DARK GATHERING

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA AdventureDark Gathering

REVIEWS

• 

  Bropix

  90/100
  Some of the Best Horror in Anime

  Dark Gathering is a Supernatural-Horror, Adventure Manga by Kondou Kenichi, who was an assistant who worked on the manga D.Gray-man. It was adapted into a 25-episode anime by OLM, housing talents that helped produce amazing shows like Summertime Rendering, OddTaxi & The Apothecary Diaries.

  

  Set in modern-day Japan, it follows Gentouga Keitarou who is trying to readjust to society after being cursed by a spirit. He meets a young girl named Houzuki Yayoi, the cousin of his childhood friend Houzuki Eiko. Yayoi is a genius psychic, hell-bent on finding an evil spirit she named “The Spectre”, who was behind her mother’s disappearance. She drags Keitarou into her terrifying world of grotesque supernatural adventures.

  While overviewing the Summer 2023 catalog, my initial thoughts after watching the trailer were that of uncertainty. The question was if this anime could be genuinely scary or just another cringy edge fest. Luckily Dark Gathering succeeds with flying colors in being a horrifying, creepy, and suspenseful show.

  While the initial episodes have an episodic structure it quickly develops into interesting story arcs as Yayoi discovers that the creation of The Spectre seems to be more sinister than initially believed.

  

  The anime tackles very heavy and taboo themes, with very little if any censorship to accompany them. The horror and tension are intense, and greatly executed, mainly due to two reasons.

  First, the haunted locations the characters visit. Many of these locations you could connect to real-life ones, locations holding some dark unknown past of many decades ago, showing the heights of cruelty possible by human beings. For example, in one side-mission, the characters travel to an abandoned building that in the past was connected to a sex-trafficking ring and now is haunted by the spirits of its victims. The supernatural encounters and the horror they unveil never feel too try hard edgy, but instead genuinely creepy in how the spirits, many of them being tortured souls, show their wrath towards the living.

  Second, I greatly enjoyed the ghost-hunting combat. A tool the characters use are dolls that act as damage proxies, they transfer damage the evil spirits deal to them to said dolls. The dolls are a great plot device since they greatly increase the sense of urgency, a reality check to you the viewer, that without these dolls and Yayoi’s knowledge, you would have an easier time surviving the Shibuya Incident compared to some of the spirits they encounter.

  

  While the cast is small, they each fit their role within the story well. Yayoi carries the show's narrative and is the most competent among the trio. Keitarou slowly becomes more heroic during the supernatural adventures and Eiko’s love of scary encounters grows.

  The production is good, the character designs are cartoony, and the animation is consistently good. The designs of some of the spirits are downright horrific and scary, even scarier in the manga. The sound design is top notch and the soundtrack succeeds in aiding its creepy vibe. The slice-of-life moments are similar to that of Higurashi, where everything is more colorful and goofy, but once it gets serious the art gets more intense.

  

  Overall this anime is amazing, I desperately need a 2nd season. It takes some time for it to cook, but once it does, you are hooked and can’t stop watching.

  If you like good horror anime I would recommend Higurashi and Shiki as well.

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• 

  OrielBel

  80/100
  A solid entry in an under served genre

  The reason that horror as a genre has been so resilient for so long is because at a base level, it's kind of fun to get scared. It's like a rollercoaster or bungee jumping; you get right up close to something dangerous but in the back of your mind the experience is (hopefully) carefully curated enough that you can enjoy it. There's a triumph in coming out the other side having experienced something that made us feel so vulnerable.

  Dark Gathering is a series about that bizarre mixture of terror and euphoria that we experience with horror. Its characters experience everything from familiar campfire ghost stories to grisly tales of true crime, getting right up close to mortal danger. Although they're scared out of their mind at the things they witness they're also fascinated and exhilarated by it too.

  The show is broken down into two halves. In the first the trio of Keitarou, Eiko and Yayoi encounter smaller scale local haunts that they dispatch after some issue in a monster of the week style adventure. In the second half, a new threat presents itself and the gloves come right off. The ghosts become far more grisly, their backstories become far more horrifying and their designs become more abstract. In order to combat these our heroes start utilizing powerful ghosts Pokemon style to try and take them down.

  The show's heart lies in the trio's dynamic, as Keitarou's struggles to keep up with Eiko's fascination with the occult and Yayoi's dogged crusade against the supernatural. He's the straight-man essentially, having fairly understandable reactions to the horrors we encounter yet still remaining brave to hold on to the only connections he's been able to make after years of isolation. There are aspects to his character that could've been explored more, like his apparent high intelligence that I hope to see more of in a potential season two.

  His childhood friend Eiko is a strange case. At face value she's the perfect supportive friend who only wants what's best for Keitarou. But secretly she's an obsessive adrenaline junkie who loves the thrill that scary things gives her. If Keitarou is meant to be the everyman the audience is meant to relate with, Eiko is meant to represent the thrill we get in seeing what new haunt the show comes up with this week.

  But the real star of the show is Yayoi. With her massive cowlick, skull pupils, blazer and tie combo with shark tooth pumps, she looks like a Pokemon trainer who got really, really into Soul Eater. She is the show's action hero believe it or not, a vengeful crusader on a mission who doesn't mind getting right up close and literally strangle ghosts with her bare hands if she has to. Her fearlessness is equal parts thrilling and hilarious, as well as her budding relationship with the other two members of her group.

  Production wise the show stays at around a "serviceable" level. Whenever the show isn't deep into the new horror of the week it's content to mostly keep the characters as talking heads with minimal movement. Horror tends to suffer when we can see the seams in the production, so the lackluster character animation, flat coloring and distracting auras did tend to take me out of the experience. Thankfully, where the show did shine was in its stellar sound design, where you hear every scream, croak and creak in extreme detail.

  Horror has never really had a foothold in anime despite a rich history in manga and film. TV broadcast standards usually neuter it and it's difficult to merchandise. As a result we barely get a drip feed of it every few years, which is a shame. Dark Gathering may not be perfect, but it takes big swings and has a real love for the genre.

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