AKA: ダークギャザリング

Genre: Horror/Comedy

Length: Television series, 25 episodes, 24 minutes each

Distributor: Currently licensed by Sentai Filmworks, available streaming on HiDive.

Content Rating: TV-MA (Violence, cannibalism, gore, suicide, mature situations)

Related Series: N/A

Also Recommended: Ghost Hunt; Higurashi; Chainsaw Man

Notes: Based on manga by Kenichi Kondo, published by Shueisha

Rating:

Dark Gathering

Synopsis

Keitaro Gentoga was hired by his friend Eiko Hozuki to tutor her cousin Yayoi; but it turns out that Yayoi is really interested in using Keitaro- who is terrified of the supernatural, but who "attracts" ghosts- as bait to lure in malevolent spirits. Yayoi is "collecting" these spirits (imprisoning them in dolls and stuffed animals), with the aim of using them to free her mother's soul from the particularly powerful evil spirit imprisoning it.

Review

Thanks to Manticore; this is from their list.

To start off with, I noticed that a lot of Yayoi's magic looked familiar. Apparently malevolent spirits can consume each other to increase their own powers, something like the Kodoku idea in Japanese folklore, except that is usually done with insects. (See Onmyoji.) Yayoi also uses paper dolls (with some bit of a person, like fingernails or hair) as decoys, which I remember from one story arc of Ghost Hunt. Yayoi's school even has a "Toilet-Bound Hanako-chan", which is also an idea I've seen before...

Yayoi's appearance is as strange as her powers. She's cherub-sized, has a hair topknot, wears an overcoat and knapsack, and is shod in "tooth tennies"; but her eyes are her most peculiar feature. She has two pupils in each eye- we're told the second one appeared in the accident that killed her parents, after which she was able to see ghosts. (OK, another anime reference: Okko's Inn.) But that doesn't really explain why her irises look like skulls (with the twin pupils serving as the eye sockets.)

And yet it's not Yayoi who really scares me here. She may look weird, have unfathomable magic powers, and possess a huge collection of barely-contained murderous spirits, but I found her cousin Eiko (who insists that Keitaro introduce her to others as his "girlfriend") to be the one that made ME feel uneasy. For Yayoi, at least, seems completely open and honest about her intentions, admitting that she's using Keitaro as "bait" to achieve her own ends, but while she's willing to put him in harm's way, she doesn't actually want to LOSE him, either to death, or to possession (the latter's a very real problem here, which I'll come back to.)

With Eiko, on the other hand, one gets the impression that unknown (and possibly sinister) things might be going on behind her pretty face. (I guess it's pretty; as I'll get into later, I wasn't that impressed with the character art, aside from Yayoi's bizarre design.) While BOTH girls have no problem putting poor Keitaro in mortal danger, Eiko (at least superficially) seems to be involved in the whole business more out of thrill-seeking, and a couple of brutal ghost encounters where SHE (rather than Keitaro) had to take the brunt of the supernatural terror seemed to (temporarily) take some of the edge off her ardor. She and Keitaro are supposed to be victims of the same curse (nerve endings growing OUT of the hand), but she wears gloves on BOTH hands, while on the grounds of symmetry I'd guess that only her left hand's affected (since only his RIGHT'S cursed.)

There are certain things about her, though... hints within the show. She's occasionally depicted with the shadowed face, and/or over-wide grin, that, per anime conventions, can indicate some Bad Stuff Going On in the character's head. I wondered if she'd been Replaced.

Which brings us to the ghosts, and a nasty lot THEY are indeed. Their axes can easily slice living flesh, but some of them are even capable of eviscerating human bodies from the inside. When they were human, several died (or were caused to die) as the result of abuse and/or betrayal, so we again have the idea of homicidal haunting as a result of a grudge that wouldn't die, even though its bearer did. Apparently the only reason anyone is still alive in Japan is because the ghosts' "haunts" are generally avoided by people- though these are the very sorts of spirits Yayoi needs, to take on the keeper of her mom's soul. Keitaro initially goes along with it because Yayoi promises to cure his curse, but later he really wants to protect her, since she INSISTS on exposing herself to these vengeful spectres. But besides physical harm, the ghosts can possess humans, either temporarily or permanently; in the latter case, the ghost Replaces the human's soul. (We're only really shown what happens to the displaced soul in one case.)

The show's spectres, like the rest of its art, are depicted in a shadowy, stark, and simplistic fashion (versus the "sunny" graphic realism of, say, Chainsaw Man). I've seen this sort of style in other horror anime, and didn't mind it too much, since the show is grisly/gory/gruesome enough as it IS, and making the graphics more realistic might have been too much here. The show has an excellent command of psychological terror, which is at times augmented with humor that is VERY grim indeed. (The elevator scene, which has gotten some U Tube attention, is an excellent example; the show realizes that a claustrophobic feel adds to the tension.) But I didn't feel the art worked so well with several of our human characters, as I said; Keitaro and Eiko, in particular, seem as angular and gaunt as the leads in a Peach-Pit production. (And some events that happen to Keitaro make him look even worse.)

This is Season One of a longer saga, so many things are left hanging; our primary trio, in fact, get involved in a side quest involving one Ai Kamiyo, a girl with literal stars in her eyes, who's supposedly pledged to a god, and is not one BIT happy about it. But Yayoi thinks, if she could capture a GOD, think of the spiritual mojo...

And finally, one word of advice for college freshmen: the Suicide Club should NOT be high on your list of college organizations to join.

Poor Keitaro- it's bad enough to be a magnet for evil spirits, but the Hozuki cousins send him into the lairs of the most wicked, most powerful, of them all. I went four stars mainly for the show's psychological intensity (and because I ALWAYS side with put-upon leads), though I might have preferred some different character art. — Allen Moody

Recommended Audience: HiDive goes TV-MA. Cannibalism, dismemberment, and suicide are just part of the Good Clean Fun here; though even WITHOUT those, the psychological terror makes this one Not For Children.