS1 for company
The OP readily demonstrates Kotoyama’s usual strategy when running out of narrative steam: introducing another girl who is hot but also scares him
“If I win here I’ll finally reach a rating of 50,000!” Her alleged excitement is undercut by the shot layout, which extends far behind her to convey the barren, lonely state of her home
She checks downstairs later to find a missed delivery notification. Apparently even vampires cannot escape the scourge of delivery drivers who intentionally avoid having to actually drop off their packages
Though this is ostensibly a story about vampires, it still embodies Kotoyama’s fascination with the incidental quirks of life. A fair amount of Dagashi Kashi involved the leads just lounging around and griping about modern inconveniences; one of his strengths as a writer is his ability to inhabit such convincingly mundane thought processes and personal exchanges. His characters never need narrative motivation for conversation, they’re always happy to just shoot the shit
“I feel bad making them make multiple delivery attempts.” Truly the most harmless of vampires
“Steam irons again today.” So used to boredom that she’s memorized the late-night TV adverts. It’s a pretty depressing existence
“Everyone I pass looks glum. I wish they’d learn to enjoy the night. Like a certain someone I know.” After the initial thrill of deviance and novelty has passed, wandering the city at night can easily become its own sort of routine. Though Nazuna framed her relationship with Kou as her introducing him to the pleasures of the night, it actually seems like that goes both ways. As someone who’s well acquainted with the night, Nazuna enjoys living vicariously through someone who can still find it inherently alluring; it is Kou who makes the night interesting for Nazuna, not the other way around
“Hi hi hi, kitty kitty kitty yes, bye bye!” Nazuna can speak cat fluently, I see
“Hey, sorry to ask, but can you tell me if this beeps?” Nazuna’s feelings towards Kou are highlighted all the more dramatically in his absence, as we see her wander the streets without purpose, and make sure she won’t miss a call from him as she takes a bath
Ah, the Mt. Fuji bathhouse tapestry, an apparent staple of bathhouses Japan-wide
Even though Nazuna is naked, the cinematography capturing her is far more neutral than the sexually charged compositions that attend Kou falling asleep beside her. A signature trick of Monogatari, which always emphasizes how, much like art itself, sexuality is generally forged in a conversation between subject and viewer. Naked bodies can easily be neutral objects, sexuality generally comes down to framing
Nazuna races out of the bath the moment the phone buzzes
Her meeting with Kou provides an excellent comparison point. Even though she’s actually wearing clothes now, the camera aligns us with Kou’s preoccupation, highlighting the nape of her neck, the suggestive bottom edge of her jacket. I feel like many attempts at sexually charged media fail out the gate because they fail to consider why these characters are presenting themselves in certain ways, or who that presentation is being directed towards
Granted, that’s actually the appeal of a fair amount of anime – “look at these scantily clad women whose personalities in no way match their outfits, isn’t it fun how they don’t know they’re being watched?”
“I had to get out early because of a certain someone.” Nazuna’s acknowledgment of changing her plans for Kou’s sake is matched with blinding city lights, emphasizing this revelation of how much she cares
“You tend to remember stuff you don’t want to in the bath.” Thanks, Shinji
“I was trying not to think about it. The concern and anxiety over whether I should really keep doing this.” It’s kinda funny how the default assumptions of anime make it easy to overlook what a dramatic choice Kou is making. Teenagers frequently strike out on independent adventures in animation, but Kou lives within our own world, and abandoning school for weeks, potentially abandoning a human future altogether, is unsurprisingly weighing on him
“I learned the feeling of having fun is an emotional stress in itself.” Once he’s past the honeymoon phase, is this a daily life that actually satisfies him, that he can inhabit comfortably and without stress?
“She’s just freshly out of the bath with a different hairstyle. So why is my heart fluttering?” He’s arrived at a new stage of incidental intimacy, and seeing Nazuna outside of her usual context has shaken him. Is he already sharing his life with this girl?
With all of this being so new to him, Kou reveals that he often offers his blood just to gauge his own feelings
Kou’s scaroused feelings are further incensed by an accidental stop at a love hotel. Extremely Nazuna beat of her immediately jumping on the bed, delighting in the greater feedback provided by something other than her limp futon
“Were you able to assess your feelings, vampire-wannabe boy?” Contrasting Nazuna’s current behavior against the beginning of the episode makes it all the clearer how much Kou’s presence invigorates her, how having an apprentice to lord over brings her to life
Kou reveals he doesn’t actually feel comfortable about his own horny thoughts, as he considers Nazuna a friend. It’s an awkward situation
“Let me keep savoring all those different emotions you have.” An exceedingly horny way to announce that she’s prepared to accept all of him
The scene ends in a clear contrast with the episode’s opening – Nazuna once again channel surfing through the night, but actually finding great joy in the process with Kou there beside her
Having reaffirmed their bond, Kou rambles onward into a new theater of anxiety, wondering how many guys she’s sucked blood from before
Apparently she previously found subjects to consume by offering her services as a “professional cuddler.” Even her admissions of alleged impropriety are just a different sort of chaste, especially when combined with her offhand admission that she is now exclusively drinking Kou’s blood
Very clear topics of horny fascination for Kou here – the suggestive darkness of Nazuna’s skirt, the firm and occasionally sharp pressure of her fingers. Sexuality thrives in implication
Her knowledge of pressure points becomes its own form of seduction, and then someone rings the damn doorbell
It’s a former customer, and Kou is “going to be the cuddle buddy.” Goddamnit, Nazuna
Her name is Kiyosumi Shirakawa, and she works at a publishing company
“You see, I make my money off the cuddling business.” Apparently being a vampire is actually the least ridiculous thing about Nazuna
And Done
Thus Nazuna ropes Kou into her home-grown cuddle buddy business, an industry that’s apparently sufficiently lucrative to pay for her sizable apartment. Well, the economics of vampiredom aside, I very much enjoyed this episode’s contrast of Nazuna’s private life with her latest Kou-related escapades. Seeing Nazuna alone really emphasized all the ways Kou brings joy and excitement into her life, a revelation that was neatly matched by the alternately neutral and sexually charged cinematography. Tomoyoki Itamura continues to prove himself a perfect match for this material, while Kotoyama’s interrogations of intimacy and ennui keep reaping lovely character moments. Also there was a fluffy cat! Great episode, bring on the next one.
This article was made possible by reader support. Thank you all for all that you do.
