When I first started reading, I remember saying I loved a lot about it. The art, the characters, the dynamics, etc. Childhood friends and what you see in the night and love and everything about the world I still can’t quite wrap my head around. I think…something about the night is what made me most interested in it. I love walking to my local convenience store when it’s dark out and I have something playing in my earbuds and I get to say the bright lit up lights of their fried chicken sign. It’s a shame if I stayed out too long I’d probably get stabbed lol. But, yeah. There’s also something that’s so fun about vampires, but that's pretty obvious. Creatures who get to live their lives in a world so different from our own and seeming so much more free and capable.

I think the first one hundred chapters had their moments, but, what most got me about them were their sincerity. Characters who I thought would at first be played for jokes felt like actual people. Seeing these characters talk and react to each other in ways that felt so much more like how I could see myself talking to people was a refreshing feeling I just can’t put into words. So much less judgement, so much more understanding. So much less tolerance for bullshit, so much more willingness to get annoyed and be blunt. It felt so true to itself.

It was in the last two arcs though where…I started to feel something else. I had begun to feel, after a certain point where the original chapter to chapter style got eaten up more by the unfurling story, that I was really wondering where it was going. Not in a bad way, I just didn’t know what I was really getting myself into. I saw things starting to head in a direction, and when It became really clear what was coming, I…realized that the sincerity I loved about this manga had come back to bite me.

I said earlier this manga talked a lot about things I really didn’t understand. I’ve already opened the door to being personal, so, I’ll go ahead and say I’m not really the best with relationships. Friendships, love, I wouldn’t say they’re a hassle or something extreme, but, early on, one of the main things that gets discussed is Kou, the main character’s, inability to understand love. He seems to have a good grasp on friendship, something I definitely don’t, but on love? I get it. That feeling of missing something and feeling like everyone is treating something you can’t see as so important as the most important thing ever can feel annoying. Of course, it being a romance manga, that's something it goes into as well.

So, when I say that sincerity came to bite me in the ass, I’m thinking of one specific chapter. Reading it did the job of showing me the importance of love, of friendship, of everything I don’t understand and have spent my life seemingly ignoring, and how painful and beautiful those things can be.

Everything after that is a just as beautiful and painful continuation of that.

I don’t think I have the emotional strength, or desire, to try and explain that moment, and all the ones after it, here in detail. I don’t think I have the ability to really explain just how passionate and important they are to people like me who really needed to see them.

If you’re considering reading Call of the Night, it's a fun manga with great dynamics in its characters and a plot that's sincere, emotional, and never stops being entertaining.

If you’re like me, maybe it’ll help you get off your ass and go talk to people again.

Either way, it’s peak.