Gather! Mystery Research Club (Atsumare! Fushigi Kenkyubu) is a manga by Masahiro Anbe, who previously created Squid Girl. It began serialization in Weekly Shonen Champion in 2016.
First year high school student Daisuke Goryou has a problem. He's noticed that as the only one in his class who hasn't signed up for an after school club, he's getting used quite a bit as a go-fer. The problem is, he doesn't have any particular talents or interests.
That changes when one day he's asked by a teacher to carry a heavy box to storage, but upon opening the door he encounters three girls inside. Learning from the girls that the actual storage shed is on the opposite side of school and that they'd been given the old storage shed as their clubroom, Daisuke decides to take them up on their offer to rest a bit.
Learning that the three girls are all interested in researching different things but forced to create the Mystery Research Club due to being unable to create individual ones, Daisuke finds himself unwittingly hypnotised into signing the club registration form and recruited into the club.
Suzu, Occult Research Representative with her collection of cursed items as well as her ever-present cursed doll Masako. Chiaki, Magic Research Representative and her monstrous strength. Kotone, Hypnotism Research Representative and her willingness to use hypnotism to help people (or help her get her way). And now Daisuke, club guinea pig. His comical, chaotic life begins!
Gather! Mystery Research Club provides examples of:
- A-Cup Angst:
- Suzu is painfully aware that she's nowhere near as well-developed as Kotone, Asahi-sensei, or Reiko who all quality for Buxom Beauty Standard.
- Chiaki is occasionally bothered by the fact that her bust size is not that far from Suzu's, and certainly no match for Kotone.
- Beautiful All Along: Nonoka walks around wearing a lab coat (to carry her various mixtures) and huge glasses that pretty much cover most of her face. When she takes off those glasses, however, she's very cute. Daisuke is genuinely stunned when she first takes off her glasses in Chapter 76 to thank him for a Rousing Speech he gave her.
- Butt-Monkey: Reiko probably gets it the worst of just about any of the girls. Among other things, she's been hypnotised multiple times, Daisuke once saw her bare bottom, she caught a cold walking home from school... The only saving grace is that outside of the three club members, she has the most Ship Tease with Daisuke.
- Character Check: Chapter 330. After the manga spent hundreds of chapters drifting away from its premise in favor of general harem hijinx, Chiaki is suddenly interested in stage magic for the first time in forever.
- Chekhov's Gunman:
- Nonoka Hiratsuka is first seen in Chapter 38 on a school newspaper describing the disbanding of the Science Club. She later appears in person in Chapter 48 and finally joins the Mystery Research Club in Chapter 76.
- Daisuke's classmate Ryouko Tanaka initially appears in Chapter 66 as part of a gag where Newspaper Club president Kaname Yoshizawa takes her place in class. She later reappears in Chapter 95 (fittingly titled "Mystery of Tanaka-san") and has become a regularly appearing member of the cast.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Both Chiaki and Suzu show shades of this. Especially Suzu, who is prone to pouting when Daisuke seems to be getting close to other girls.
- Clothing Damage: A common punchline involves someone's clothes getting shredded or even melted away.
- Companion Cube: Suzu almost never goes anywhere without Matsuko. That said, when met outside of school (e.g. when she arranges to meet with Daisuke's little sister Yui), she leaves Matsuko at home.
- Covert Pervert: Reiko Takahama is the member of the Public Morals Committee who has the most interaction with the Mystery Research Club, and she's prone to imagining perverted shenanigans happening from even the most innocent comment or item. How much of this is covert is up to debate, however. Daisuke himself has her number from the very start.
- Deceased Parents Are the Best: In chapter 353 ("The Mystery of Graveyards"), we learn why Suzu is so obsessed with ghosts. Not long after her mother died in a car accident, she began hearing rumours of a woman's ghost being spotted in the area and thought it might be her mother. However, no matter how much she visited the graveyard she saw nothing and concluded she simply doesn't have a sixth sense that would allow her to see the alleged ghost. As a result, she developed an obsession with the occult hoping it would eventually let her see for sure if the rumoured ghost was really her mother.
- Didn't Think This Through: A common problem with many of the characters. A few examples include:
- Kotone hypnotising someone only for there to be unintended side effects (e.g. when she hypnotised Daisuke and Chiaki to be more open-minded in order to make it easier for them to study, it also made them more susceptible to suggestions).
- Chiaki might use her strength to force her magic tricks to work, breaking the tools in the process.
- Nonoka might whip up a new concoction to solve some sort of problem only for it to Go Horribly Wrong or worse it's Gone Horribly Right (e.g. her floor cleaner was so effective that it granted any surface zero friction, meaning that when Daisuke took a single step he rocketed clean across the pool).
- Ryouko teases and play-flirts with Daisuke as part of her personality, but if he genuinely stares at her or expresses genuine attraction or interest in her as a result (such as the time she was showing him the proper way to brush, leading to him staring into her mouth to see), she tends to quickly clam up.
- Even Suzu occasionally falls into this, such as the time she offered to help one of her classmates with her manga by drawing a monster. Daisuke later points out that her beloved monster was getting beaten up by said manga's protagonist, causing Suzu a small amount of mental damage. In Chapter 248 ("The Mystery of Wake-Up Surprises"), she crawls into Daisuke's bed as part of an escalating series of prank, only to belated realise when Daisuke turned to face her that she'd climbed into bed with the boy she likes. In Chapter 291 ("The Mystery of Cursed Bras"), she gets her hands on a cursed bra, and the rest of the chapter is taken up by the other members trying to get it off her after she puts it on.
- The Dreaded:
- The Mystery Research Club as a whole are feared by the other students and staff. Of the individual members, Chiaki is known for her brute strength, Suzu and Masako are avoided like the plague, and Nonoka is almost always carrying some sort of crazy concoction with her. Only Kotone seems to be viewed positively as a School Idol.
- Head of the Newspaper Club Kaname Yoshizawa is feared for her ability to dig up dirt on people.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Wholesome Crossdresser and member of the Drama Club Masashi-kun. For a time Daisuke genuinely thought he was a girl (not helped by him generally coming to school wearing the female student uniform).
- In Chapter 235 ("The Mystery of Buddies"), Daisuke begrudgingly admits that despite knowing he's a guy, Masashi-kun actually does press some of his buttons due to how girl he acts. The members of the Mystery Research Club realise to their horror that Masashi-kun might be a genuine threat in Chapter 240 ("The Mystery of Male Clothing").
- Fictional Counterpart: In chapter 349, Daisuke sings "Hey Judy" by "The Beetles".
- First-Name Basis: The Mystery Research Club members are on this with each other. It's somewhat unusual in that Daisuke starts addressing his clubmates by their first names almost from the very start, compared to, say, Seitokai Yakuindomo where protagonist Takatoshi Tsuda addresses everyone by their last names even though they've all become very close.
- Chiaki and Reiko are on first-name basis, partially due to the fact they're both Second Year students.
- Suzu and Yui are on first name basis ever since their first encounter (when Suzu stayed over at Daisuke's house).
- The Gadfly: Daisuke's classmate Ryouko Tanaka is this, as she often does stuff because it amuses her. She's certainly not above using the fact she knows Daisuke finds her attractive to tease him.
- The Generic Guy: In-universe, Daisuke is seen as this compared to his fellow club members. Each of the members is known to be quirky or outright dangerous in their own right, but then you have this completely ordinary guy in the same club.
- That said, people who've actually seen what Daisuke goes through as a member of the Mystery Research Club often come away thinking he's actually Made of Iron.
- Gilligan Cut: In Chapter 291 ("The Mystery of Cursed Bras"), Suzu is admiring a cursed bra she managed to secure and reflects on its history. She determinedly states she wouldn't be so foolish as to actually put it on, which is naturally followed by her sitting with her shirt off in the Mystery Research Club room while the others (sans Daisuke) discuss how to get it off her.
- Hidden Depths: Despite generally being The Gadfly, Ryouko Tanaka generally takes her job at Cafe Marcott seriously. That doesn't mean she's above teasing Reiko when she visits the cafe, especially if Daisuke happens to be there too.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Except for the first chapter (which was titled "Welcome to the Mystery Research Club"), each chapter is titled "Mystery of (X)" (in Japanese, "(X) no fushigi").
- Innocent Innuendo: When Daisuke asks Yui to explain to their mother his relationship to Suzu (their mother thinks he and Suzu are an item... and that he's cheating on Suzu with their teacher Asahi-sensei), Yui happily replies that "Onii-chan and Suzu-chan are so close they even sleep together!" This... didn't help Daisuke's situation.
- Instant Expert: In chapter 320, Yui tries out Kenta's skateboard and within two minutes she is expertly grinding along park benches.
- In the Dreaming Stage of Grief: When Chiaki ends up on an island with no inhabitants, she eventually express her fear by suspecting that the whole thing is brought about by Kotone's hypnosis, which might break at any time and bring her back to the clubroom with everyone else.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In chapter 346, Reiko (a character in a lewd shonen manga) complains that shonen manga are nothing but lewd pictures.
- Let Us Never Speak of This Again: In chapter 342, after the fake wall behind the sealed locker is revealed to contain love letters that female students received and decided to give to Asahi-sensei out of pity, the narrator says that everybody collectively decided to forget what they saw.
- Loners Are Freaks: Suzu seems to accept this is her lot in life due to her obsession with the occult. The fact she carries Matsuko, a cursed doll, wherever she goes reinforces this. That said, she genuinely is happy when she makes a new friend like Daisuke's sister Yui or when people make an attempt to get to know her like her trio of classmates.
- Love Confession: Out of nowhere, in Chapter 357 "The Mystery of Being Serious" Suzu gives Daisuke a Valentine's Day chocolate in the shape of a heart and bluntly tells him, in all seriousness, that she likes him. This shocks Chiaki, Kotone and Nonoka enough that they also confess their feelings for him.
- Luminescent Blush:
- Reiko is prone to having one of these when she and Daisuke interact, partially because sometimes they wind up in a spicy situation (e.g. Chapter 191 "The Mystery of Net Cafes" where they were in a cubicle together, heard people getting heated in the next cubicle, and suddenly realised how close they were to each other), sometimes because she's so embarrassed (like in Chapter 273 "The Mystery of Frisbees" when she reflexively caught a frisbee Daisuke caught in her mouth like a puppy dog).
- Suzu is often able to fight these down whenever her attraction to Daisuke gets too much for her. However, sometimes the situation is just too much for her, with notable occasions including Chapter 248 "The Mystery of Wake-Up Surprises" (where she slipped into Daisuke's bed with him as part of an escalating prank war and suddenly realised she'd just gotten into bed with the boy she likes) and Chapter 291 "The Mystery of Cursed Bras" (where she concluded the only way to remove the titular cursed bra was to get the boy she liked, i.e. Daisuke, to take it off).
- Mad Bomber: This is apparently one of Nonoka's nicknames, due to her experiments' tendencies to explode.
- Made of Iron: Among the Oohara Kotone fanclub Daisuke has this reputation after a disastrous attempt to join the Mystery Research Club. They conclude he has to be some sort of man's man to endure the shenanigans of the Mystery Research Club day after day.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane:
- Matsuko in a nutshell. Things genuinely seem to happen to Suzu's benefit (and other people's detriment) when Matsuko is involved. Daisuke tries not to think about it too hard, especially after the time Suzu lost her in the snow but then found her in a place Daisuke knows he'd thoroughly searched.
- At the end of chapter 353, Suzu trips and falls against Daisuke, and it's implied the ghost of her mother might've made it happen.
- Memetic Badass: In-universe, Daisuke has this reputation with some people in school as someone who is fairly normal and yet attends the Mystery Research Club alongside known terrors like Chiaki, Kotone, Suzu and Nonoka.
- Mood Whiplash: Chapter 353 starts with the usual "Suzu wants to find a ghost" jive, but midway through she reveals the "ghost" is her mother, who died in a car crash. This is not played for laughs at all, with even the author notes for the previous volume mentioning that "something somber would be revealed".
- Morton's Fork:
- What the school had to do when Nonoka's Science Research Club was finally disbanded due to lack of members. They could leave her to her own devices (meaning she'd wander around potentially causing explosions and the like in the course of doing her experiments) or make her join the Mystery Research Club (potentially adding a chemical element to a club already infamous for girls using brute strength to perform 'magic' and carrying around cursed items). Nonoka eventually joins the Mystery Research Club, since at least then all the walking disasters are gathered and contained in one place.
- In Chapter 226 ("The Mystery of Coin Laundromats") Daisuke picks up what he thinks is a random scrap of cloth that turns out to be a pair of panties. When Reiko comes in looking for something, he realises that the panties belong to her. He thinks about handing them to her, but has an Imagine Spot of her calling the cops on him for stealing underwear. When he does hand them over, he tries to laugh off the whole thing, causing her to wonder if he's laughing at how plain her underwear is. When he tries to then explain the panties were cute and he was especially taken with how they belong to her, she turns beet red and calls him "an awful man". Daisuke wonders if there was any correct answer to the situation at all.
- Nice Guy: Daisuke is pretty patient with his clubmates, and while he complains generally goes along with whatever "research" they want to try out. In Chapter 17, when he doesn't turn up for club the girls discuss him, with them forced to admit that it'd be completely understandable for him to want to have nothing to do with them. Suzu even admits that if she'd been in Daisuke's place, she'd never have made it through the first day.
- No Sense of Personal Space: When Daisuke encounters Ryouko Tanaka (his classmate) outside of school, he immediately notices she is prone to going up close and personal with people. She puts her hands of people's shoulders and often leans over when talking to them. She also has no problems pressing herself against him to tease him, and for his part Daisuke is painfully aware Ryouko is very attractive.
- Not a Date: Daisuke has gone on a few of these by accident, normally when meeting the girls by accident outside of school.
- He spends Christmas Eve with Reiko at Cafe Marcott in one chapter, something Reiko herself lampshades.
- He's met Asahi-sensei on at least two occasions and wound up doing something with her (once was karaoke, another was eating together at a summer festival).
- Whenever Yui drags him along when she and Suzu go out, Yui sometimes tries to push them together.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: The manga has a Tanabata episode every year (six of them, as of 2023), and yet nobody has graduated.
- Oblivious to Love: Daisuke. So much so that on at least two occasions Suzu (easily the most aggressive of the girls interested in him) has actually physically attacked him over it. That said, in Chapter 229 ("The Mystery of Boats") he quickly gets flustered when Suzu deliberately sits closely to him and looks up from him from below, accentuating her girlishness.
- He at least has cottoned on to the fact he and Reiko have a bit of a mutual attraction, as in an omake she blatantly takes his hand (ostensibly to help him hold onto her dog's leash) and he makes only a token objection.
- Outright stated in Chapter 357 when Kotone, Chiaki and Suzu note that thanks to being together all the time, it was pretty obvious that they'd all developed feelings for Daisuke. Obvious to everyone except Daisuke, that is.
- Only Sane Man: Daisuke is generally the one to bring up the problems with any of the research the girls want to carry out. He more often than not goes along with it anyway.
- Production Throwback: Plenty of them, to Anbe's last serialization.
- At the festival in chapter 45, there are masks of—among other things—Squid Girl, Magical Girl Hoshiko-chan, and Noh-men Rider.
- In chapter 80, we discover Suzu has Johnny and Depp in her room. Furthermore, the narration says they're "cursed dolls from a certain shrine", hinting it takes place in the same universe as Squid Girl.
- Chiaki tries to knock down a Noh-men Rider action figure at the Tanbata festival in chapter 94.
- In chapter 151, Yui watches a Noh-men Rider film on TV.
- In chapter 332, Daisuke and Ryouko work at the Beach House "Lime", rather than Lemon.
- Pygmalion Snap Back: In chapter 242, an art club member rushes to the Mystery Research Club begging for help with club president Aya Oosumi. But when they ran there, they discover Oosumi got some decent sleep over summer break and no longer resembles a half-dead zombie. She seems warm and happy, but her kouhei hates the change because Oosumi's art is neither good nor bad—pictures of butterflies and grassy meadows are just too bland. So the kouhei decides to arouse Oosumi's lust (for nude artwork) by forcibly stripping members of the Mystery Research Club. It works like a charm and Oosumi is back to her old worn-out, disheveled self in no time.
- Reused Character Design: The teacher in the first chapter who sets the whole plot in motion is a dead ringer for Tokita-san (AKA the Southern Winds owner) from Squid Girl.
- Revisiting the Roots:
- In Chapter 289, Daisuke lampshades the fact that the series has drifted away from its original premise of him being a guinea pig for the girls' mystery research, in favor of it becoming a generic harem manga. He tries to get them to engage in their old shenanigans, but it's implied that due to character development they care about him too much to return to their old ways.
- However, starting in the mid-300s, Anbe does seem to be making a concerted effort to bring back the original premise, including a flashback to the founding of the titular club and a few chapters where Chiaki is interested in stage magic again, something that hasn't been relevant to her character in half a decade.
- Self-Deprecation: Suzu is prone to talking herself down when it comes to attractiveness, since she's painfully aware that due to her height and build she seems a lot younger than she really is. However, when shopping for swimsuits with Daisuke's little sister Yui, she's barely able to fight down a Luminescent Blush when Daisuke earnestly tells her that it doesn't matter what swimsuit she chose; she'd be cute in any of them because she's the one wearing them.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: Aya Oosumi, the art club president. Simply getting some sleep over summer break is enough to turn her from a shambling zombie wit Creepy Shadowed Undereyes who constantly coughs up blood to a happy-go-lucky girl with sparkling eyes and a sunny smile.
- Shipper on Deck:
- Yui is one for Daisuke and Suzu, partially because she gets along really well with Suzu herself. She isn't even remotely subtle about it, either. For example, in Chapter 229 ("The Mystery of Boats"), she and Suzu plan to ride a rowing boat together but are told they have to be accompanied by an adult. Yui insists Daisuke take Suzu rowing.
- Kenta, one of Chiaki's younger brothers, is one for her and Daisuke. Partially because he thinks that Chiaki is such a tomboy she might never find someone to marry her, and partially because he has a crush on Daisuke's younger sister Yui and figures if Daisuke and Chiaki get together he'll get to see her more often.
- Ryouko likes pushing Reiko and Daisuke together, partially because she gets loads of entertainment out of Reiko's insistence she has no romantic feelings towards him.
- Shout-Out: In chapter 193, when Hayasaka-san decides to quit the track team due to an embarrassing sunburn that left half her face white and the other half tan, Suzu's solution is to draw little surgical scars on the border.
- Something Else Also Rises: Some chapters end with Daisuke deliberately obscuring his lower body to hide an erection.
- In Chapter 83 ("The Mystery of Musical Chairs"), Daisuke loses when Suzu opts to just sit on his lap when the music stops playing. He notices the back of her neck as well as how soft she feels and hurriedly scrambles away.
- The Stoic: Suzu generally has a deadpan expression on her face and has more understated reactions to things compared to Chiaki and Kotone. She isn't emotionless, though, as she can be just as panicked or surprised as the others. Bringing up the occult is a certain way to get a reaction out of her, and she genuinely likes being with Yui.
- Stupid Sexy Friend:
- Reiko insists that she has no romantic feelings for Daisuke, which is completely undercut by the fact that the two have sometimes found themselves in situations where it's blatantly obvious that they have some sort of attraction to each other.
- When he befriends Masashi-kun, Daisuke realises that Masashi-kun can trigger this reaction in him despite him being well aware Masashi-kun is a guy.
- Sustained Misunderstanding: Daisuke and Yui's mother was under the impression Daisuke and Suzu were dating. It's not hard to fault her, considering Suzu once slept over at their house.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Due to a misunderstanding, Daisuke's mother fears Daisuke and Asahi-sensei are engaging in this. She's outraged at the thought of a teacher dating her own student, but not as much as she is with the idea Daisuke is cheating on Suzu to do it.
- It doesn't help that Asahi-sensei herself doesn't seem completely against it, though at least she usually shakes herself out of entertaining such thoughts. In Chapter 239 ("The Mystery of Solo Summer Festivals"), for example, she blushes when thinking back on how much fun she had after running into Daisuke at a summer festival before remembering that he's her student.
- The Unfettered: What happens when Reiko is temporarily stripped of her position as a member of the Public Morals Committee. As it turns out, she's the only one who has any sort of ability to keep Mystery Research Club members like Chiaki under control and the head of the Public Morals Committee quickly reinstates her.
- Unlucky Everydude: Daisuke. While he gets caught up in the Mystery Club members' various shenanigans, he also has plenty of Ship Tease with most of the girls he's close to. Daisuke himself doesn't seem to consider himself unlucky and after the first few chapters just seems to take everything as it comes.
- Unwanted Harem: A lot of people think there's something going on between Daisuke and one of his clubmates (because you can't just have a boy with a group of attractive girls, including the School Idol, and have nothing happen). In truth, Daisuke's wound up attracting quite a few girls, including his clubmates to varying degrees.
- To whit, Chiaki's attraction is obvious to several people (except notably Daisuke himself), Kotone finds his presence to be reassuring, Reiko finds him attractive in spite of herself, his classmate Ryouko has a lot of fun teasing him and sometimes hints she means it more than just for fun, and Suzu is arguably the most aggressive of the girls.
- In addition, the head of the newspaper club mentions she finds him kind of cute, Nonoka finds his scent to be relaxing and reassuring, and Asahi-sensei wasn't completely against the idea of marrying him during a misunderstanding with Daisuke's mother.
- Lampshaded in Chapter 178 ("The Mystery of Maid Cafes"). Ryouko recruited Suzu, Chiaki and Kotone to turn Marcott's (the cafe frequented by Daisuke, and where Ryouko works part-time) into a maid cafe to try to draw in a younger crowd. The girls give Daisuke stereotypical maid service (e.g. serving him a omurice and then drawing a heart on it) but then the manager asks if the girls would be willing to give that sort of service to someone other than Daisuke. Ryouko is forced to concede the point.
- It should also be pointed out that Daisuke himself actually does find all the girls attractive in their own right.
- Will-o'-the-Wisp: In chapter 336, Daisuke and Nonoka meet in the dead of night at a convenience store and decide to set off fireworks. This leads to Nonoka instructing Daisuke about how different chemicals are burned to change the colors of fireworks. When they go to leave, they encounter swirling "fireworks" glowing in colors neither of them has ever seen before. Nonoka heads towards them, intent on doing experiments, but Daisuke is savvy enough to grab her hand and run away with her.
