English Dub Review: Dark Gathering “Betrothed to Divinity”

Overview (Spoilers Below):

The girl’s eyes shine with stars, but two spectral presences haunt her future.

Our Take:

Keitaro has got himself a new student to tutor, but she’s unsurprisingly far from ordinary. Let’s face it: we all knew this was coming based on his previous experiences with the supernatural and Yayoi. We’re about eight episodes into Dark Gathering, and we’ve already been introduced to a new character joining the ghost-catching lineup. That character, in particular, is Ai Kamiyo, a zestful, yellow-haired girl with star-patterned pupils as peculiar as Yayoi’s skull-like eyeballs. However, unlike Yayoi, Ai’s unusual pupils aren’t because she had developed polycoria.

Ai’s star pupils are due to her being betrothed to a powerful god that lures wandering ghosts to her area with its energy. Additionally, Ai is destined to die on her 20th birthday and become the god’s bride, which is four years from now. So you can say that this is one arranged marriage that must be revoked. Based on the god’s benevolent appearance, it’s evident that it isn’t Ai’s type. However, that’s not the only thing affecting this unfortunate girl’s life. Ai is followed by the spirit of her older brother, who died saving her from the falling steel pylons. This is before revealing that she’s actually haunted by two ghosts: her brother and her future “husband,” with the former attempting to kill her to save her from her inevitable fate.

Ai is another character whose energetic and whiny personality will heavily depend on whether the viewer enjoys these types of people. From the start, I was worried that Ai would immediately become the biggest nuisance in Dark Gathering. She’s obsessed with sugar and complains over every little misfortune like a child crying over spilled milk. However, as the episode progresses, she gradually becomes more tolerable due to the show balancing the humor with its dark tone. Of course, this is only the beginning of Ai’s arc, as she and the others are now dealing with unwelcome visitors in her apartment, so we’ll see how she turns out in later episodes.