AKA: よふかしのうた ; Yofukashi no Uta

Genre: Supernatural Drama/Comedy

Length: Television series, 13 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently licensed by Sentai Filmworks (and HiDive for streaming video)

Content Rating: TV-14 (Violence, fanservice.)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: If you like it light, Moonphase; if you like it dark, Shiki.

Notes: Based on manga by Kotoyama, serialized in Shogakukan's Weekly Shonen Sunday

Rating:

Call of the Night

Synopsis

Ko Yamori resents the boredom of his existence, to the point that an encounter with a vampire named Nazuna Nanakusa seems to offer him freedom from the drudgery of his life- by his having her change him into a vampire. But achieving that goal proves surprisingly difficult.

Review

I've never read the manga this is based on, though I have read brief descriptions of the individual volumes. Frankly, I was expecting something much darker, and maybe more erotic, than what we're given here. (And maybe with better artwork, but since I haven't read the manga, I don't' know how to apportion the blame for that.)

One thing that stood out for me here (and not really in a good way) was the show's vampire revisionism. Of course, a writer can do whatever they want with the characteristics of an imaginary creature (for example, the vampires in Moonphase also practice magic), but there does seem, since Dracula, a general fictional consensus on the traits of vampires, and the properties of their interactions with humans, which is abandoned here for plot convenience. For example, in COtN it is asserted that a vampire can only turn a human into a vampire (here it's called making the human their "offspring") if the human is actually IN LOVE with the vampire- an assertion that Lucy in the original Dracula, Elfreide in Moonphase, and a whole TOWNFUL of poor souls in Shiki, would all dispute. In COtN we also hear that a vampire is only absolutely required to drink blood ONCE EVERY TEN YEARS; again, the once-human victims in Shiki could have only WISHED this were so. But these are all plot points in the service of giving Ko a lot of time to think it over before committing himself to becoming one of the Children of the Night.

Other innovations here include: sunlight by itself doesn't kill vampires (we see this at least a couple of times); and a vampire has a time limit of one year to turn a human into a vampire- if it can't be done in a year, the vampire's compatriots will simply kill the human. So there is a real-time limit in the show's plot, but since when have manga existed in real time?

Natsuna is drawn with: her hair braided into huge rings; a fanservice friendly outfit (which she usually conceals under a coat); and crossed eyes. In fact, all the major characters in this show seem to have either crossed eyes (Natsuna), beady eyes (Ko), or both. (An example of the last is Ko's childhood friend, Akira Asai, who's strangely understanding about both Ko's involvement with Natsuna, AND about his desire to become a vampire.)

I'm unclear about why Ko thinks being a vampire would be such an improvement, since the VAMPIRES complain of boredom too. Natsuna spends much of her long nights playing video games. When she needs money, she resorts to her "Cuddle Buddy" business, which is intended both for financial gain, AND to give her the opportunity to suck the blood of her clients. (It SOUNDS sleazy, but at least what we see doesn't LOOK that sexual at all. As I said, as vampire shows go this is usually pretty tame.) Despite having the classic haughty attitude toward humans, Natsuna often seems childishly irresponsible, and I thought of van Helsing's observation, in Bram Stoker's original, that vampires have "child brains."

As for Ko, I was curious about HIS abundance of free time at night as well. He's apparently living with his mom, and mom seems to be another of those Japanese parents who's gone a lot of the time for work. Still, you'd think Ko's non-attendance at school would have raised some red flags with SOMEONE else besides Akira.

The show does seem to indicate that vampires have great longevity, and yet they seem kinda clueless about some aspects of humanity, love in particular. It occurred to me that THIS show's vampires might not be able to biologically reproduce at all (so no vampire "dynasties" like in Underworld or even Moonphase), but can ONLY create other vampires out of humans. (Natsuna obliquely refers once to when she "became" a vampire, so I would guess, by the show's rules about this, that she must have been in love with a vampire in the past. I DO wish Ko had inquired more about this.) The time limit the vampires impose on human-vampire relationships I'd guess has a different function than the ostensible one of keeping humans from learning too many vampire "secrets." And despite the assertion that a human merely needs to fall in love with a vampire to become an "offspring", in the show's best episode (#9), it looks like it needs to be a mutual thing. (That one episode is so illuminating about the life, and love, of vampires- and shows this with even a touch of sentimentality- that it tempted me to go another star.)

Most of the highlights indeed occur in the latter part of the show. We find that one vampire we were introduced to as part of Natsuna's vampire "clique", besides having an adoring group of offspring, is not quite what they seem. And while I started this expecting it to be darker than it is, at least a shadow IS finally introduced, in the form of a detective who is also an expert vampire slayer.

I didn't care much for the show's typical hip-hoppy opening and closing themes. I guess my favorite Score In A Vampire Series (can we create an award for that?) is still the seriously eclectic one of Moonphase.

The wholesale re-imagining of vampire lore for plot convenience bugged me. Ko himself seems driven by impulses he really doesn't understand; it causes his behavior to be rather random, though it did lead to the best resolution in Ep. 9. The show (perhaps mirroring Ko's mentality) takes a while to find its rhythm.

And yet there's some very good stuff here. Ep. 9, again, is a standout; it reminded me of the final resolution of the Nanami plotline in Dance in the Vampire Bund, though thankfully WITHOUT the elements of pedophilia in THAT one. The show tries to depict Japan at night as a magical "other world", and to some extent succeeds. Natsuna's odd (and self-serving on TWO levels) "business" was interesting- though could have stood more story exposition.