The folks over at Bleeding Skull! have described the OVA Call Me Tonight (1986) as the “cute” Urotsukidōji (1989), and they aren’t wrong. But calling any thing “cute” in comparison to Urotsukidōji isn’t actually saying that much. However, it is true that Call Me Tonight is far more mild in its violence, sexual and otherwise, than Urotsukidōji. What really sets the two films apart is the tone.
Call Me Tonight is a sort of coming-of-age romantic drama with supernatural overtones. The film follows a first year student and call girl named Rumi “Suuko” Natsumi as she guides the Jekyll/Hyde monster-boy Ryo Sugiura through his sexual awakening. Whenever Ryo is aroused he transforms into a tentacle demon. Rumi, an avid reader of pulp and monster magazines, is completely smitten by Ryo. But it isn’t long before “delinquent girl” Oyuki sets her sights on Ryo and unleashes a current of violence.
The main difference between Call Me Tonight and other examples of monster oriented Japanese erotic is that Ryo, in his monster form, is not inherently sexually violent. The purveyor of such violence comes in the form of Oyuki and her gang. The arc that Rumi and Ryo share in the final act of Call Me Tonight is essentially that of the rape/revenge thriller. Having been victimized, the two would-be lovers rescue one another and Ryo dishes out some rather gory vengeance.
Call Me Tonight is a kind of post-punk take on Beauty & The Beast set in the milieu of the Japanese youth gangs. Director and writer Tatsuya Okamoto borrows freely from these disparate genres to craft an adult anime that is equally heartfelt and kinky. There are a handful of comedic references to other sources (in literature and film) that signal that Call Me Tonight is meant as an homage to those same monster magazines that Rumi cherishes.
Clocking-in at roughly half an hour, Call Me Tonight is about a quarter of the running time of Urotsukidōji. If one were interested into diving headlong into the fetish regions of anime then Call Me Tonight provides the perfect gateway. I hadn’t seen Call Me Tonight for years but upon revisiting it I found it as moving and as provocative as ever.
