English Dub Review: Dark Gathering “Across Japan”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Keitaro and Yayoi manage to capture the spirit cursing Ai, sacrificing most of Yayoi’s collected spirits as a result. With that, Ai departs to go to her brother’s memorial. Keitaro, Yayoi, and Eiko conference and plan to travel across Japan searching for evil spirits…but Keitaro still wants them to study. Yayoi also invites him out to a spot to thank him for all his help, but it’s also a ghost sighting, so they gotta get to work.

OUR TAKE

…huh, I really expected the arc around Ai to last at least a couple more episodes. Or at least until the end of THIS episode! She’s featured in both the OP and the ED, so it stands to reason she’s gotta be at least a BIT of an important character, and she’s the only other character listed on the Wikipedia article besides the main three, but…yeah, I guess not. The fact that she was uniquely cursed like Yayoi and was given the prestigious honor and title of being Keitaro’s second student also seemed to add a bit of significance, like even if this matter with her brother and the ghost cursing her was resolved, she would stick around as the new rookie of the would be Ghostbusters. Maybe she’ll become more prominent later on in the remaining fifteen episodes? We’re not even halfway through the show so there’s definitely room to do more with her if possible. Sorry to harp on this, it just seems…really weird. Like seriously, you don’t give an anime character blonde hair and star pupils if they’re not gonna be a main character! It’s just not done! There’ll be cats and dogs living together! Mass hysteria!

As for the second half of the episode, it’s clearly a bit of a cool down and reassessing after a few eventful moments. Having been through a handful of adventures as a group by this point, it’s a good time for the three of them to think about what they’ll be doing with all this paranormal investigation stuff going forward. Keitaro has already made the choice to stick it out and find a way to release both himself and Eiko from their respective curses, Yayoi seems to just like looking for ghosts (as well as having a growing appreciation for Keitaro), and Eiko…she’s a concern. She’s of course not every prominent in this episode and continues to play the cute ditz character, but we’ve already seen hints that she has a bit of a darker nature to her, being secretly more into the ghosts and curses than Yayoi, and not in a healthy way. She and Keitaro are officially dating now, but while their blossoming love is usually sweet, we’re very likely going to see that darker side come out. So, it’s really a question of who’s going to end up doing lasting damage to Keitaro first, the ghosts…or Eiko? Or maybe I’m really overblowing it and the next big bad will be another ghost that Yayoi can add to her collection, who knows!