How “Call of the Night” Uses Its Vampires to Build Its Structure

Vampires, as a storytelling tool, come with rules. They’ll vary depending on the type of vampire and what sort of story they’re telling, but one rule stands out as a reliable constant: vampires are nocturnal beings. Barring unusual supernatural powers or an explicit plot to blot out the sun, most vampire stories have a hard limit on when key characters can be active, one backed by potentially explosive consequences. Call of the Night, mangaka Kotoyama’s five-year vampire romance, turns this limit into a strength, using it to give the comic’s dramatic moments and genre-hopping room to breathe while ensuring that the story never stagnates.

Call of the Night starts as an odd-couple romcom. Insomniac teenager Ko Yomori meets eccentric vampire Nazuna Nanakusa. They strike a bargain: Ko will let Nazuna feed on him, and in turn, Nazuna will turn Ko into a vampire. The trick is that while Call’s vampires only know bits and pieces of how their species works, they know one thing for sure: to turn someone, they have to be in love with the vampire who will usher them into the eternal night. Yet Ko doesn’t know if he’s capable of love, and Nazuna doesn’t know if she can inspire love—but they want to try.

Together, Nazuna and Ko see the city, taking in wonders that the day cannot offer, meeting their fellow night owls, and fumbling with sparks of mutual attraction. However, things soon grow more complicated. Ko reunites with his few daytime friends, who are also struggling. Nazuna clashes with the vampire council, who threaten to kill Ko if he doesn’t turn, but who soon find themselves befriending and sincerely rooting for the would-be couple. Ko crosses paths with private detective Anko Uguisu, a vampire hunter who pushes him to look hard at vampirism and whether it’s truly what he wants. Anko’s true identity turns out to be Kyoko Meijiro, Nazuna’s long-lost first human friend, who swore vengeance on the species after a vampire transformed her father, which directly led to the annihilation of her family. Ko and Nazuna thwarting Kyoko’s half-baked plan to destroy all vampirekind turns into saving her from suicidal despair and self-hatred, and then becoming her friend and confidant. It is, simply put, a lot.

But, like the Hold Steady sez, “the nights go on forever now, but the morning comes up quick.” Everyone’s got to sleep sometimes, and as a vampire, Nazuna cannot be attached to Ko and Kyoko at the hip 24/7. They’ve got no choice but to take a breath and a beat. Kotoyama uses this to reset Call of the Night’s stakes (sorry) and to make the cast sit with what they’ve experienced. 

Throughout its run, Call of the Night repeatedly shifts genre and mode as Ko and Nazuna’s romance brings the two out of their shells and into the world. Ko’s friends and the vampire council expand the types of comedy at play, including workplace-based hijinks. Kyoko’s one-woman war against vampirekind brings the engaging tension of a thriller. Independent vampires pick superpowered fights with the crew, turning Call of the Night from a romcom to an action comic. The warped vampire who turned Kyoko’s father and ruined her life sets her sights on a similarly damaged human friend of Ko’s, taking Call of the Night into both psychological and classical horror territory. 

Still, Kotoyama always returns to Call of the Night’s original slice-of-life rom-com form, marking the shifts via the hard stops that vampirism and daybreak impose. The results are an engaging and addictive comic. Ko’s pals, the vampire council, Kyoko, and others join the main cast, giving the leads more folks to play off of. The escalating action scenes and their aftermath push Ko and Nazuna out of their easygoing comfort zones—literally for Nazuna, who loses her apartment to a vampire brawl. The hard truths the duo learn about vampire/human relationships and their risks remain true, complicating their relationship as it deepens and grows increasingly romantic.

Call of the Night’s storytelling also requires the cast to process what they’ve been through, both positively and negatively, during an arc. Take, for example, the denouement to Kyoko’s arc. She realized she wanted to live, abandoned her self-destructive quest for revenge, made peace with Nazuna, and found a true friend in Ko. These are all unambiguously good, life-changing things. However, Kyoko is 28 years old and has devoted her entire adult life to revenge. With that gone, she’s no longer running on hate. Now, though, she has to face the emptiness filling her life. She had no friends, community, or romantic partner to leave behind. She hasn’t touched another person since her parents died. The reward for waking up every day is that you get to wake up, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt, especially when, as Kyoko is, you’re questioning what, if anything, the last decade of your life meant. Kyoko’s confessing this to Ko is a striking, moving piece of comicscraft, all the more so because Call of the Night’s structure emphasizes the time she’s spent coming to this revelation and, in turn, the time that it takes for Ko and Nazuna to decide to act on it.

Kotoyama consistently deploys Call of the Night’s night-by-night storytelling structure skillfully and carefully. Action-packed climaxes get their big beats and breaks, and quiet revelations unfold panel by panel. The nights go on as long as needed, and the mornings come as they always must. Ko, Nazuna, and their peers get up to all manner of chaos, from tracking down a peeping tom to launching a motorcycle into the face of a murderous vampire. But Call of the Night always circles back to its lonely, searching, sweetheart leads and their entangled, ever-evolving romance. They grow, change, become wise, fall apart, and come together. It’s a comic that lingers, like a vampire’s life-changing kiss.

Header Image: YOFUKASHI NO UTA © 2019 KOTOYAMA/SHOGAKUKAN

How “Call of the Night” Uses Its Vampires to Build Its Structure – Justin S. Harrison