After rejecting a confession from a girl at school because he doesn’t understand love, Kou stops going to school and starts wandering the night with insomnia. One night he encounters a mysterious girl who believes people that stay awake at night are dissatisfied with the way they spent their days. Following her into the night, she brings him back to her place and suddenly starts to suck his blood. Discovering her true nature, Kou now seeks to be a vampire, but to become one, you need to make a vampire fall in love with you.
With a unique twist on vampires and some of the best night-time visuals in all of anime, this series is one of those that wedges itself into its own unique corner of anime. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Call of the Night, head on down below.
Anime Like Call of the Night
For Fans of Interesting Non-Traditional Vampires
Bakemonogatari
After surviving a vampire attack, high school student Koyomi Araragi finds he has several supernatural side effects that remained after being cured including the ability to rapidly heal. While trying to live a normal life after the event, he ends up catching a classmate, Hitagi Senjougahara, as she fell down some stairs. As he catches her, he discovers that she is near weightless after being inflicted with a curse. After enlisting the help of the easy-going wandering Shinto priest that helped him with his vampirism, Araragi finds himself embroiled in not just Senjogahara’s issue but several different supernatural events afflicting those in his town.
While the Monogatari series grows grand and more complex, it did initially start off as a series about exploring the unseen part of a city after meeting a mysterious vampire girl. Both series are also visually interesting, but in different ways.
The Case Study of Vanitas
Scorned by his vampire peers for being born under a blue moon, it is said that the vampire Vanitas created a powerful grimoire known as the Book of Vanitas that would bring retribution to all crimson moon vampires. On his way to Paris, Noe is searching for this fabled book. While traveling aboard an airship, he is saved from a vampire attack by an eccentric man that claims to posses the Book of Vanitas and uses it to cure the attacking vampire that was driven rabid by a progressing event afflicting vampires called the Charlatan’s Parade.
While The Case Study of Vanitas is an action show, what both these series have in common is the way they revitalize tired vampire lore. Call of the Night makes them seem more like night walkers and outcasts while The Case Study of Vanitas bends and blends vampires with its steampunk world.
Vlad Love
Mitsugu is a high school girl who finds meaning in her life donating her rare, but mostly worthless blood. One day while visiting a blood bank she encounters a beautiful foreign girl. While this girl looks like she is about to faint, she ends up destroying the blood bank, causing Mitsugu to lose consciousness. The next thing she knows, she is in the home of a vampire.
Despite both characters being girls in Vlad Love, it has a pretty similar premise of suddenly meeting a vampire and becoming absolutely enamored with their mystery. However, while Call of the Night has elements of romance, Vlad Love is more a slice of life comedy show.
Irina – The Vampire Cosmonaut
In 1957, the world witnessed the Federal Republic of Zirnitra’s achievement of sending a living creature, a dog, into space. Since then, they have been in a race to send humanity to the stars with the United Kingdom of Arnack. However, deemed that a dog’s physiology is too different from a human’s, the Federal Republic has decided to perform their next experimental launch with the cursed race of vampires. Despite being taken by force from her home in the mountains, vampire Irina Luminesk is determined to reach from the stars.
Both series offer up an interesting new take on vampirism. However, while Call of the Night has less of an overall plot, Irina has a goal of going to space and her vampirism is something that can aid in that. Furthermore, you also get to see an interesting sort of discrimination as well.
For Fans of Charmed By A Charismatic Girl
Dagashi Kashi
Kokonotsu Shikada has aspirations of becoming a manga artist, but his father wants him to take over their prestigious rural sweets shop that has been in the family for nine generations. Kokonotsu continually refuses until one day the eccentric Hotaru Shidare breezes into town and wants to make his father work for her family’s sweets corporation. Kokonotsu’s father agrees, but only if Hotaru can convince Kokonotsu to take over the shop. So begins Kokonotsu’s days of listening to Hotaru laud the history and value of beloved Japanese treats.
Both of these series share the same author. While Dagashi Kashi is passionately educational about Japanese junk food, it is, like Call of Night, a slice of life, semi-romance about a boy who becomes drawn into the world of a passionate and alluring girl.
Magical Senpai
Forced to join a club due to school requirements, one young man stumbles across the Magic Club and its sole member, Tejina. She manages to rope him into her club as part of her audience. Unfortunately, as she has massive stage fright, it doesn’t go very well.
Both series have rather normal boys who happen across extremely odd, but very passionate girls who drag them into their world. In Call of the Night, it is vampirism, in Magical Senpai, it is magic. While they are very slice of life oriented, there is some solid comedy too.
Love, Chunibyou, and Other Delusions
Everyone has that stage in their life where they think themselves special, different from mere humans. This phenomenon is called Chunibyou Syndrome and is most common in pre-pubescent children. In middle school, Yuuta Togashi thought himself the Dark Flame Master. He has since grown out of it upon entering high school and looks back at those cringe-worthy times with displeasure. Unfortunately, after a chance meeting with Rikka Takanashi, a girl believing to have a God in her eye, she attaches herself to him and brings that Chunibyou past back out.
Imagine meeting a mysterious girl in the night, but then discovering that she is kind of a dork. While Call of the Night plays being a night walker pretty straight forward and seriously, Chunibyou is all about the cringe part of youth where you think you are somehow special compared to everyone else. Despite the cringe, it is a lovely little comedy series and becomes a nice romance.
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya
Kyon had long given up on his belief in the supernatural until he meets Haruhi Suzumiya. Haruhi, a strange girl in her own right, is interested in all things supernatural, but laments the lack of intriguing clubs on campus. Kyon, however, inspires her to create her own club, and thus, the SOS Brigade is born. Unfortunately for Kyon, he is also roped into joining this new club dedicated to all things supernatural.
Both series are about average guys living in an average world and being slightly disillusioned by it. However, one day they meet this magnificently interesting girl whose personality draws them into her world. That world is that of the supernatural, as it turns out.
For Fans of Living on the Fringe
Arakawa Under the Bridge
Kou Ichinomiya, as the son of a wealthy businessman, has vowed never to become indebted to anyone. However,when he falls in the river under Arakawa Bridge, someone dives in to save him, thus he owes his life to this person. She is a homeless girl named Nino who wants only one thing – to fall in love. In order to pay her back, he accepts her offer to be her boyfriend, thus moving out of his home and starting a new life under the bridge.
Both Arakawa Under the Bridge and Call of the Night are about normal guys who find themselves tugged into the unknown world of girls they just happen to meet, but grow to love. However, while Call of the Night is rather straightforward with its supernatural themes, Arakawa leaves you wondering if they are supernatural beings or just weird homeless people.
Mysterious Girlfriend X
Every girl is mysterious to a young man, but new transfer student Mikoto Urabe is particularly curious to Akira Tsubaki. She earns a reputation as a weirdo on her first day when she laughs in the middle of class for no reason, doesn’t interact with her classmates, and sleeps on her desk. One day, Akira finds her napping at her desk, notices some drool that she left and impulsively tastes it. He is suddenly struck with a fever and finds out he is suffering from a love sickness that is a form of withdrawal from not ingesting more of her drool. As such, the two enter a very strange new relationship.
While Mysterious Girlfriend X is occasionally uncomfortably (hilariously) gross, it is a show like Call of the Night where a normal main character wanders into a the unknown world of a girl that he meets. From there is balances itself between a plot and a romance without being too heavy on either.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Call of the Night? Let fans know in the comments section below.
