There are a few anime that do ‘instant death in the very first scene’ tropes well. The main character meets their end in some tragic or nonsensical way, and that accident is what leads to their actual plot line starting. It’s pretty fun to explore, considering how it leaves viewers with questions regarding how the character is going to make past their death. This undead scenario also comes up when discussing Call of The Night and Kou Yamori.
Technically Kou Yamori isn’t dead in the current airing season of Call Of The Night. He is a Half Vampire, which means that he is somewhere between life and death. This is also a metaphor for his existence, where he is traversing the line between the bright light of humanity and the quiet dark of the Night Walkers he encounters during his nocturnal trips through Tokyo. Kou is very much alive, just a little less human than he started.
That’s just how Call Of The Night goes though, which skates this weird line between casual supernatural ecchi and existential philosophy all wrapped in one surreal story. Kou Yamori, after dropping out of high school, doesn’t exactly have much going for him until he stumbles upon Nazuna Nanakusa. So, when he gets a chance to be a Vampire like her, he jumps at it. Except he transforms into a Quasi-Vampire instead, with his powers still in their infancy and leaving a lot more to be explored.
Honestly, this is the perfect stand-in for Kou’s personality as well, describing how he’s stuck between two worlds. One, where he is a conforming member of society but miserable in performing that role, and the other, where he is pursuing what his heart wants and standing out but being ostracized for it. And will that freedom lead him to fatal ends? Let’s discuss in a segment of Lore Analysis – where we take a close look at the mythos of certain franchises to analyze where the plot might be going. Today, it’s Call Of The Night.
Call Of The Night: Caught In The Limbo Between Life And Death
The premise of Call In The Night is an odd one. It starts about as mildly as you’d expect, with a teenager leaving his normal life to pursue one where he is an insomniac roaming the streets. And then he meets Nazuna. It’s in this friendship with her that Kou discovers a new world in a city he has known all his life, the late-night dwellers of Tokyo.
The two come across many individuals on their nights out, and Kou Yamori actively pursues conversation with them. Something he had no interest in doing back when he was still a high school student. He has no issues talking to adults twice his age about things beyond the mundane. But that’s the beauty of the night, where everyone can leave the person, they were behind and blend into the monsters of the night to become more. It’s intoxicating, the ambiguity the night provides, the freedom it allows people to just exist. So, Kou wanting to be a vampire so badly isn’t so odd.
He feels more alive with the undead.
Kou Yamori: The Journey Of A Recluse
But maybe that’s just who he has always been; a social outcast who was left disillusioned by what life held. The conformity of real-life suffocates him, which is why the promise of a world unknown excites him.
Kou Yamori wasn’t always like this. He was smart, someone who liked talking to his friends at school and engaging with work. But he realized how the attention he was getting was not worth the effort for him because it didn’t motivate him to do better. And he could never understand the struggles of the students around him.
So, he leaves, drops out of school, and becomes more reclusive. And thus starts his journey of being caught amongst the quiet nightlife.
