ChouunShiryuu said:So i finally read this and here's my two cents on the topic:
Undead has gotten even more cringe with doctor moriarty assembling his team of anti-avengers, with frankenstein and what not. There's also miss aya about to teach sherlock holmes a lesson or two along with her edgelord. I guess it gets a point or two for trying to at least be engaging during the detective segment unlike kyokou suiri s2 and yuki onna stuff which doesn't make the detective parts fun with character interaction (sarcasm, jibes, banter etc), which was pure intellectual masturbation (though better written detective work, credit where it is due). It's as you said about detective fiction in general, but moreso in this title where you can feel it's trying to be oversmart even in the conversations between aya and edgelord on one side and the hapless fellow to be intimidated with their intellect on the other.
The character interaction may get some points, but ultimately neither of the two main charas are interesting enough or unique enough to have a good character dynamics, it's hipster and generic ojou-sama, you can't have an araragi and hachikuji kind of thing with them, you can't have the softer interactions, the masochistic comedy etc with hipster MC, it was doomed to fail from ep 1. Also noticed how blatantly they did the setups where the other characters came to know of aya's and tsugaru's identity or which ancient vampire they killed? I thought at one point the charas did it being self aware of what they're doing since aya once commented "I like the reactions when people find out im just a head", but since that it has proven to be writing flaws of the author trying to write a power/competence fantasy to the charas.
Dark gathering, on the other hand, has been a bit misunderstood by certain segments on here. It does not live up to the conventions people expected from it, but it's good and well written for what it actually is, the comedy is mildly amusing and creepy like that one scene where the MC calls the phone booth, then sees the human figure made of blood look at him and smile from inside the phone booth, which was slightly creepy and quite funny, which the anime was aiming it (it wasn't aiming to be scary scene so if you had false expectations of what it's trying to do based on certain conventions in your mind, you'd not see how the scene was great for what it tried to do). The character interactions are fun and it has its own sense of humor, like the show would be insufferable if the MC acted like less of a pushover and more of a whiny prick. The character dynamic might work better between the maid and Mc in undead murder farce than between aya and MC, so it was destined to fail regardless of the detective turn and i predicted it first epsiode.
Again i agree with you on the character designs being a bit weak and the damned shoe detracting from yayoi's appeal as a character haha. And lastly, the fucked up personalities of the girls is going to be a selling point for dark gathering, predicting this now, since they'll be interesting characters cause of it.