Part 1 | Part 2

Call of the Night begins with Ko Yamori stepping out; literally out of his apartment, but in a broader, more metaphorical sense, of his box, his comfort zone, his hard-drawn lane. Though he hasn’t lived it yet, there is a sense within him that intuitively understands that to step out is what he needs to do in order to start living a life that means something to him.

Ko has been strung along the path of life expected for teens his age, he’s gotten up at the same time and attended school day in and day out, he’s been subject to cliché romantic gestures from his fellow students, and he’s come to the conclusion that it’s all just no fucking fun. You can see this in how his school days are portrayed; dull, bleary, washed out and white as to feel borderline monochrome. A place where nothing feels alive, nothing feels flowing, nothing may as well ever move. It feels like a dead end.

And so, knowing well that his youth, his precious short life, isn’t gonna gain anything from slogging through the same thing, every day, for the rest of his adolescence, Ko dames to take real initiative and simply… try something else. He stops going to school and goes out in the dead of night, when much of the world which placed him on that path is at rest, to explore the vast physical world around him on his own terms.

When he first walks out and simply… breathes in the cool night air, merely exists under the stars for a few seconds without any particular stressors pushing him towards any action or plan not on his own terms, the sigh of relief he gives, and that all-encompassing sensation of freedom and weightlessness that follows, is immediate and palpable. An immaculate first impression.

What makes Ko such a nice protagonist is that he’s just generally an all-around good kid; even as he abandons his expected responsibilities, he’s never painted as a deviant or a miscreant or used as an insert for scummy perverted otaku-types. He’s earnest, he’s curious, he’s kind and gentle and a little soft-spoken, and on top of all that, he’s a dork, in touch with his childish side, who just unabashedly likes fun things (which, it must be reminded, are fun!). He’s a romantic at heart, really, he just needs his heart unlocked. He just feels… lost. He’s just missing a little something. He just feels like he’s been railroaded through a life without much meaning.

When Nazuna Nanakusa first enters the picture, she seems like the exemplar of the kind of person a bored, tepid, listless individual like Ko needs in their life, something of an ideal role model. A drifter of the night, existing outside societal bounds, wild, irreverent, chill, funny, teasing in good fun but carrying an air free of judgment or pressure, her voice husky and raspy and nasal. She’s got a mysterious, enticing air around her. She’s not conventionally attractive or hot in a way that seems groomed to meet external standards as she damn well doesn’t have to be, she’s punky and scrappy, for she seems a joyous delinquent, and the vibes she gives off in her presence are infectious and render her allure as a person to be around magnetic and irresistible. She’s got a fanged smile a mile wide that just emanates a lust for life.

Nazuna proposes to Ko one of the core philosophical tenants of the series; that one ought not to go to sleep until they are satisfied with how they spent their waking day. To go to sleep dissatisfied, to leave your waking hours wasted and unworthy of reminiscing on as you drift off, is simply unacceptable. This is the essence of nocturnalism, to stay up as everything else sleeps as to find that satisfaction.

And there’s one more thing that makes her a fascinating presence, perhaps most notable of all; she’s a motherfucking vampire!

That last bit sticks out to Ko as something he’s certainly never seen before, and he makes the, perhaps rash and ill-considered, connection in his brain that hey, maybe this is the lifestyle vampires enjoy. They don’t have to put up with human society and their stuffy rules and structures! Living every night as a vampire would be so sick, wouldn’t it!? So, Ko commits to living the nocturnal life with Nazuna as his partner-in-crime, with a single ultimate goal, fulfilling the prerequisite for Nazuna being able to turn him; he will fall in love with her.

It’s an impulse it’s easy to understand jumping on if you’ve ever been there in Ko’s position, felt adrift in life and constricted by our dull civilization the way he does, even as obviously poorly thought out as it is. Nazuna is the only vampire Ko’s met at this point, and they haven’t even known eachother for a full night yet, and yet that yearning for something fun and different and more is so indisputably present, it can drive one to say and whole-heartedly believe even the craziest things.

Nazuna, presenting herself as a fully-fledged fun-seeker and veteran lover of the night, takes him up on his desire to roam the nocturne, and seeks to be his hand into the wonders of living for yourself in the free world after dark. To dwell at night, then, is a new way to search for satisfaction, where everything arbitrary and expected is stripped away, and there is only you and your desires to follow. Why… such a freedom might even feel something like flying.

There’s a way in how we see throughout the first episode how unfulfilled and exhausted by the expected rituals of courtship and dating, the whole “going out” rigamarole, for people his age Ko is, leaving him so empty to the very concept of romance, contrasted with its final scene, soaring the open starry sky in Nazuna’s arms, to the tune of the rambunctious, anarchic ode to wild nocturnal living that inspired the creation of this story in the first place, fueled by the promise of freewheeling and fooling around and, even if there is no expressly mutual romance yet, indeed loving this free after-hours world around them without abandon, that reminds me, in microcosm, of an essay from my favorite text, CrimethInc’s book Days of War, Nights of Love, simply entitled “L is for Love”:

Falling in love is the ultimate act of revolution, of resistance to today’s tedious, socially restrictive, culturally constrictive, patently ridiculous world.

Love transforms the world. Where the lover formerly felt boredom, he now feels passion. Where she once was complacent, she now is excited and compelled to self-asserting action. The world which once seemed empty and tiresome becomes filled with meaning, filled with risks and rewards, with majesty and danger. Life for the lover is a gift, an adventure with the highest possible stakes; every moment is memorable, heartbreaking in its fleeting beauty. When she falls in love, one who once felt disoriented, alienated, and confused finally knows exactly what she wants. Suddenly his existence makes sense to him; it becomes valuable, even glorious and noble. Burning passion is an antidote that will cure the worst cases of despair and resignation.

Love makes it possible for individuals to connect to others in a meaningful way—it impels them to leave their shells and risk being honest and spontaneous together, to come to know each other in profound ways. Thus love makes it possible for us to care about each other genuinely, […] But at the same time, it plucks the lover out of the routines of everyday life and separates her from other human beings. She feels a million miles away from the herd of humanity, living as she is in a world entirely different from theirs. In this sense love is subversive, because it poses a threat to the established order of our modern lives. The boring rituals of […] socialized etiquette no longer mean anything to a man who has fallen in love, for there are more important forces guiding him than mere inertia and deference to tradition.

[...]

One cannot be a lover and a dreadfully responsible, dreadfully respectable member of today’s society at the same time; for love impels you to do things which are not “responsible” or “respectable.” True love is irresponsible, irrepressible, rebellious, scornful of cowardice, dangerous to the lover and everyone around her, for it serves one master alone: the passion that makes the heart beat faster. It disdains anything else, be it self-preservation, duty, or shame.

[...]

And so, despite the stereotyped images used in the media to sell toothpaste and honeymoon suites, genuine passionate love is discouraged in our culture. Being “carried away by your emotions” is frowned upon; instead we are raised to always be on our guard, lest our hearts lead us astray. Rather than being encouraged to have the courage to face the consequences of risks taken in pursuit of our hearts’ desires, we are counseled not to take risks at all, to be “responsible.” […] Love as most of us know it today is a carefully prescribed and preordained ritual, something that happens on Friday nights in expensive movie theaters and restaurants, something that fills the pockets of the shareholders in the entertainment industries without preventing workers from showing up to the office on time and ready to reroute phone calls all day long. This regulated, commercial “love” is nothing like the burning fire that consumes the genuine lover. Restrictions, expectations, and regulations smother true love; for love is a wild flower that can never grow within the confines prepared for it, but only appears where it is least expected.

This? This is beyond the narrow view of romance Ko knew living a standard, preordained life; this is loving, in its totality. Flying upside-down, as to reflect the upturning of the expected norms of our lives and what is possible therein; hell, defying our laws of gravity in the act of flight itself feels as a poetic subversion, to shirk the rigid routines of structured current life, to reject the colonization of our minds and bodies and to fly freely in the beautiful open air feeling to be one in the same. And this feeling is beyond done justice and elevated to perfection in the background art, the scene of the night itself, which leaves me at a loss for what words are even worthy of its beauty, this rich, seductive ocean of dark, sublime, glorious purple seasoned like a wave of sugar with swirling stars and distant nebulas. One of the most truly magical scenes I’ve ever seen put to screen, an Alternative A Whole New World, for the young, disaffected and rebellion-curious. Nights of love, indeed.

Call of the Night has rightfully received all the words of praise it deserves from all corners of anime viewers for its aesthetic and vibes, and how accurately it captures the most magical feelings taking a walk at night can engender, the ambience of it all; there’s a persistent sense of quiet and peace, of the calm night surrounding as the waking world lays at rest. It is this atmosphere which serves as the ever-present backdrop to all the further delights that are to unfold.

Yet, there is a distinct vibrancy to be found among this hush as well, offbeat and jazzy and fun and colorful in its own unique way; indeed, the night has a life and a shine all its own.

The background and landscape art is integral to this experience being done justice, among the definitive portrayals of the night itself ever put to screen, not only some of the most straightforwardly beautiful but thematically important background work I’ve seen in animation. The colors and stars are rich and massive, and even in the background art’s more subtle and down-to-earth moments than the grand, artful astral oceans the series is famous for, the velvety darkness pierced with the blinding little pinpoints of the stars remain so alluring, such a sight to behold; it you’ve ever been lucky enough to be out on a night where, just by chance, the stars are more visible and bright than usual, it’s a sight to be savored. And on the occasions we bear sight to the all-encompassing radiance of the moon itself, it feels so special, like an absolute privilege to live under. Every screencap I’ve used to drive this point home so far is just from Episode 1, and trust me when I say the series keeps these feelings up all the way through.

It’s all matched and melded immaculately with the lo-fi-hip-hop-inflected soundtrack by Yoshiaki Dewa, whose work had previously soothed my soul in the minor iyashikei classic Flying Witch, and who really deserved to have been shouted out by name a lot more for how much this soundtrack was an integral factor in how people sold the show while it was airing.

And when it comes to music as part of the nocturnal experience, yet in service of the revelry as opposed to the relaxation, Creepy Nuts’ OP and ED have got that angle covered like nothing else.

The OP, Daten, kicks the beginning of each episode into raucous life with a blast of an immediate first impression; this sort of sinister, bouncy, Halloween-y jazz-pop-rap with R-Shitei’s uniquely raspy and naughty vocals, giving the impression of a party of those outside the norm, the freaks, the losers and misfits, and the nightwalkers and literal, actual horror-creatures alike, all of whom are given the right to dance and laugh and feel themselves even where the waking world wouldn’t want them to. This image is reinforced by the story told in the visuals during this first verse; Nazuna invites Ko down into her world, and in there, she dances before him in an empty parking garage, before beckoning him to do the same; a parking garage, this strictly utilitarian structure of mass transportation in service of business, gray concrete brutalism built to serve cold hard capitalist ends, is reclaimed, if only for a little while and if only by an intimate few, for the sake of merriment and free motion.

The pre-chorus is a little anxious and nerve-wracking, a bit genuinely freaked-out by a whirlwind of change and new stimuli, while still carrying through the vibe of being so profoundly exhilarated and enticed, climaxing in the chorus proper embracing the ride and delivering in the promised exuberance of it all. Blood-sucking being connected to food is reinforced through Nazuna biting Ko’s neck hard-cutting to her silhouette biting an apple causing his neck to spurt, the abrupt yet perfect climax to the tangible kinetic motion of Nazuna at once closing in to catch Ko and opening her mouth for his neck.

As in Ko and Nazuna’s first flight, the world being turned upside-down is a main running motif in the OP; specifically, when the song hits is more upbeat and triumphant chorus, the theme of the visuals comes to be falling upwards into the vast starry sky; one’s world being flipped on its head in this way serving as the means for a long dive into what was previously impossible. “Falling, falling” is, contrary to what the imagery that word may usually conjure, a celebratory chant, for falling away from the cold and hard into something new, expansive, and exciting. Nazuna is with Ko all along, catching him whenever he needs catching, serving as his stability, his guide, his rock, in this new paradigm. Nazuna guides Ko, into the stars, smiling at him with encouragement, and his anxiety gives way to delight.

The behind-the-scenes motif in the middle of the OP is cute, even if it did unintentionally mislead me into thinking this was gonna coalesce into a story about an impromptu after-hours video-making club early in the show’s airing (a thing I would still very much watch). In a growing trend in anime OP’s I’m very fond of, the lyrics are cleverly integrated into the visuals the whole way through, showing an impressive flexibility in how they are made to fit the style of each scene and shot.

It ends with Nazuna embracing Ko and gearing up to suck some blood, the excitement on her face palpable. Episode start.

The ED uses the song that inspired the creation of and serves as the namesake of this story in the first place, Yofukashi no Uta, the call of the night, and it’s no question how the spirit of this piece of music inspired the flow of creativity that birthed this story. It creeps into being with that spooky old dark cabaret sample, before the vocals and Nazuna’s presence thunder into life together at once, and the night sky itself is turned into a roaring, free party. Raw, anarchic fun. It’s celebratory, the lyrics ampromorphizing the night itself, falling under her seduction, and begging her moon to bathe you in its light as to have the ball of your life under it. Nazuna follows suit, rampaging and tearing the model city apart as the represent that when the sun is down, the city is ours. Badass shots of Nazuna revelling, acting out, and being generally sexy and awesome flash like strobe lights, climaxing in her kicking the moon around like a soccer ball, signifying that the night itself is our plaything, all bookended with shots of her dancing in the night sky’s very clouds and bathing in them like a hot tub, not giving a single fuck.

There’s also the matter Kotoyama’s character designs, which I really fell for. There’s just this essence of to them that suits all this perfectly; they’re sharp and angular and a bit acerbic, they have those piercing pupils, there’s a roughness and a harshness to them, yet in this way that’s disarming because it just emanates this cool, this chilled-out, effortless laxness that can’t help but be attractive and even comfy in its own way. Like, they just feel like they’re some cool kids perpetually vibing, livin’ their lives and goin’ with the flow around the outskirts like it’s no big deal, it’s kind of a decidedly unconcerned-with-glamor cool that’s paradoxically all the more aspirational feeling; befitting a series which paints the side of a dirty old vending machine in the dark as having the capacity to be the most truly romantic space imaginable. You want to be one of them, to be living just like them, and that makes it so attractive to spend this time with them.

So Ko starts living at nighttime with Nazuna, and in a gloriously subversive visual poetry, his world feels brighter than ever.

Indeed, the feelings I got from Call of the Night’s early episodes were not dissimilar from those of a great iyashikei anime; that sense of letting pressure and responsibility, in this sublime moment of the present, melt away, and becoming in touch with simply your own self and the environment around you. It’s so relaxing.

Take now, for instance, the playground; it’s the very first thing Ko is drawn to when he ventures out, to hop on the swingset and just propel himself as high as he can, laughing all the while in the throes of physical movement. In the day, under normal social contexts, the playground is for children and children only. It is in some ways a private domain, restricted. But at night, when no one is around and children are asleep, it is stripped of context. It is simply a physical space and form and set of objects, one which, it turns out, is pretty fuckin’ fun to play around on. Stripped of its social context, it returns to the Earth in a sense, a physical space to belong to anyone; more specifically, to you.

There was a playground just a few houses down from the house I lived in most of my life, the one me and my family moved into when I was 6. It got torn down and replaced with a new one just this past Summer, while Call of the Night was airing in fact, in a sad sort of serendipity. I played on that playground with my siblings and our general family circle as an actual little kid, so there’s obviously nostalgia there, but what made that place all the more special to me and made me so sad to see it finally go occurred some years later. I remember the summer vacation of 2016, when I was 17, between Junior and Senior years of High School, when I just straight-up didn’t keep up a sleep schedule, I’d be up until 3, 4, by the end of that summer 5 in the morning, to see the crack of sunrise. That was during the most depressed, devoid period of my life, a time which in the rear-view mirror feels like a vacuum of value, a black hole. Yet, one of the few unequivocally positive things that I cherish from that time period, the tiniest glimmer of a gem I managed to extract from that time, is the night walks I would go on during that summer. One of the places I regularly visited on those night walks was that old playground, and guess what, even as a borderline husk of a person as I was at that time, playing around on that thing in the deadest hours of the night, balancing on top of the plastic tunnel made for kids to climb through, swinging on the swingset and seeing how high I could go and far I could jump off beyond the builders’ intent, making my own rules of play not intended by the designers, etc…. was really, really fun and physically fulfilling.

I imagine for anyone who’s done something like exploring their school or any other familiar building in their life of the sort in the dead of night, the feeling is similar. When you see the places and institutions you’re so used to the baggage of instead as they merely are, at rest, it feels like an alternate dimension of sorts, and it thrusts the world you’re so used to into a light (or lack thereof) you’ve never thought to see it before, which can be the prerequisite for a radical shift in perspective; to rethink the world not as the series of schedules and movements and set locations you’re railroaded across in each day’s routine, but as a free and open space, which merely exists and which you merely exist within. Once you recognize that, the possibilities from there are quite literally endless.

The ability to return to a state that puts us more in touch with the sensibilities for play we have as kids that we are conditioned away from as we grow older is one of the most enticing promises a free and open space such as the world at night holds. Ko reconnecting with one of the loves of his childhood, the communicator watches, by way of him and Nazuna playing with them together, which lets them bond, both to one another through play and joking around over the transistors with eachother, and to their environment through exploration and playing a form of hide-and-seek, it is such simple yet comprehensive delight.

One relaxing scene early on I adore is when Nazuna, Ko, and Ko’s old school friend Akira all sleep together on the floor of Nazuna’s squat as rain pours outside; what an enrapturing moment, so intimate and serene and kind, Ko and Nazuna showing this humanity in giving Akira a warm place to stay safe from the cold rain outside, gladly letting her into their world, their little two-person club, as a place of refuge, and the atmosphere in this moment just soothes my heart to its core.

There’s another element of it in there, too; one thing that sticks out soaking in these early nights Ko and Nazuna spend first bonding together is that the jokes that occur between them are legitimately really funny? It caught me off guard rewatching the show for this very post how many times I actually burst out laughing. The banter between Ko and Nazuna feels like real banter between chill friends, comfortable with teasing and taking the piss. The way Nazuna plays with Ko by making out his words and the situations they wind up in to be dirtier than they are doesn’t feel like Bullshit Anime Sex Humor™️, it feels like real and authentic good-hearted ribbing between buds in a way that’s charming and humanized, because this really just is authentically what Nazuna’s sense of humor is like, lewd and teasing and skirting her fingers around taboo, which fits in with her air of irreverence so wonderfully. The way Nazuna insists on referring to sex as “copulating” in Episode 2 just cracks me up, I swear, and I could honestly listen to them and Akira riff on bad trashy dating sim visual novels for hours. My compliments to Gen Satou and Sora Amamiya for selling these characters with such great fun and such immaculate chemistry. Dorks. I love them.

Helping out this is the show’s facial expression game, which is absolutely top-of-the-line, in all respects but especially appreciated in the comedic department; I swear, this show just might have the strongest chibi-comedy-face game I’ve ever seen. Like, man, c’mon. In total, the humor feels so authentically infused with the show’s personality, it’s so chill and loose, a seamless blend of dry and deadpan yet wacky and quirky, in a way that makes chilling with these characters in this relaxed environment all the more inviting.

Everything between Ko and Nazuna just feels so earnest, and the other side of that very same coin comes in their moments of intimacy and sexual tension. In one powerfully romantic moment in Episode 5 bathed in a warm, deep pink, a post-bath Nazuna directly goads Ko the be more honest and open with his feelings; the wanting, intimate allure in her eyes, the desire for him to feel his feelings genuinely and share them with her, as she lists them off one-by-one closing her fingers in on his shoulder, is so heart-pounding and so beautiful. If anything, the fact that this moment is immediately preceded with Nazuna bouncing on the bed like an idiot as she makes fun of Ko for accidentally booking a love hotel only drives it all home, drives their relationship home as something so loose and open.

There’s a damn near heart-stopping, unfathomably tender intimacy when Nazuna sucks Ko’s blood. It feels like an ultimate act of trust and connection, a secular sacred ritual, an allegory for food and sex, serenity and pleasure, life in total, all at once. The desire to suck blood is, after all, one of the base bodily dual needs-and-wants of vampires, just like hunger and libido are for humans.

These moments have a very sensitive sort of eros to them, the scenes surrounding the act feel a lot like the kind of touchy, fickle, occasionally awkward, heart-palpitating moments that might surround young, well, copulation; yet much the same, in the moment of the act itself, it feels as though nothing else matters and nothing could possibly feel better. Two meld into one and into all. It’s probably the thing that matters most in a human-vampire romance story, and Call of the Night brings it across with flying colors.

It’s the earnestness and openness between these two that serves as the core to all of it; the fun, the jokes, the romance, the intimacy, the blood-sucking, the bond, all. The night, a calm, free environment to live and play in the negative space of societal activity, reveals parts of you you hide away in the context of the formal, draws out that which you need to be satisfied with yourself and with your day, makes you more honest with that which you want and that who you are on a baseline level, and that honesty and unabashedness underscores all which the bond between Ko and Nazuna is.

These themes of self-liberation all climatically explode in what, even in a year rife with standouts, nevertheless stands without competition as my Anime Episode of the Year; Episode 6, entitled “Might as Well Have Fun”.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the midst of an absolutely horrible, soul-crushing, dysphoria-inducing job when this episode came out; a job that felt like it was forcibly attempting to pressure-shape my heart into something I didn’t want it to be and that made me loathe having to exist in a body that socially accommodated doing it against my heart and mind’s deepest wishes, a job whose every hour felt like a tragic and comprehensive waste of my having been born on this earth; and this episode felt like lightning being shot directly through my spine. It made me want to scream, in the best possible way. It was probably one of the core motivators in me mustering up the will to finally quit, and for that I owe it something eternally.

First and foremost, we see that Ko is far from the first or only person Nazuna has invited to join her in the night to give them relief and refuge from the stressors of our way of living; in the flashback that opens the episode, we see a time when Nazuna approached another stressed, exhausted victim of our modern life, one Kiyosumi Shirakawa, walking in the night aimlessly after her company dragged her along to “social” business she felt no place in. There’s one of the insidious things about corporate capitalism and work culture right there; the way the companies you work for and the people you merely work in the same building as act like and even proclaim to be your “family”, try to take the place of a real social connection forged through the earnest and spontaneous, ensnaring your heart by insisting it ought to belong to them. It’s exhausting at best and can make you feel like your very soul is being siphoned from you, forcibly directed towards something it feels no care at all for, a violent violation of your being and your heart, your autonomy of care, at worst.

Just seeing the night sky and a space empty of the moors of her workplace give her the ability to loosen up and let herself feel something good for herself, to stretch and to smile. Stretching is a pleasure so rarely depicted, let alone with reverence, in art, yet it is one so deep and physical, which arises from the core of one’s muscles and bones and joints, a pure, visceral burst like no other of ecstatic and reinvigorating free movement, which recenters the body in its aftermath. That Call of the Night takes such care to emphasize Kiyosumi doing it here is a testament to how it reveres such things as the autonomy of pleasure, showing this woman expressing it in microcosm, experiencing something good from the depths of her physical body right here where she stands, away from the workplace that tries to make her feel like every aspect of her being, even her free time and social needs, belong to them. That it can so casually and seamlessly show such moments of its characters just… relaxing in this way is a perfect microcosm of this story.

The flip from frustrated, aimless dejection and bewilderment to abject physical pleasure and relief, as it abruptly cuts from Kiyosumi being approached by Nazuna in the park to the midst of her massage, is so stark and so beautiful.

In a general sense, I love how the thing Nazuna does for some money is something that brings relaxation, pleasure, and stress relief for others; namely, massaging. How we see her in this flashback not only so adept at massaging Kiyosumi, but actively encourage her to make as much noise as she wants, to let her pent-up pressures and feelings of pleasurable relief out as loudly as her body and being feels fit to without restraint or respite. Kiyosumi doing so, the feeling of Nazuna’s hands surging through her veins and muscles as all the hell her work puts her through is relieved, exiting her being through the desperate moaning and squealing of her vocal cords, is nothing short of raw ecstasy, a sound that resonates on a chilling level. Up front, I can’t give enough credit to the great Yōko Hikasa for going above and beyond in selling both Kiyosumi’s pleasure and pain all throughout this episode with such tangibility and humanity, in this scene in particular bringing her feelings brought about in these rare moments of bodily relief to life, such life.

This cold open shows more than ever that this, giving those who wander search the night for personal space and freedom the relief and pleasure they so need, is something that Nazuna values. It’s all perfectly consistent with how Nazuna has been towards Ko. That beshadowed grin of seductive excitement on Nazuna’s face as she approaches her in the flashback just says it all.

But right now, she’s off playing video games, which is also all too consistent. So Ko gives Kiyosumi the massage, and as they break the ice with one another, Ko finds out that Kiyosumi was once in his same shoes; that she, too, sought to live as a nightdweller in her youth. Ko and Kiyosumi trade off talking about the fun, amusing, life-affirming little things and freedoms that come about living nocturnally; singing out loud, standing in the street; practically finishing one another’s sentences, Ko expressing fresh-faced excitement while Kiyosumi expresses wistful nostalgia, a shared experience brought to life as one’s past and one’s present collide. That subtle, tender intertwining of solidarity and nostalgia that arises in this conversation is just… awe-inspiring, what a human moment.

Kiyosumi claims the job itself isn’t all so bad. Maybe she’s just in denial, unable to admit to herself that something that takes so much of her time is something she hates, or maybe she really does mean it. Either way, that’s the thing about work culture; even in the lucky circumstances where the raw work itself isn’t the worst thing in the world to do, the time it takes from you, those faux-social insistences and situations it imposes upon you, the expectation that you make that work the center of your life, social life and identity and all, can all still make it feel like the most crushing thing, like a thousand-ton block of concrete weighing your body and heart down.

And here and now, now that she’s opened herself up to and been honest about her desires even just a little bit, it all finally snaps. Everything Kiyosumi’s held back from saying to her boss and coworkers, the force of every tear she’s held back from crying in their presence, every time she’s held back from breaking down, from speaking her truth, every feeling, every yell, every gulped-back-down swear word, the load finally breaks and it all comes pouring out of her as she cries, screams, pleads, finally brutally honest with herself, that she doesn’t want to fucking do this anymore. In this moment, she realizes that her life doesn’t belong to her, and how desperately she wants it back, how deprived she is. In this moment, at this point in my existence, Kiyosumi was me, down to the bone.

And then.

For a series crawling with vampires and not at all alien to horror elements and moments, there was not a single moment in this series that made all the hairs on my neck stand up on end like the moment that phone started ringing. My memory on this is fuzzy, but I think I may have literally screamed “NO!” in shock when that phone went off, the words “THE BOSS” staring me down the same way the prospect of having to go back stared down Kiyosumi in that instant of realization, like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun when you’ve just heard the explosion of gunpowder go off. I knew full well how I would have felt is that had happened to me, and I felt so, so awful for her.

Her words apologizing to Ko and announcing her intention to heed the phone’s harsh, buzzing insistence crackle through her continued crying, she stumbles her way towards her work clothes, eyes blacked out, seeming dead, her body animated only by the force of obligation.

Ko simply cannot let this sight be without doing something.

Maybe the over-the-top intensity of Ko blocking off the door, the harsh outlines and shadows over his face and all, was meant to ring as comedic. It didn’t ring as comedic for me at all. I felt that fervor with every bone in my body. I was rooting like hell for him to successfully block her off from leaving. I think there may have been a feeling in the back of my mind, something like; god, I wish someone would do that for me. I wish somebody would physically stop me from ever showing up to that fucking place ever again.

The score during Kiyosumi’s fall (thanks to Nazuna’s extremely logical solution) is strangely peaceful and serene. It’s as though to say to her, even in this intense and emotionally scary moment, don’t worry. Ko and Nazuna have your back. They hear what you’re going through, they get it, and they care. They won’t let you feel this way. Ko, and in turn Nazuna, insist to Kiyosumi as they save her, “you won’t die”. You don’t have to die painfully over this. You don’t have to hit that cold, hard concrete ground all alone. That she fears death in this moment shows that there is still will to live within her, and Ko and Nazuna want to nurture that.

Back on the ground, even as Kiyosumi insists on going back, she cries, trembles, her voice breaks, the words leaving her mouth are in direct friction with her real feelings. She fights and struggles to go on denying herself those feelings, especially now that she’s just been shown this solidarity, someone who she not only gets but who attempted to break her free from this for the first time. It cuts back to her phone all the while, rapidly filling up with demanding texts, which is meant to feel pressing and overwhelming, horrifying, inescapable, a hell that calls.

Note how even as she protests that she needs to go to work, she doesn’t use any language like this is my “responsibility” or “duty”. She says, multiple times throughout as though to drive it home, this is my “obligation”. There is no false honor attached to it, as there damn well shouldn’t be. There is no attempt to flower this woman’s suffering up with false plastic meaning. It’s completely honest in the crushing, pointless futility of work culture.

Continued in Part 2 >