Call of the Night stars Ko Yamori, a Junior High student suffering from insomnia. Having grown sick of his daily life, Ko decides to start skipping school and wander the streets at night. On one fateful night, he encounters the mysterious vampire Nazuna, who decides to show him the joys of nightlife and feed on his blood.

The most appealing aspect of Call of the Night is the relationship between Ko and Nazuna. While Nazuna is enticed by Ko’s high quality blood, Ko is drawn to Nazuna because of his desire to abandon his normal life. To this end, Ko wants Nazuna to turn him into a vampire, but in order for her to do so, a condition must be met: Ko needs to fall in love with Nazuna. This is an interesting twist for the series, allowing it to explore the emotional significance of love and social connections.

The main barrier to Ko’s goal is his own sense of isolation. Ko feels like he has no meaningful relationships in his life. He has trouble understanding what defines a friend, and even with the few friends he’s had in the past, he’s unsure if those relationships have longevity. The introduction of Ko’s childhood friend Akira Asai forces Ko to directly confront his perception of friendship. While Ko couldn’t imagine someone caring about him after so many years, Akira still wholeheartedly considers Ko to be her friend. In turn, this also makes Ko ponder what Nazuna means to him. Is she just an acquaintance or a friend, and what does it mean to fall in love with her? This approach to exploring love helps Call of the Night stand out from other stories with romance elements, making for a thoroughly engrossing read.

If you’ve seen Kotoyama’s previous series Dagashi Kashi, you will be well aware of his knack for comedy. As you’d expect, Call of the Night is filled with entertaining antics and humorous situations. These can be sourced to the dynamic between Ko and Nazuna. Nazuna’s wacky personality often conflicts with Ko’s more blunt one. Their different backgrounds also cause them to get embarrassed by very different situations. For instance, Nazuna will freely talk in sexual innuendos to Ko’s dismay, but will get flustered whenever Ko mentions love. An especially memorable moment is when Ko shows his neck to Nazuna in public, leading to her freaking out and calling him shameless. Kotoyama has not lost his touch, and readers will surely get a few chuckles out of this volume.

Kotoyama’s art style is incredibly distinct. His character designs have a sketchy yet defined appearance that allows them to stand out from panel to panel. Beyond that, what’s most impressive is the overall composition of Call of the Night. Since the majority of the series takes place at night, Kotoyama makes heavy use of gray and black shading to add ambiguity to the environments. This is counteracted by the various light sources in each scene, which are depicted through lighter shading to represent the range of the light. One of the two-page spreads in chapter 3 showcases this especially well, as Ko and Nazuna look at the moonlit town from an overhead view. Kotoyama arranges numerous light sources across the spread, and you can see the shading and directions of the shadows differ as the lights become more distant from Ko’s perspective. Ko and Nazuna’s night strolls feel like an immersive experience, one that you can’t help but sit back and admire on every page.

Call of the Night is a fantastic series featuring an entertaining cast and surprisingly emotional themes. Kotoyama has crafted a manga with a great sense of humor and a visual aesthetic that will entrance new readers. I’m already craving my next venture into the night!

This book made me very uncomfortable. The main character is a teenage boy who willingly gives blood to a vampire. More than once drinking blood is explicitly compared to having sex. The main character is fourteen years old. We don’t know the vampire’s exact age, but her relationship with technology and the way she spoke about things gave me the impression that she’s much other than he is. Reading this book feels like watching an abuser groom a victim. That detail combined with the fact the plot is presented as romantic made me feel gross reading it.

Ko is a bit dorky and Nanakusa is a vampire. When Ko meets Nanakusa he realizes he wants to be a vampire also. The very first line in the book had me hooked, "They say human blood tastes best at night." It set the tone and that combined withe the art I was instantly drawn into the story. I have never seen this take on vampires and how to become one. It was interesting and a lot of fun. I did not want to put it down. Parts of the book were awkward, but since the MC is in middle school it worked. I can't wait to read volume 2.

4 stars.

At first sight, "Call of the Night" reminded me of "Dagashi Kashi’s" character designs – specifically, the eyes, sometimes plain and the others detailed. To my surprise, this manga was done by the same creator – Kotoyama - and I am impressed at how different this feels from the previous title. "Call of the Night" opts for a low-key, melancholy, and playful tone with coy, tongue-in-cheek humor. It is a refreshing installment in the shounen rom-com category with most of its focus on the titular duo – Ko Yamori, a fourteen-year-old loner without much of an aim for life, and Nazuna Nanakusa, a vampire who drinks Ko’s blood for sustenance. Like any good duo, they work well off of each other – Nazuna’s cheerful demeanor engages Ko’s introversion well when they play with their walkie-talkies in the night of a quiet city – and the potential, I see, lies in its understated dialogue. There are moments of stereotypical anime reactions when it comes to certain surprises or details, yet for the most part, the duo interacts curiously with one another, each discovering the realities of vampirism and loner life. It is cute to see both of them so invested in one another, figuring out the meaning of “love” – the dreaded “L” word of Nazuna’s dismay. Whether it be from Nazuna making innuendos to Ko’s pursuit of falling in love with her, there is a lot of charm to be found here.

In a way, this feels like the complement to the recent "Fly Me To the Moon" – both involve a random encounter followed by a developing relationship and the nuances that come with love – all of which depicted in a light-hearted way. "Fly Me To The Moon" is a more comedic title opting for gags and references while "Call of the Night" is more quiet and subdued.

Sometimes the work can be slow and repetitive, especially when Ko explains in detail what happened in previous chapters in the first half of the manga, yet I cannot help to feel refreshed after reading this. I want to see more of this work in future installments, and I cannot wait to see how Ko and Nazuna’s relationship develops further.

Call of the Night Volume One tells the story of a 14-year-old junior high student and his encounter with a female vampire.

Call of the Night Volume One
Written by: Kotoyama
Publisher: Shogakukan
English Publisher: VIZ Media
Release Date: April 13, 2021

At the beginning of the manga, the reader is introduced to a 14-year-old boy named Ko Yamori, who has developed insomnia. He has also lost interest in school, especially after an incident where he turned down a girl’s love confession because he’s not into dating. So now he’s skipping school and wandering the town at night. While he’s out, he encounters a mysterious girl, and she claims she can help him with his insomnia.

The girl takes him to her place, which is a run-down building in a skeevy area of town. She tries to help him fall asleep, and he decides to fake sleeping. The girl reveals herself to be a vampire when she drinks some of Ko’s blood. Since he wasn’t actually asleep, he knows what happened, and she’s surprised when he reacts.

A lot of the volume focuses on Ko and Nazuna Nanakusa as they start spending time together and learning about each other. In the world this story takes place in, a human will only turn into a vampire if they fall in love with the vampire that’s drinking their blood. Ko, who makes it clear that he doesn’t understand anything about love, decides to make it his goal to fall in love with Nazuna and become a vampire. While a lot of this may sound like it’s on the dark side, there’s also a lot of comedy interjected into the story, especially in the scenes where Ko and Nazuna interact with each other.

There is a theme that runs through this volume, which is the question of what exactly a friend is. This is especially evident during the section where Ko buys a set of walkie-talkie watches so he and Nazuna can more easily communicate. He relays a story of buying another set when he was around nine years old and leaving one somewhere in the hopes that someone would find it and contact him with it. He never had the courage to actually try to make a call himself to determine if anyone ever picked it up.

This story leads to the introduction of another character: a girl named Akira Asai. Ko grew up with her, and she was one of the few playmates he had when he was growing up. It turns out she has the other walkie-talkie watch. It’s revealed that Ko had left the watch on top of Akira’s mailbox, and that he had forgotten that particular detail. It turns out the new set of watches Ko bought have the same frequency as the old one, so Akira starts picking up signals from Ko and Nazuna’s communications.

Akira is kind of the opposite of Ko. She goes to school and is actually an early bird. She gets up early and wanders around for a while before going to school. Akira and Ko run into each other, and they make plans to meet up. Nazuna discovers the two of them are meeting and it appears she becomes jealous. It seems to me that the author is working at setting up a triangle between Ko, Nazuna, and Akira. While Nazuna hates hearing the word “love,” I think she is kind of harboring feelings for Ko. I’m not sure that Akira necessarily has romantic feelings for Ko at this point, but it’s already clear that Nazuna sees her as competition, even if it’s not in a romantic sense. She definitely views Akira as competition for Ko’s time. My guess is that this will likely be a recurring conflict throughout the series.

I’m not entirely sure how to describe the art style. It’s definitely more on the “stylized” side, but I’m not sure I would go quite so far as to say that it’s as stylized as say, One Piece or Soul Eater. But there’s some exaggeration in the character design, especially for Ko. But one thing that kept bothering me about Ko’s design is that in some respects, he almost looks like how Mitsuhide from Case Closed would look like as a teenager. I had to keep pushing that thought out of my mind while I was reading this volume, since Ko’s personality is nothing like Mitsuhide’s.

Admittedly, Call of the Night is not the kind of manga I go out of my way to read, but since I was able to receive a free digital review copy from VIZ Media, I decided to take a chance on it. It’s not bad at all for what it is, but this isn’t the type or style of supernatural manga that I personally enjoy reading. However, I think fans of manga like Soul Eater or any kind of comedic supernatural manga may be better able to appreciate Call of the Night.

Oh, vampire manga, my favorite problematic genre. Well, vampire anything really. And that continues with Call of the Night, but like literally all my vampire trash favorites before it, I totally accept the awkward age things and just roll with it, well to a point. Call of the Night is created, written, and illustrated by mangaka Kotoyama, localized and published in English by VIZ Media via the publisher’s Shonen Sunday imprint, translated by Junko Goda, with an English adaptation by Shaenon K. Garrity, and finally touch-up art and lettering by Annaliese “Ace” Christman.

In Call of the Night Volume 1, we see the start of a relationship between a sexy vampire yandere girl and an antisocial dorky boy. It’s really that simple and it gets a little weird when Kotoyama maps out their vision of vampire lore through Nanakusa, the vampire’s perspective. Ko, is a teen, specifically, he’s 14-years old.

During one of his many sleepless nights, Ko slips out to walk the streets. When flirtatious Nazuna invites Ko to spend the night at her place in an abandoned building – and in teen boy fashion, he’s excited. But then he awakens to kisses on his neck with a little too much bite to them. And there begins their relationship. He’s an insomniac who isn’t good at interacting with other people, let alone falling in love with them. Nanakusa is a hungry vampire who is eager to show Ko what the night has to offer. But of course, Ko doesn’t just want to be her blood-bag, instead, he wants to be transformed into a vampire, like her. But it isn’t easily achieved.

Now, it has to be said that they aren’t connected through romance but it’s clear that it isn’t just the fact that his blood is most delicious she’s had (you know, the vampire romance trope that just won’t die). While the two grow closer, it’s hard to tell what pushes them together. Ko desperately wants to become like her, but to do so, she has to feed from him while he’s in love with her. And for Ko, that isn’t easy.

The whole of Call of the Night Volume 1 isn’t bad. It’s standard vampire logic, but at the same time the biggest problems of the subgenre come up because of Kotoyama’s choice to make the characters the ages he does. While Nanakusa is a vampire who was at least already a vampire in the 90s when big cellphones were all the rage, Ko is 14. Just 14. He isn’t legal, he can’t drink, and while I’m not gonna stop a teen vampire romance from happening, especially given that Nankusa is drawn looking very young (an issue I will not bring up because that’s a lot to unpack in its own article with Fly Me to the Moon’s Tsukasa), it’s how drinking blood is described that makes it weird. There is an entire scene where Nanakusa uses the word “coitus” a bunch of times to describe what drinking blood is like to vampires. Which, I get.

But at the same time, when your male protagonist is 14, it’s pretty much weird and even more so when his one objective is to fall in love in order to be transformed. To be honest, the series themes could have easily been tackled with an older protagonist, even if Ko was a third-year high school student or a first-year college student. His sheltered experience could have still been highlighted and done in a way that doesn’t infantilize him to the point of being awkward.

When we push the age aside, Call of the Night Volume 1 does find its stride in how Nanakusa and Ko come to understand each other. The two of them are able to have adorable moments together that offer something other than forced “coitus” talk into the narrative and you can tell that they’re developing a close bond. And for that alone, it’s enough to pick up this title.

Overall, Call of the Night falls into the same issues many vampire [insert media here] fall into and while that’s expected, it’s a little disappointing in 2021. That said, if you’re into absolutely vampire everything this is one to pick up for sure.

This was soooo fun and interesting.

I have never read a vampire-focused manga but this was a great entry into a promising series.

If you like vampire stories that feature vampires that are annoyingly funny and snarky, pick this up.

Can't wait for more!

Creepy, but not because it's a vampire manga. The protagonist doesn't like people and wants to become a vampire but learns the only way to do so is to fall in love with a vampire and have that vampire feed off of him, which is given a very sexual vibe. To be honest, once I realized that was going to be a love sex farce with a middle school aged protagonist? I lost any interest.

I was lured in to Call of the Night by the similarities of Nazuna to Toga from My Hero Academia. Based solely on the cover, I was expecting this to be rather depraved, but it was not nearly what I expected. Certainly there are sex jokes, but jokes and comments are as dirty as it gets. Art-wise, the My Hero Academia comparison stands, but that's definitely not a bad thing with how popular that is currently. Suggested for most libraries.

It's not that this is bad by any means. In fact, it is a decent starter to a series. But that is all it really is- a start. There simply is not enough here to fully judge. Perhaps after volume 2 I will have a better idea about how I feel about this one. I suppose that all-in-all it isn't so bad that I wouldn't give the next one a shot.

Read more graphic novel reviews at www.graphiclibrary.org.

14-year-old Yamori suffers from insomnia and decides to wander the streets of his city at night. He runs into a mysterious girl, Nazuna, who he allows to lead him back to her ”home” in an abandoned building. Nazuna tries to lull Yamori to sleep, but then she bites him! Nazuna is actually a vampire, and she finds Yamori’s blood to be particularly delicious. Yamori decides that being a vampire could be the solution to many of his mortal problems, but that means Nazuna and Yamori will have to fall in love with each other! Yamori tags along and follows Nazuna each night, desperately trying to fall in love with her and have her reciprocate. To complicate things, a girl from Yamori's past claims she wants to be Yamori's friend again, and he didn't realize they were friends to begin with.

Yamori is basically a little sheltered puppy. He's had some challenges in life that he's not sure how to deal with. He also hasn't had very many friends, and he’s never really had a crush before. He seems to have very little attachment to life, and his depression and insomnia are very reminiscent of what many teens go through. Yamori also stops going to school once he starts going around with Nazuna, which is a little more believable within the culture of Japan because High School is not mandatory. In the US, there would be a lot of questions when Yamori stops showing up, and potentially the police would get involved. This story seems like it will be mostly about Yamori learning to be a better human while he seeks to abandon his humanity. It's a little darker than the normal paranormal romance, which might be a nice bridge for fans of Tokyo Ghoul and Black Butler.

Kotoyama takes the quintessential manga illustration style and adds much of their own touches, especially around the eyes of the characters. The city-scapes are beautiful and masterfully detailed - the author note at the end indicates that drawing apartment buildings was one of the main reasons the mangaka started this series, so it's no surprise that they are really well done.

There are a few moments where Yamori and Nazuna talk about "coitus" as she continues to call it, and Nazuna reveals that, for vampires. feeding on humans is very similar to having sex. The two have cuddled and kissed so far, but it hasn't progressed farther than that. There are a few shots of Nazuna that could be considered very "fan-service-y" where her posterior or not-overly-well-endowed self are in the forefront of the illustration.

​Sara's Rating: 7/10
Suitability Level: Grades 10-12

Tags: Rating: 7/10, Suitability: High School, Manga, Romance, Paranormal

Cute with a lot of potential to be a fun manga, this is sort of a weirdly bent paranormal love triangle, where an insomniac teen, Ko, meets a Vampire girl and tries to get her to turn him into a vampire. Problem is, the only way to do that is if they fall in love, but Ko also has a cute human friend who is an early bird who throws a wrench in the plan.

A lonely, shy, 14 year old with insomnia, Ko, wanders the night to keep himself occupied. One night he encounters a strange girl who leads him back to her place to help him sleep. Turns out though - she's a vampire! Once Ko realizes that she's bitten him, he asks her to turn him into a vampire. She explains that a human can only be turned if they are in love with the vampire. Determined to be turned, Ko decides that he WILL fall in love with her. The two hang out every night and slowly develop a friendship.

I thought this was pretty fun. The vampire, Nazuna, can be a little over the top with sexual innuendo at times, which is awkward in that she's saying these things to a 14 year old, but it's still pretty PG-13 in nature. And Ko does make it clear that he's very uncomfortable.

I do look forward to reading the next volume to see how things progress.

Not your typical vampire manga, Ko is a middle school student who has lost interest in life and is suffering from insomnia. In one of his outings at night, he meets Nanakusa, who tells him that he should enjoy life. Nanakusa is a vampire and to Ko new found love for life at night wants to become one too. However, Nanakusa tells him that he can only turn to a vampire if they are in love, making him decide that he will make her fall in love with him. I love the art concept and the character's perspective but was expecting more. I Will read volume 2 to decide if I will continue reading the story.

Thank you NetGAlley and VIz for this ARC.

#CalloftheNightVol1 #NetGalley #Vampires #Insomnia

Can't review because there's no text except once every twelve pages or so. The art is mostly talking heads with a rare full body shot or action shot every couple of pages. It's quite boring visually if there's nothing to read and that's all I have to go off of.

I really enjoyed my read of this particular volume! For more details about this particular volume, please check out this video, where I go into detail about it, and some other volumes I read recently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etfX4yuShBQ

I don't know how else to describe this manga other than, it felt empty. Not only did most the panels feel empty but so did the characters, there feelings, their reasons, just everything felt empty.

Thank you to NetGalley, VIZ Media, and Kotoyama for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Ko has insomnia. When he goes out for a late-night walk, he meets a girl named Nazuna who offers to help him sleep. Ko's world turns upside-down when he finds out Nazuna is a vampire. Ko decides he wants to be a vampire too. There's a catch, though. To become a vampire, he has to fall in love with one and have his vampire love drink his blood! Ko is on a quest to fall in love with Nazuna, but love is more complicated than that.

I am not a huge fan of the art, but I thought the story was cute. It's similar but different enough from other vampire stories to give it a certain level of interest. Ko isn't too interesting, though Nazuna seems to have some secrets surrounding her character. I'd like to see what happens to Ko and if he ever gets hi wish.

Much of the dialogue was missing from this copy so I can’t really give a honest review. I couldn’t even follow what was actually going on. Sorry.

I was intrigued by the story and the cover. The story was mysterious and interesting but the artwork reminded me of Tim Burton's work with less life to it which doesn't really work for a book in black and white in my opinion.