Dark Gathering Collection Blu-ray Review
Keitaro has spirit sight, the ability to see and sense ghosts around him, but when a childhood experience leaves him and his friend cursed and traumatised, Keitaro isolates himself from society. Years later, after his childhood friend Eiko helps him integrate back into society, he’s now at college and takes up a tutoring job, but has sworn off all ghost-related things. The problem? His first student, Yayoi, also has spirit sight and begs Keitaro to help her find more ghosts so she can become powerful enough to confront the grotesque supernatural phenomenon that took the spirit of her dead mother away. Can Keitaro keep his normal life and avoid all ghostly encounters? Or is he destined to be drawn back in, no matter what?
Dark Gathering is based upon the manga of the same name by Kenichi Kondo, available in English from VIZ Media. The anime is 25 episodes long, and from research, the anime seems to follow the manga up to Volume 9, and then stops. Sadly, despite the long-running anime, the series doesn’t wrap up with its own ending, or any ending for that matter. It actually sets up the next arc, and then just finishes. Either it was hoping for a new season, or had never planned to cover the whole manga anyway (which is ongoing at the time of writing, and recently resumed after a brief hiatus). This makes the ending rather flat, and admittedly disappointing as I felt that I never got a satisfying conclusion to the story it set up, but I can’t deny that I did have a very creepy time with this series.
The first half of the anime covers Keitaro trying to maintain some kind of normal life, resisting all attempts from Yayoi and Eiko to take him ghost-hunting. He’s the POV character for the first arc, including his narration on how he feels at certain points, and the ghost attacks centring on him as well. Apparently ghosts are drawn to Keitaro, so despite him not wanting anything to do with ghosts, they really want something to do with him, and it’s usually not good! I found myself enjoying this arc the most, as it had an emotional core and stakes that I could sympathise with. Keitaro, understandably, is traumatised by his experiences with the undead, and despite his skills to sense them, he really wants nothing to do with them. After seeing what ‘curse’ he and his friend suffer from as a result of the ghost attack that happened prior to the series, it’s understandable that he freaks out when both Yayoi and Eiko are keen to seek out ghosts. When he learns from Yayoi that they could break the curse if they capture a powerful ghost and use it to kill the original ghost that cursed him, it gives him pause. Does he fight for a ‘normal life’ with his curse, regardless? Or does he dive headfirst back into the supernatural, risking his life with the hope of living a curse-free life in the future? It’s through Keitaro’s encounter with Yayoi and her bravery when fighting other ghosts, the knowledge he gains in their battles, and also learning of other people’s curses (such as Ai, towards the end of the first arc) that his mind starts to change. It’s the push and pull that makes an interesting dynamic between Keitaro and Yayoi, as well as giving him food for thought as to whether he’s willing to go back into the very thing that ruined his life. He gets less focus in the second half of the series where the focus switches to Yayoi and this is a real shame, as he has the best arc and emotional stakes.
I also like the story arc that Eiko goes through in the series. It’s revealed early on that she was the friend that was cursed alongside Keitaro, but instead of self-isolating, she embraced the supernatural and actually LOVES the thrill of being scared. She’s basically Yumeko from Kakegurui – Compulsive Gambler, but instead of being addicted to the thrill of gambling, she’s obsessed with the supernatural and the fear it brings her. She’s also like the devil on Keitaro’s shoulder, pushing him to dive headfirst back into the occult, and she’s also in love with him. Midway through the series, she has an interesting crisis of faith, where her fear is pushed to its limits, and she starts to wonder if her love for the supernatural has been misplaced. It goes where you think it will go, but I do like the exploration of her character, and how the series doesn’t frame her obsession with ghosts as something healthy, often framing her monologues about loving being scared with ominous music and creepy imagery.
But the most important character of the series is Yayoi, who is the creepy girl we see from the very beginning and looks a little like a Soul Eater character. She has spirit sight too, and lost both her parents very young in a car crash, but has a double whammy of trauma by watching her mother’s ghost being eaten by a monstrous being known as the ‘Spectre of Death’ that looks like a giant womb floating in the sky. Yayoi is on a revenge quest,and has knowledge about the ghost world that goes beyond Keitaro’s expertise, so she’s both the one who drives the main plot as well as providing exposition when the situation calls for it (which is a lot). In the second half of the series, she also takes over as the POV character, as her quest for revenge ends up becoming a much bigger problem and affecting both Keitaro’s quest and other people’s livelihoods.
The problem however is that Yayoi is more of a plot device than a character; she has the building blocks for an emotional arc (wanting to save her mum’s soul, the growing of her ghost army as she dives deeper into the occult) but she also serves as the story’s ‘badass’ ghost hunter, whose expression never changes and always comes out on top in battles, so the two sides contradict each other. You can’t really humanise someone who’s trying to save their dead mother’s spirit from damnation, and yet have them be completely unaffected by the numerous ghosts attacks. And I do mean ‘unaffected’ in every way. Not only does she win every time (expected as a protagonist) but she also spills the lore of each ghost in the midst of battle, like she’s always known or has figured out each and every ghost’s weaknesses, but she’s never scared or shown to be affected by it. There’s one battle where she’s put in serious danger, being nearly strangled to death by a ghost over a bed of water, yet the moment she’s saved, she moves on like nothing’s happened. She can be fun to watch when she’s winning, but she’s way less interesting that Keitaro, which is why it’s a shame she takes over the narrative. Also her over-explaining becomes tiring after a while.
It turns out the world of ghosts is more complicated than it first seems. There are different level ghosts (S-rank, A-rank, etc), each one has different powers depending on how they’re killed, etc. It also turns into the deadliest game of Pokémon ever made where ghosts can be captured and levelled up, but also eat other ghosts and turn on humans at a drop of a hat if left unchecked. This becomes more important in the second half, but each ghost having their own backstory and special attack is very good to see. The show’s lore is interesting; it allows for unique set pieces and cool ghost designs, but it can get a bit much at times, especially as Yayoi tends to only explain it as and when it’s happening, rather than drip-feed information and have it come to fruition later. One egregious example is in the latter half of the series, when it’s revealed that a ghost can actually replace and switch bodies with a person, and it’s only explained LITERALLY the episode before it becomes important, revealing that the villains have been body-swapping for their evil plans.
But outside the lore dragging down the ghost encounters at times, I can’t overstate this enough: the ghost attacks are definitely the highlight of the series. The 18 rating on the box set isn’t an error as this series is very atmospheric and scary. If you like super spooky and gory survival horror games such as Project Zero/Fatal Frame, Silent Hill or Fear & Hunger, then Dark Gathering is worth checking out too. First of all, it nails the horror atmosphere very well, although the series opens as a comedy and has occasional light moments (to offset how intense it can get at times), the moment the ghosts appear you feel it in the atmosphere. The dark colour palette, the chilling music, the bait and switch of redirecting the audience thinking a ghost is somewhere, only to smash cut to the ghost right in the next shot with no musical spoilers at all. It’s all very well done and effective. Even later on, when you know that our heroes are going to make it out of each ghost encounter alive, you can still feel the tension in each episode, because you don’t know what the ghost is going to be or what it will do next, and the stakes are different each time. The same goes for the designs; each one is very striking and horror-inducing. My particular favourite ghost was one that kills by pulling on people’s brain stems and then making the ghosts of his victims serve him and bring him even more victims…yeah that image won’t leave my head anytime soon! The series is gory, dark, creepy and violent at many points, so not for the faint-hearted.
The series is animated by OLA, which is a company with many ‘smaller’ teams and this particular title was handled by Team Masuda (which has more experience animating series of Beyblade) but I think they did a great job here. Quality is strong across the board; you can tell during the quieter/comedic moments that corners are cut to save time, but the ghost attacks go all out which is appreciated. I like how they bring to life the various ghosts attacks, such as the Death Chanting of one ghost, with flickering kanji on screen as he chants away. The score is spread between numerous people: Kohta Yamamoto, Shun Narita and Yusuke. The soundtrack is very effective in bringing to life the heart-stopping ghost encounters, and the eerie tracks make you feel unsettled even when nothing is happening. Yet. I also love the use of sound effects to really drive home the messed-up nature of the show, the scrapping, squelching, clicking, moaning, biting sounds and more; they really set the audience on edge.
This Blu-ray set from MVM Entertainment contains all 25 episodes of the anime; extras include clean opening and ending, episode previews and recaps. There’s also the Japanese and English dubs too. For the dub, I thought veteran Clint Bickham did a good job showing Keitaro’s range, from screaming for dear life to emotional when getting close with Eiko.
Dark Gathering lives up to its name with extremely effective horror and ghost designs to send a chill up your spine. The series is let down by its non-conclusion, and a narrative overtaken by the least interesting character, but it’s still a spooky watch overall.
