Keitarou Gentouga is a college student who hates ghosts. Unfortunately, spirits have always been unnaturally attracted to him, so much so that he was previously a shut-in after causing his childhood friend, Eiko Houzuki, and himself to get cursed by a spirit.
However, Eiko helped him get back out into the world, and as part of his rehabilitation, he started tutoring Eiko’s young cousin, Yayoi.
It isn’t long before Keitarou finds that Yayoi actively seeks out dangerous spirits, using him and various other tools to capture them for a mysterious purpose that all stems back to the spirit that took Yayoi’s mother after her death.
In the large pile of supernatural anime about spirits and curses, I can appreciate that Dark Gathering is one of only a few that actually allows horror to thrive in those stories. Spirits are scary. The character should be scared of them or at least a little psychopathic about it, like Eiko. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like Dark Gathering, head on down below.
Anime Like Dark Gathering
For Fans of Attracting Spirits
Mieruko-chan
Miko is a normal high school girl who has found her life turned upside down by the sudden ability to see spirits.
Despite being terrified by what she sees, she does her best to not acknowledge the spirits so they leave her alone.
Both Dark Gathering and Mieruko-chan are fully dedicated to main characters that are afraid of spirits, so of course they are constantly surrounded by them. Furthermore, while somewhat comical, they also fully accent the horror of spirits and ghosts instead of turning them into a joke as supernatural anime often does.
However, while Dark Gathering is more about capturing the spirits, Mieruko-chan is about the main character trying her best to ignore them.
Re-Kan
Hibiki Amami is a regular high school girl, except that she can see spirits. However, instead of being afraid, she often befriends these ghosts, helping them with their problems. In return, the ghosts often end up helping her do various tasks.
While her friends accept that she has this power, Narumi Inoue, a girl terrified of ghosts, refuses to acknowledge it. However, even she, like Amami’s other friends, agree to help the ghosts with their issues too.
Both series has a character that can see / is attractive to spirits, and a character that is wildly afraid of them. That just happens to be the same character in Dark Gathering while it is two separate friends in Re-Kan.
While both series are about helping or capturing spirits, the big difference is more in the tone. Dark Gathering highlights the dangers and terror of the curses and hauntings while Re-Kan presents spirits as a little less scary and more as beings that should be helped.
In short, Dark Gathering aims more towards quirky, but still horror while Re-Kan is more about being cute.
Mokke
Shizuru is a high school student who can see ghosts. Mizuki, her younger sister, is often haunted by apparitions. The two sisters are frustrated by their abilities, so their parents send them to live with their grandparents in the countryside.
Moving away from fast city life, the sisters learn the importance of co-existence in their new slow country life.
Mokke is about two sisters. One who can see spirits and one who attracts them. Like Yayoi in Dark Gathering helps Keitarou by capturing the spirits that are attracted to him, the older sister aids her plagued younger sister.
However, Dark Gathering is based more in sinister curses and urban legends. Mokke is often more melancholy and folkloric with the supernatural.
Natsume’s Book of Friends
For as long as he can remember, Takashi Natsume has been chased by spirits, but recently he discovered that the reason was because his deceased grandmother had passed on to him her “Book of Friends,” a book containing all the spirits she had brought under her control.
Now Natsume realizes that these spirits haunt him in hopes of gaining freedom. With few friends, no loving home, and constantly hunted by malicious spirits, Natsume looks for a place where he belongs.
Both Dark Gathering and Natsume’s Book of Friends are supernatural anime that follow main characters that have sort of been cut off from social relationships due to being able to see spirits and unnaturally attracting them.
However, Natsume is indifferent if not friendly to many of the spirits around him, helping them with their issues and often having more positive relationships with them. Essentially, while Dark Gathering is a paranormal problem solver with a but more emphasis on horror, Natsume’s Book of Friends is more a supernatural slice of life.
For Fans of Supernatural Problem Solvers
Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation
In a world where spirits posses people against their will, Muhyo and Roji are dedicated to getting you justice and getting those spirits out of your body using spiritual law.
There are actually quite a few anime series that are about various characters investigating and dealing with spiritual / supernatural problems. However, both Dark Gathering and Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation attempt to put a unique twist on how it is done.
In Dark Gathering, they are capturing spirits for their worm toxin-based spirit murder, but Muhyo & Roji’s Bureau of Supernatural Investigation twists things up by solving spiritual matters using spiritual law.
Outside of that, both series also feature adults, or at least taller people, being bossed around by a strong-willed small character / child.
Dr. Ramune – Mysterious Diseases Specialist
If something takes root deep enough in someone’s heart, it can attract spirits that will cause mysterious diseases that modern medicine cannot cure.
For those that have these unique ailments, like crying condiments from your eyes, there is Dr. Ramune who helps his patients explore the root cause of the issue in order to rid them of the disease.
Although Dr. Ramune is about very strange, often food-related diseases, the diseases are caused by spirits.
Both Dr. Ramune and Dark Gathering follow individuals that travel around and deal with these issues. However, people contact Dr. Ramune for help while Yayoi often just kind of goes to places that are supposedly haunted and hopes its true.
What these series have in common is that they are both supernatural, but also a bit quirky so they don’t feel like many other supernatural anime series. They are fun, but not without moments of creepiness as well.
In/Spectre
At a young age, Kotoko Iwanaga was abducted by yokai and asked to become their Goddess of Wisdom to act as a mediator between spiritual and human issues. She agreed and lost her right eye and left leg in the agreement.
Meanwhile, Kotoko meets Kuro Sakuragawa, a man who just broke up with his girlfriend after a kappa fled before him.
Kotoko makes her move to not only lock him down as a boyfriend, but to have him help her settle various disputes with spirits.
Both Dark Gathering and In/Spectre follow characters that spirits are attracted to and also characters that spirits are pretty afraid of. They then have those two work together to solve spiritual matters.
However, while Yayoi is using Keitarou as bait in Dark Gathering, Kotoko is using Kuro as a bodyguard in In/Spectre. Furthermore, In/Spectre is more about spiritual mediation than capturing spirits.
The big difference between these two is that In/Spectre often focuses on longer arcs. Those arcs are also sometimes a bit low on actual action, but very big on long-winded dialogue. Essentially, a decent chunk of the time in In/Spectre is just the spirit mediator talking things out and unraveling the mystery in words.
Demon Detective Nougami Neuro
Neuro Nougami is a demon that feeds on mysteries and puzzles.
However, as a demon who must remain unnoticed by humans, he pairs up with a human girl in order to solve mysteries. A job she hopes will help her solve her own personal mystery.
Although unlike Dark Gathering that is about stealing spirits to feed them to your collection of other spirits, Demon Detective Nougami Neuro is equally as creative in that it is about solving mysteries with a demon that eats mysteries.
Both series are supernatural mystery solvers, but also put an interesting and creative new twist on things. However, perhaps what they most have in common is they are silly, but also very menacing.
Neuro may be a bit fabulous in his personality, but he is also pretty sinister. Similarly, Yayoi is a child, but with a dark goal and way of reaching it.
Ghost Hunt
High school freshman Mai Taniyama likes to spend her free time telling ghost stories with friends. One day, she hears a ghost story about the cursed old school building. Overcome by curiosity, she decides to check it out.
After peeking in the window, she spots a camera. After a twist of fate, she ends up breaking the camera and injuring an unknown man. It turns out that both belonged to the young Kazuya Shibuya, a paranormal investigator and high school senior.
In order to pay him back, he forced her to become his assistant for his paranormal investigation company.
Dark Gathering takes inspiration for a lot of urban legends and various ghost stories, making the hauntings and curses real in the show while still being a fantasy supernatural series. Ghost Hunt also makes spirits real in the show, but goes about solving the hauntings in a more realistic way.
Ghost Hunt uses techniques from real life paranormal investigation to handle hauntings and hunt ghosts while Dark Gathering is much more of a fantasy. However, both series are about removing ghosts and curses.
Although not a focus like in Dark Gathering, Ghost Hunt also touches on the Kodoku / worm toxin thing where you force a bunch of spirits together and get a super powerful result.
For Fans of Childish Art Style, Horror Stories
Gegege no Kintaro
In the 21st century, people no longer believe in yokai. However, unexplained issues plague people still. To get answers, Mana writes the Yokai Post when a boy named Kintaro appears before her.
Both Dark Gathering and Gegege no Kintaro follow children who deal with supernatural problems and interact with spirits. While the children characters are cutely designed, the series never lets you forget that spirits are innately scary. As such, both have that amalgamation of cute innocence and horror.
While Dark Gathering is more about capturing spirits and Gegege no Kintaro is more diverse with how it handles issues, both series do highlight a lot of urban legends and ghost stories from Japan in an interesting, occasionally scary way.
Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun
Hanako is said to be a ghost that occupies the third stall of the third floor girls’ bathroom in the old building. When summoned, she is said to grant any wish.
Nene, an occult lover with dreams of romance, summons Hanako, only to find out that this traditionally girl ghost is a boy!
While Dark Gathering is often about traveling all over to capture spirits involved various hauntings and curses, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun is restricted to one supernatural-stuffed school.
While both series are about dealing with rather sinister supernatural matters, both series also do so with a surprisingly cute art style that accents the youth of the characters – even if one is about college kids.
In its way, the cute art style actually elevates the creepiness of some situations in both shows.
Kemono Jihen
A boy nicknamed Dorotabo lives with his aunt in a rural Japanese inn after being abandoned by his parents. One day, a detective that specializes in the occult named Kohachi Inugami arrives from Tokyo.
He is there to investigate mysterious livestock deaths and takes an interest in Dorotabo. The boy ends up helping Inugami and discovers that he is only half human.
Possessing skill at dispatching beast-like entities known as Kemono, Inugami takes him back to work at his agency in Tokyo.
While both Dark Gathering and Kemono Jihen are supernatural series about dealing with either spirits and curses or demons, they do have a key difference. Kemono Jihen is more about fighting demons in a shounen action anime sort of way.
Both series employ a more youthful art style, but also are surprisingly dark and creepy. Kemono Jihen may be a shounen battler, but it also has some dark and violent stories to tell. This is especially surprising since the characters are also rather young in Kemono Jihen.
Do you have more anime recommendations like Dark Gathering? Let fans know in the comments section below.
