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「眷属作り(こづくり)」 (Kenzoku-tsukuri (ko-tsukuri))
“Reproduce”
Here’s the thing about vampires – they’re always symbolic. Just of what may vary from story to story and legend to legend, but they’re always devices to explore the human psyche. Sex is a constant, and Call of the Night is no exception – it’s hard to find tales where the psychological role of the act of vampirism isn’t as a stand-in for intercourse (or at least lust). But the vampires themselves seem to have a lot of angles to them here. Perpetual children, social outcasts, sybarites – at various points in this story many symbolic identities have been suggested for them.
There is something vampires seemingly always are in Yofukashi no Uta – women. At least so far. Is there a deeper significance to that, or is this merely the circle that’s intersected with Kou’s? Vampires are the main thrust of this episode to be sure, but first Shirakawa-san has another run-in with Kou, and she remains very protective towards him – almost maternal, in fact. She makes quite a contrast to the women he interacts with later in the episode, who represent the diametrically opposite side of femininity. I have no idea of these scenes were placed the same way in the manga, but it felt as if the anime did that very much on purpose.
Kou has run-ins with no less than five more vamps in this episode, all apparently female (and they bring some hefty seiyuu prestige with them). First off is Kikyou Seri (Tomatsu Haruka), who Kou spots fending off the advances of a (seemingly) much older man. Seri looks like a high school girl but doesn’t talk like one, and she tells Kou of her own way of embracing the night – toying with guys and pretending she’s in love with them. Kou is proving to be quite maternal himself – all the girls he meets he worries about, and Seri is no exception. But she’s obviously a vampire, and she obviously has an ulterior motive – not to steal Kou from Nazuna, but to act as interference while her colleagues kidnap him.
The fight between Naz and Seri is a minor part of the episode but it’s great – Yofukashi certainly isn’t betraying any signs of its supposedly stressful production. Kou ends up taken to a rooftop where four more vampires are waiting for him. The “oldest” is Hirata Niko (Kitamura Eri) and if not the leader, she’s at least their spokeswoman. Two rather sultry ladies who appear to be in their twenties are Honda Kabura (Itou Shizuka) and Suzushiro Hatsuka (Waki Azumi) – who notably doesn’t “vamp” Kou like the others. The youngest by appearance is Kohotobe Midori (Oozora Naomi), who expresses a preference for virgins and openly tries to use her appearance as a means to get inside Kou’s guard.
This is a fascinating conversation, even as Seri and Naazuna are having another one in the vacant lot where Kou was abducted. Seri lets a lot of interesting and seemingly very important stuff slip, not least that vampires aren’t supposed to get close to anyone they don’t intend to turn – or drain dry and murder. It’s also made very clear that Nazuna is a social outcast among these vampires at least, because she doesn’t play any of their games and expresses no interest in creating offspring. That makes her dalliance with this human boy a puzzling one, and that’s the reason why he’s been brought here.
One inescapable takeaway from all this is that Naz was apparently telling the truth about the way vampires create offspring, which certainly comes as a surprise to me. Nazuna’s notoriety among her kind for not creating offspring and indeed, for eschewing their romantic conquests is interesting. What’s unclear to me is just how she was getting by before she met Kou. If vampirism in this mythology is “turn or kill” and she wasn’t turning anyone, was she killing them? Or just having casual encounters and going on her way? If the latter it’s interesting that her cohorts seem less upset about that than her long-term relationship with Kou, because both seem equally in violation of the code they purport to live by.
Niko presents Kou with an ultimatum – choose one of them to fall in love with and turn, or be killed on the spot. They then proceed to try and seduce him, especially Niko and Midori, without any success. Despite his obvious discomfort at being the subject of a serious girl talk session, he actually copes with all of this pretty well. What they don’t understand – until he clarifies it – is that he wants to be turned. But only by Nazuna. Kou’s answer to Midori’s probing about his “type” was perfectly in-character – she’s not his type, because he doesn’t have a type. Whether that’s because he just hasn’t figured himself out yet or because he’s genuinely asexual as far as romance is concerned is as yet undetermined (and a very important question).
This appears to be enough for a truce between the two sides where Kou is concerned, but their reaction to the very last line of the episode – where he says he’s prepared to become a vampire “no matter how many years it takes” – clearly indicates that another shoe is about to drop. Whatever that is, Yofakushi no Uta remains a really fascinating and entertaining mess – so full of ideas that they don’t always neatly fit inside it, but that’s a good problem to have. It seems that even outcasts – be they vampires or human night crawlers – have social expectations, and for Kou it’s not proving so easy to escape them as he expected.
YES! Now the real fun has begun. I’ve waited a long time for the anime to reach this point.
I’ve seen the skepticism across the internet for some time. So it really baffles me as to why people would think Nazuna was lying to Ko about the conditions to becoming a vampire. Yes, she’s teased him on multiple occasions for fun but she’s not THAT malicious. And she has nothing to gain beyond already having access to a regular food source in Ko.
Nazuna is effectively in the vampire world what Ko is in the human world: An outlier with no interest in following the social norms. Her vampire seniors roasting her for not creating offspring is equivalent to the majority of the population pressuring any outliers into joining the latest trend. My theory is that her choice in refusing to reproduce suggests that, aside from her professional cuddler business, she tries not to go after the same target she’s met on the outside.
It’s a safe bet that the lady vampire group would tear my head off for saying this in front of them, but they need to hone their manipulation skills more. Though their tactics of luring their prey differ between each individual, they have one common point: They’re designed to take full advantage of the majority of society’s population. Extroverts, to be exact. Introverts, like Ko, are wired differently in the mental sense. So, the same tricks aren’t going to work. They’d have to be very particular when trying to win someone like him over.
GE, we already know that Nazuna feeds off drunks occasionally, and her “sleep clinic” business is also another way of bringing food in. But there’s still more lore not yet revealed in this story, like how often vampires need to drink blood in order to survive.
The way they ended this episode was great, but at least one other reviewer clearly missed the fact that something big is about to drop.
The turn-or-kill aspect choice is probably regarding The Masquerade™, if a human finds out about vampires those are the two options. Else 5 vampires killing humans on a regular basis would certainly draw attention, even in a big city.
In a big city, a smallish number of extra deaths each month would barely rise above the statisical noise floor. Of course if all the victims died from having their blood drained via holes in their necks you might expect that to start ringing alarm bells, but presumably the vampires would dispose of the bodies carefully – either that, or they’d have well-placed servants in the police force who’d just rubber-stamp the deaths as suicide.
It might not cause such an uproar if the deceased and disappeared are from the ever-increasing homeless and/or orphan population. All the vampires would have to do is take advantage of the general population’s insensitivity to one another.
In the movie “Blade: Trinity”, a police chief working for the vampires explained that the vampires had blood farming facilities stationed in every major city, using the people they’ve gathered. That at any moment, there’s two to three million homeless wandering around. They just pulled them off the streets and no one in the upper classes of society notices because they couldn’t care less about them.
That ending was a hell of a cliffhanger. It looked as if Kou was about to get away fine, but then he said “no matter how many years it takes”…
Who doesn’t have that much time? Is it because Kou will die because Nazune is regularly drinking his blood? Is it because Nazuna will die is she doesn’t reproduce sooner?
I thought this series was going to keep with the fun chapters and the comedy, mixing in some more serious elements about misfits and people not adhering to social norms, but this chapter did really drastically change the tone prety fast.
That was WHAM episode.
Things got really dark with Kou facing literally death.
Also we see Nazuna is as outcast in Vampire society as Kou is in human one.
The rule – create offspring or kill – seems a bit counterintuitive to me.
Offspring making without restrictions, considering vampires dont age or die would lead to uncontrolled vampire infestation.
Killing too many people would lead to its own problems, as humans have nasty habit of exterminating threats to their own wellbeing. (Shiki…)
IMHO best solution for modern, city dwelling vampires would be opposite: not feeding of same victim twice and keeping both offspring and deaths to absolute minimum. They can keep victims unaware of the vampirism pretty easily. Average young male would be easily drunk into unconscious state, fed on, and next day he would be vaguely remembering hot chick with strange fetish, if anything at all.
Who would be reserved the turn-or-kill treatment for – the people who actually learned of the vampires existence. This would actually be case for Kou, who managed to pierce the Masquerade by virtue of being insomniac.
And I think Kou just broke some great vampire taboo when he proudly announced – as long as it takes… Maybe vampires are disgusted by old age and ugliness, so the thought of Kou being turned maybe after 70 is so blasphemouis?
Nice cliffhanger!
Seeing Shirakawa-san bump into Kou made me think they were going to date. Shirakawa to me is the most human out of every character.
Nanakusa had every reason to be protective of Kou, No one knows what will happen when other Vamps get a hold of Kou.
> Sex is a constant, and Call of the Night is no
> exception
Sex is a constant because media always portray vampires this way. From Blade, to Underworld and Twilight. Hot sticky romance is always in the plot.
IMO sex is a constant because it’s the psychological underpinning of vampire mythology. Popular culture reflects that, it doesn’t drive it.
Shirakawa is 24 and Kou is 14. I hope that’s not even remotely a consideration.
Sex is a constant in the human life. In fact it was mostly suppressed in the “high culture”, so vampire fiction was an outlet of sorts for it…
Shirakawa and Kou might be an Item maybe after 10 years. Age difference is acceptable, but for now it is straight up criminal offence.