Call of the Night Vol. 4 Review – The Longest Part of the Night

Coming up as one of my favorite manga of this year, Call of the Night continues with Call of the Night Vol. 4. This volume paces itself through arcs that have no actual weight on the narrative. Further, it begins to create a void between Ko and Nazuna by not expanding on their feelings at all.

Call of the Night Vol. 4 opens with a maid cafe arc where the vampire, Midori, needs some help, so she hires Nazuna as a temp. Unfortunately, this opening acts as filler as a possible peeping tom is suspected of photographing one of the maids, and Ko is asked to crack the case. Again, it’s fun, but I just don’t like how forcibly blunt Ko is in conversations. It’s something that happens throughout, like he has no clue what sarcasm or normal human interaction is.

Sure, I see this as a character trait where he can’t wrap his head around what love is, but it’s even explained in this volume that he was a pleasant student at one point. Unfortunately, this makes him unpredictable as to if his personality shifts depending on the mood. He’s coaxed into doing things by Nazuna and his friends, but his foundation just doesn’t seem to be as strong as I thought. He barely interacts with Nazuna in this volume, and he gets no closer to his goal of becoming a vampire.

One of the more essential characters introduced is a detective confronting a vampire and then offering to get Ko and his friends involved. It’s a strange interaction, and her mature flirty lines are unwarranted. Sure, it makes her look cool, but I’m holding off until Vol. 5 to make my judgment of her. Kiyosumi appears more in this entry, but we know no more about him than before.

The entire volume feels disjointed, used to introduce new plot lines and attempt to close off new ones. The joke of the Mental Guy from Volume 3 appears, though, which is hilarious. There are decent character scenes, but I just couldn’t seem to care about the other relationships as much as Ko and Nazuna’s. One thing I’m noticing is that Nazuna is changing, and I’m losing interest in her relationship with Ko. I’m beginning to feel like I’m on team Akira at this point.

Call of the Night Vol. 4 is an experiment to see view side events in this series and introduce this detective character. There’s a little more depth on the school life of Ko, Akira, and Kiyosumi, but nothing that you already didn’t know before aside from a brief interaction with their homeroom teacher. If this is a setup for what’s to come, then I’m all for it, but this is one volume that could otherwise be skipped.