Call of the Night. While I wouldn't necessarily agree with the latter – the only real commonality they share is vampires – I think it's a safe bet to say that the former holds true. That's not because it touches on any similar thematic issues or characters, but because the two series do share a vibe. Of course, the corollary is also true, meaning that if you're not a huge fan of DAN DA DAN, Dra-Q is likely to not be for you either, and I do find myself falling into that camp, although not for remotely similar reasons.

In large part that comes down to two very specific things: the specific way the story unfolds and the characters. Creator Chiyo throws us headlong into the plot from the first chapter, introducing us to Amelie and Pako and their whirlwind romance. Amelie is a 160-year-old vampire and a third-year high school student who is exploring the human world, as it's implied all young vampires do. She's fallen hard for Pako, the class delinquent, and that's more than enough for her to almost simultaneously break all five of the laws her parents told her never, ever to break: no romantic attachments, no direct , no physical exertion, no crying, and no smiling. Most of those are to prevent humans from identifying vampires, as they'll make their eyes glow, show their fangs, or make their wings pop out. But deep in the throes of her crush, Amelie just doesn't care – and neither does Pako when he figures out the truth about her. In all fairness to Amelie, it's actually not him feeling her cold skin that clues him in; the two are attacked by a werewolf and Amelie's head is lopped off, which doesn't kill her. Pako, not one to care about interspecies relationships, simply takes her headless body and head home to sew her noggin back on, because as he says repeatedly, “love ain't about blood.”

But you know what is? Vampires and werewolves, and thanks to a jealous werewolf, Pako gets turned, because in the series' world, lycanthropy is transmitted if a werewolf gives you their saliva even via a bite while vampirism is only transmitted if you drink a vampire's blood. And wouldn't you know it, vampires and werewolves are mortal enemies, so even though Pako and Amelie are madly in instalove, there's nothing they can do about it now, especially since vampirism and lycanthropy can't be comorbidities. (Werewolf saliva will kill a vampire.) They aren't just star-crossed lovers, the stars have double-crossed these kids.

It's an interesting amalgamation of tropes and concepts, and by all rights it should be good. But what holds it back is the rapidity of its pacing and the fact that all of the characters are surface-level only. Even if you don't love the plot of DAN DA DAN, it's hard to argue that the characters are good and that following them makes up for a lot of sins. But Amelie is no Momo, and she spends most of her time moping around or being ineffectually upset with her parents. Pako also feels remarkably underdeveloped, and Maria, the more or less self-proclaimed love rival, has less depth than puddle; her entire motivation is “I want Pako,” although to be fair, that's Amelie's as well. Not helping the situation are truly cringey concepts like losing one's “blood flower,” meaning sucking blood/biting someone for the first time, a term that presumably comes from the bad old term “deflowering” to describe a first sexual experience.

While I don't love Chiyo's art, there are some appealing aspects of it, like the nicely solid bodies and lack of unnecessary sexualization. We see Pako without his shirt more often than we see the girls' underwear. It is, however, very heavy on the black spaces and uses a lot of dark grey tones, so it can be hard to see the details. It can also get gross at times, but that feels par for the course, with the exception of Pako's perpetually skinned knuckles, which at times make him look more like a zombie than a werewolf. (That goes for his blood-spattered skin, as well; the look of it is pretty undead.) There is a nice variety of figures and Amelie's family reminds me of Ranze's family in the Tokimeki Tonight, which can only be a positive.

Dra-Q is a hard series to recommend. You may well like it if you're a DAN DA DAN fan, but it's much less developed than that series. You may like it if you're a fan of silly vampire titles like Chibi Vampire, but it's darker and gorier than that. With its skin-deep characters and a plot that sometimes feel like the creator was just flying by the seat of their pants with each new development, this is more awkward than anything. I think I'd read a sample or get it at the library before purchasing, because this is the very definition of a mixed bag.