A review of Nightwalker (The Midnight Detective) 1998
By Fahrenheit
Nightwalker, directed by Yutaka Kagawa and Kiyotoshi Sasano, was a short running anime adaptation of a now virtually lost Japanese VN of the same name following the adventures of a vampire called Shido Tatsuhiko along with his fairy-like sidekick Guni, Yayoi Matsunaga a woman who is a member of the N.O.S. anti-nightbreed crime unit and a young schoolgirl by the name of Riho Yamazaki who works as his secretary.
The series takes a generally episodic approach with each of its twelve episodes being mostly self-contained along with having antagonists that are successfully dealt with by time the end credits roll (unless they are not but more on that later). Very few of the characters see much development over the series, with the most obvious exception to this being Riho and her change from a human to a vampire, but apart from this one should not expect much in the way of meaningful transformation, perhaps if the series were longer or even if the anime had received a second series we would have seen more changes in Shido as he dealt with whatever the ‘Golden Dawn’ was supposed to be.
I would personally describe Nightwalker as feeling incomplete, with the exception of Riho’s arc getting completed episode twelve ends with a lot of open questions. As stated before, we do not find out what was meant by the ‘Golden Dawn’, an apocalyptic prediction that was biggened throughout the show and introduced by Cain; another vampire who originally turned Shido into a one himself. Another example of the incompleteness of the series was the very little amount of time dedicated to Yayoi, the fact that she donated her blood to Shido and later Riho wasn’t something I picked up on until halfway through the series, furthermore outside of her duties to the N.O.S unit I can highlight no further reasons for her interest in Shido’s business, Yayoi simply wasn’t developed.
Perhaps it should be stated that I liked the series, it is definitely worth checking out if you like older anime, vampires or even that nineties city aesthetic, the show is very comfortable and certainly has a unique charm. The parts of the series I found to be the most enjoyable are found in episodes six (The Bottom of A Well) and eight (A Soul Lost in the Darkness) basically the episodes where vampires play tricks on people by pretending to be a helpless child and a deceased old man respectively, I’m not sure why but the idea of vampires wanting to prank people is very funny to me. In terms of actual quality, I don’t remember having any problems with episode eight but episode six was quite slow with Shido being stuck at the bottom of the well for most of its duration.
The main overarching point of conflict in the series is Riho’s transformation. Cain causes a lot of problems for Shido of course but due to the limited run of the series he is somewhat side-lined, and the implications attached to him are never explored, who was Shido before he was transformed? And what is the ‘Golden Dawn’? for example. The spotlight is really focused on Riho with whole episodes dedicated the problems or potential problems with becoming a vampire (episodes five ‘Medicine for the Dead’ and twelve ‘Eternal Darkness’) this seems to be done quite well, though episode twelve suffers heavily from the ‘it was just a dream’ trick. My favourite Riho episode has to be episode five simply because of a funny moment when she jollily says ‘bye-bye’ to her friends as she leaves them forever in the clubhouse.
Three weeks ago I would probably have had more to say about Nightwalker unfortunately I have forgotten most of what I had originally watched, however I think I have written enough so that BioGundam (the person I’m really writing this for) doesn’t feel underwhelmed. Nightwalker gets a 6/10.
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Shido with Riho, watched over by Guni