Dark Gathering

Episode 5

I'll go ahead and eat just a few of my words from last week's review, as this fifth episode of Dark Gathering quickly makes Eiko's stalker-style obsession with Keitaro into a bit that actually kind of works. Integrating her tech-whiz traits to let her cyber-spy on Keitaro so that she (and Yayoi) can be involved in his initiating plot without directly being there is smart enough. But it also leads to a showcase of Eiko's more disastrous personality points, which we can now have since her odder tendencies are fully out in the open (to us). It's fun to see how she and Yayoi get on when Keitaro's not in the room with them, the way Yayoi can mess with Eiko as much as she does with Keitaro. It fleshes Eiko out, making me more receptive to her tendencies as presented here than I was with the raw weirdness witnessed at the end of last week's episode.

It also facilitates a strong setup for the actual plot of this episode. Eiko and Yayoi's spooky times podcast commentary, while they're spying on Keitaro's ill-fated college meet-and-greet, is a pretty fun mash-up of framing devices. It lets the storytelling transition from the humor aspects into the horror stuff smoothly in a way only this show could do. We can tell even before the dead giveaways that the vibes on Nagayama and his Travel Club are rancid, but there's still just enough reasonable doubt that his scary story to Keitaro will be a fake-out of some sort before the dreadful dawning realization. It creeps up on you the way something like this should, reminding us that as much fun as we're having with the surrounding shenanigans, these ghostly adventures are also inherently frightful.

It also immediately delves into a rather intense depiction of the specific peril Keitaro finds himself in. I knew from the start that things might get more intense this week, especially since HIDIVE provided a viewer discretion notice about suicide imagery at the beginning of this episode. The previous episode also involved a suicide, but this one features some rather gruesome depictions of multiple students hanging themselves, and they're only miraculously saved from dying by the end. It's mostly done for heavier horror shock value. Despite being the episode's central theme, Dark Gathering doesn't extensively explore suicide or its ideation. The focus is mainly on Yayoi's comment about the selfishness of imposing suicide on others as a response to one's lack of affection for life. This further highlights Yayoi's direct moral principles, along with the aggressive, unyielding response she's prepared to unleash upon those who threaten her friend.

Not delving too deeply into the concept of suicide is perhaps wise for Dark Gathering, given that this is the type of show that can only present obsessive stalking as a (admittedly quite funny) amusing little quirk. Instead, the focus is on establishing and resolving some simply smart plot beats, such as catching Nagayama specifying that he doesn't drink, before we witness Yayoi's ability to expel his spirit from the body using the purifying power of a bottle of sake. The clever setups and tonal lead-ins then contrast a bit oddly with the story becoming more muddled towards the end, specifically in the question of which ghost, if any, Yayoi had sealed for her overarching purposes. Nonetheless, I did appreciate the exceedingly creepy revelation of the reason the demon chose to have its victims hang themselves in the first place, so at least the spirit of the scary story depicted here overall landed.

It makes this episode a strong showcase for all of Dark Gathering's main cast as several of them are attempting to grow or develop through it. Again, the reveal of Eiko's true nature turned out to be a smart decision, since she now really feels like a character and part of the group in her own right, as opposed to a backstory-mandated hanger-on for Keitaro's situation. And we get Keitaro slowly coming to understand that his interactions with the spiritual world are so integral to his life that he's not going to be able to just ignore them in his other, more mundane social pursuits. It's a more solid entry than last week's episode, and also retroactively smooths over some of the issues I had with that one.

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.