Back in the late 2000s I caught a handful of episodes of a TV series called Moonlight which first aired in 2007-2008, who’s basic premise reminded me of Buffy’s spin off Angel, particularly its first season and a half which aired in late 1999 and 2000. I sometimes went to Moonlight’s IMDB board where I found that naturally I wasn’t the only one to see the similarity. However others pointed out that the Vampire Private Detective Idea had been done previously by a Canadian TV series called Forever Knight which aired from May 1992 to May 1996.
Fast forward to 2021 and I’ve become a Weeb looking into the history of Anime Adapted from Visual Novels (and Adventure Games that often get confused with Visual Novels), and on AniDB I find that the Summer of 1998 had both of the first two TV Anime it lists as Visual Novel adaptations, one is called Night Walker:Mayonakano Tantei. It’s official English Title is Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective but it seems a more accurate English translation of the subtitle would be Eternal Darkness. The Game it was adapted from came out in 1993, it seems the personality of the Main Character was changed significantly. The Anime didn’t get it’s English localization till 2001.
I still haven’t seen a single episode of Forever Knight, and as of my starting to write this have only watched the first 3 episodes of Nightwalker. Still I am fascinated by how many notable variations this one very specific concept had in less than 2 decades.
The idea of having a reluctant Vampire be a Private Detective is one I can easily imagine multiple creators coming up with independently. It’s a pretty natural way to combine Pulp/Film Noir tropes with Urban Fantasy. In both Angel and Moonlight the protagonist’s Sire serves as a sort of Femme Fatale. But in both Nightwalker and Forever Knight the protagonist had a male Sire which I’m sure resulted in some Yaoi shipping.
The Anime nature of Nightwalker certainly makes it stand out within this Tetrad. The Demons behind our Vampire’s cases kind of have a Youkai vibe. He also makes weapons from his Blood which anticipates Deadman Wonderland. And for reasons he has a secretary who’s a Japanese School Girl who wears her School Uniform on the job even though I know in real life you’re not allowed to wear your School Uniform doing other things in Japan, but Citrus is the only Anime to ever acknowledge that.
The Music is interesting, it has this one Guitar riff that keeps making me think of Jesus Christ Superstar.
The Dub is one of those Dubs where the only character who feels off is the main character, this should have been a Crispan Freeman role. Okay I realize some will assume Hellsing is the Freeman role I’m thinking of given the Vampire context, but in this case I’m actually more thinking of him as Amon in Witch Hunter Robin.
In episode 3 we’re told he became a Vampire centuries ago, but the brief Flashback footage we’re shown has him already in his very 20th Century business suit. So I’m wondering if there’s an explanation for that or if it's just a huge blunder?
After watching episode 4 of Nightwalker, screw what I said before about Shipping, Cain explicitly calls himself an ex Lover. Also for only being episode 4 it felt pretty big, like a season finale or at least a mid-season finale. I suspect the source material had enough story for a two cour Anime, but one was all the network felt like investing in.
Well I wound up completing Nightwalker. It was mostly all good stuff, but the last episode annoyed me a bit. Also there are dangling plot threads, they were clearly hoping for a season 2 that never happened.
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