English Dub Review: Dark Gathering “Scary School Stories: Hide and Seek”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Children can be cruel, that much is quite clear.  Poor Sakashita lost all he held dear.  He plays a game now, the rule is right here: don’t let him find you or you’ll disappear.

Our Take:

The series has reached its final destination regarding the trio’s ghostly adventures.  This time, we’re investigating every child’s worst nightmare: school.  The last encounter involving the Old I Watergate was another terrifying roller coaster that ups the ante in the show’s stakes.  However, it didn’t reach the same heights as the first two S-rank areas regarding scares and the show’s tension.  So now, we have one last ghost to encounter before Yayoi and others confront the mischievous god, and yes, it’s just as deadly as the other S-rank spirits.

This sinister ghost resides in Yayoi’s elementary school, where Yayoi confronts Dorothy Flamsteed, the creepy young girl who’s revealed to be in a class next to Yayoi’s.  Additionally, she shares the same spiritual sense as Yayoi’s, which would give the courageous girl a run for her money.  Along with Yayoi’s classmates, including Gonda and Rep, Yayoi and Dorothy search for any clues involving their elementary school’s darkest secret.  However, it turns out to be part of Dorothy’s plan, in which she tricks them into unleashing the ghost that traps everyone but Dorothy in its ghostly realm.

The spirit itself is an elementary school teacher who was bullied and abused by his students.  They even take a step too far by framing the teacher for taking lewd pictures of one of the students, resulting in him getting fired and his wife leaving him.  The actions of his unapologetic students drove the teacher to kill himself so that his spirit could take revenge on those who made his life a living hell.  He even uses a harmless game of hide and seek to trap the kids in his realm and kills their souls when he finds them.  So far, the teacher has already taken out the tough guy Gonda, which is unsurprising regarding his attitude toward Yayoi, and now he has his eyes set on Rep.

Overall, the episode offers a terrifyingly solid start to the series’s final mini-arc before its season finale.  It’s no S-rank area, as I was led to believe, but regarding its premise and the teacher’s tragic history, it shows promise that it could be another intense mini-arc to finish off the show’s consistent second half.  I would even say it could wind up being “top of the class” material if next week’s episode is as horrific as what I experienced.