Dark Gathering

Episodes 1-2

Horror anime is uncommon enough that a new series in the genre will prompt interest, while the known difficulties of doing horror right will also be a cause for trepidation in approaching said series. And so, we curiously and cautiously come to Dark Gathering, an anime whose quirks are on full display from the very beginning, standing out with the outlandish design of its poster girl, Yayoi, and a screwy sense of humor in between the spooky bits. However, by the second episode, Dark Gathering indicates some interesting, more thoughtful approaches to the spiritual ideas it's playing with. That might prove just as distinguishing for the series as Yayoi's freaky double-pupiled skull eyes.

Comedy and horror will always be structurally intertwined, and as far as the quality of those goes, Dark Gathering is mostly okay so far. I am pretty amused by the ways Yayoi, with Eiko's enthusiastic assistance, messes with Keitaro and ropes him into her supernatural adventures. Yū Sasahara is doing a strong job portraying Yayoi as a freaky little weirdo, especially given how frequently the character has to shift between silly and scary. The comedy stuff is more lightly entertaining than laugh-out-loud funny. Similarly, none of the horror segments come off as outright scary, but the vibes once the shift hits are still on point.

Dark Gathering thus far isn't an amazingly animated series, and honestly, some of the storyboarding during simpler conversational parts can feel overly jumpy and hard to follow. However, a lot of the presentation, especially in those horror segments, knows how to get a lot from a little. The series has a handle on using imagery that it knows to be specifically disturbing, such as all the sexual/pregnancy visuals surrounding the ghostly abduction of Yayoi's mother or the way Keitaro takes a whole mouthful of horrible doll hair in the second episode. The situation with the phone booth ghost in the first episode escalates with phone-based threatening imagery and then resolves by cutting loose and showcasing Yayoi's wild combat style involving dual-wielded crowbars and a Jizo-statue blackjack.

It's the outlandishness in service of selling the central idea of Yayoi and how this little girl could be something so fearsome that even the spirits themselves are afraid of her. Dark Gathering is doing a strong job of showcasing the inherent freakiness of Yayoi, even in the shadow of her silliest moments. We quickly catch on to what's going on with her cursed plushie collection, what she's trying to do, and why. However, other realizations creep up on us as we watch, such as the understanding that Yayoi isn't taking out these spirits with any altruistic intent of protecting locals from them. Instead, she is putting others and herself in regular danger by rousing them for her own extremely vicious and vengeful ends.

That's an understanding we come to in the second episode, alongside the series settling down a bit from its excitably silly-scary setup of the premiere to explain things and let us come to understand more of its ideas. We fully come to grasp how all of Keitaro's actions, contrasting with Yayoi's, are predicated on him wanting to prevent any harm to others. It rounds back to his backstory involving his childhood friend getting mixed up in a spiritual mishap with him (and I am pretty sure said friend was Eiko, which almost certainly ties into her constantly concealed hands). But the storytelling also details how Keitaro's attachment to others that way forms his sort of support network for his possessed hand, itself framed in Dark Gathering as something akin to living with a chronic illness. And in this context, "exorcism" as a regular medical procedure with actual surgical mechanics behind it dials up the interest in how these things work in this context even more. The first episode of this show caught my eye, but it was all these follow-up ideas in the second that hooked me.

Seeing as Dark Gathering has already indicated it's going to slot into something of an episodic "Spirit of the Week" setup, that's a good sign that it's got the conceptual chops to hold interest even as we're not looking forward to a ton of story stuff straight away. Not that the show is entirely ignoring that front, dropping tantalizing clues about deeper stuff that might be going on with Eiko, or teasing at the true depths of Yayoi's crusade with her creepy collection. I don't know that the show will ever wholly succeed at the horror stuff, seeing as it seems to be going more for "freaky" than outright scary, which might be more to the tastes of some scare-averse audience members who would otherwise be interested in horror vibes. On the other hand, while I find the humor amusing enough, I can see it being a turn-off to those that think it's being too mean to Keitaro. Dark Gathering is going to be one of those shows that's going to be to some people's very specific tastes. But it's put together solidly enough that I can recommend you give it a shot to see if you're one of those people. Rating:

Dark Gathering is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris knows that summer is the perfect time for spooky stories, and hopefully it's enough to distract him from this blistering Fresno heat wave. You can help distract him further by bothering him on his Twitter (for however much longer that lasts), or check out his less-scary musings over on his blog.