Yofukashi no Uta – 2 [Do You Do LINE]

Hello everyone, and welcome to my last show for the season, Yofukashi no Uta AKA Call of the Night. It’s a cute series, but I’m sure you all have other questions first, such as “Where the hell is the seasonal coverage post”. Well I’m wondering that to, so don’t worry. Currently waiting on some last minute additions from the other writers, so it will go out when it goes out. Don’t worry though, I’m going to keep a consistent schedule with my 3 (4?) series. So without further ado, lets dive into some late night vampire sexy times!

Starting off, Yofukashi continues to look good I think. There are some issues here and there with the composite, the characters feel very out of place at times. But I absolutely love the neon color palette. When combined with the darker, flatter backgrounds it lets the colors really pop. On top of that there are some really cool shots peppered throughout, even if the animation isn’t anything impressive in them. My only real issue right now is that some of the colors feel… off. My friend described the yellow ones in particular as a “piss filter” and I can’t get it out of my head. They really do look that unhealthy, questionable shade and simply don’t look as good as the blues, greens and purples. And sadly? I don’t think they are going away any time soon. At least the OST is fire, right?

Moving on to the actual show. In the episode 1 coverage I mentioned that I wasn’t sure which direction Yofukashi would go. Would it be a more actiony battle route? Or closer to the authors past manga, a sort of romance? Well as it turns out, the author of Dagashi Kashi is sticking to his roots. Yofukashi appears to be focused entirely on the leads relationship and inevitable romance. On how the two connect and grow into one another. To be clear, this isn’t bad! From its presentation, I think the author learned a lot from their first series. And by presentation I don’t mean visuals but rather how it communicates the leads feelings. Doing so through analogy, allowing it to talk about more explicit subjects like sex and emotional dependency under the guise of food and the nightlife.

To allow me to explain it a bit better, lets take a look at Nazuna. From the start Nazuna is depicted as being very confident and experienced. She’s had lots of flings, one night feedings, and knows her way around the bed if you know what I mean. Yet despite this, she still gets very flustered around our MC, Kou. Why? Well it’s because while she is experienced in physical intimacy, Nazuna has no experience with emotional intimacy. She doesn’t take things like this seriously, she doesn’t get attached. To her its all physical, the “feeding”. This is a far cry from your typical naïve maiden that most anime like to have. And if it’s done right, I think her figuring out how feelings work could be a really engaging arc. After all, we are already seeing a bit of that!

That said, I was a tad disappointed in Yofukashi this week. Early on in the episode Nazuna says that she was out feeding from some rando’s, the implicated equivalent being a one night stand. This of course upsets Kou, who effectively wants monogamy and committed relationship. But for Nazuna, this isn’t a big deal at all. Sadly though, Yofukashi walks this back by revealing that she wasn’t actually with anyone. Instead she was looking for Kou. I think that this is a big missed opportunity for the show. It’s a romance angle, one of an experienced and empowered woman rather than a virginal maiden, that I usually only get to see in trashy stuff like Domekano. I really hope Yofukashi comes back to this and shows us that there’s nothing wrong with not being someone’s first partner. Especially when they aren’t even in a relationship yet.

As for our MC, Kou, I still really want to learn about his home life. I like his inexperience and earnestness, I think it makes for a nice contrast with Nazuna’s confidence. But we still know very little about his situation and what made him stop going to school in the first place. On top of that, him being 14 to Nazuna’s probable decades is just… weird. It’s weird when the girl is the young teenager and it’s weird here to. Kind of felt like they just chose a number from among their highest readership age group and said “Lets get them hooked”. I kind of hope the age doesn’t come up often and we can just ignore it. But is that really solving the issue? I don’t know. It’s certainly a weird one.

Finally we have this new girl, the bearer of the lost transceiver. Is she a rival in love? A connection back to the waking world, the daylight hours? Who knows! Personally though I’m very curious what she could end up representing in this messy romance. For now though, it’s all a guess.

So yeah, basically what I’m saying is that this was a decent episode. It didn’t cover everything I wanted, but we have another 10 to go so there’s no rush. Hopefully Yofukashi sticks to its guns and really develops this relationship rather than leading into wacky hijinks and drama. I think there’s a lot of potential here for a wholesome, slightly fanservicey romance and I’d really like to see it pull it off.

But what about you? What do you think of Yofukashi’s 2nd episode? Let me know down below, I’ll definitely be reading. See you next week for episode 3! Oh and P.S. I forgot to mention this when talking about animation, but some of the composites look really jank and its weird that the bushes/greenery isn’t affected by the neon lighting everything else is. Just… really off putting at times.