Call of the Night (2022)

[よふかしのうた]

Volume 10

Author/Artist: Kotoyama
Publisher: Shounen Sunday Comics

Synopsis:
Uguisu's effort to drive Nazuna to kill her goes awry when Kou intervenes.

Story/Characters:
While Uguisu's initial reaction to Kou showing up makes it clear that she didn't want him there, she decides to make the most of the situation and threaten Kou directly to push Nazuna over the edge. However, Kou isn't giving up on either one of them. With her bluff called, Uguisu opens up about her motivation for wiping out vampires other than avenging her family, how she dreams of a quiet night and how she would use Nazuna killing her as indisputable evidence of vampires' existence to the skeptics who never took her work seriously. With the wind taken out of her sails, Uguisu withdraws, but Kou rightly figures it's not over. By the time Kou catches up to her, she's on the verge of blowing her brains out and he gets in the way with unfortunate results. The audience learns a lesson on firearm safety, but the aftermath leaves everyone confused. After getting inconclusive responses from Kabura and Nico, Kou and Nazuna seek out Uguisu for her insight as a vampire hunter. It turns out that Kou temporarily became a pseudo-vampire, which means he's closer to his goal. Things wind down a bit and Kou sets a new goal: to find the vampire who sired Uguisu's father to help give her closure. Before hopping on that, we have a brief interlude where Kou and Nazuna say their goodbyes at the night school and Rira opts to pull out rather than continue to pursue Kou further. I know Kou and Nazuna are the OTP, but I'm going to miss her. Anyway, said OTP then go to Uguisu to tell her their plan and the cliffhanger lets us know who the target vampire is. It's probably not a surprise who it is.

Art:
As we have quite the emotional rollercoaster here, the reaction shots are what make it work so excellently. It's nice to see once things are dialed down. Drunk Uguisu is pretty fun.

Other:
We get an afterword from Kotoyama with an illustration of Uguisu with her new haircut.

Conclusion:
Given that Dagashi Kashi ended at the 11th Volume, I thought we might be setting up the ending here, but we've at least got one more arc to go. I quite like how the Nazuna-Uguisu conflict is handled. There were several points where I thought it would go down much differently. I think fans of the series will be quite happy with what we've got and where we're going from here. Add this one to your collections.

Rating:
Own It