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The Bottom Line

Two high-school kids are killed in a train accident—and then resurrected, only to be drafted into a bizarre game. Outfitted with special suits and guns, they’re sent out to hunt aliens allegedly hiding in Tokyo—only to discover this game is far larger, more complicated, and deadlier than they ever realized.

Remorselessly grim and violent, Gantz isn’t just a mindless shoot-‘em-up—there’s deeper themes of responsibility and morality running throughout the show—but that doesn’t make it any harder to sit through.

Those disturbed by brutality or bloodshed shouldn’t even think of watching.



Pros

• The premise draws you in and inspires a great many suspenseful situations.
• Cliffhanger structure keeps you watching throughout.
• Thought-provoking storyline.

Cons

• A mean-spirited story about truly unpleasant people.
• Much graphic violence and sexuality.

Description

• Director: Ichiro Itano
• Animation Studios: GONZO
• Released By: Fuji TV
• Released Domestically By: FUNimation Entertainment
• List Price: $49.98
• Age Rating: TV-MA (brutal violence, sexuality, language, thematic material)
• Audio: English / Japanese w/English subtitles
• Anime Genres:
  • Action/Adventure
  • Drama
  • Science Fiction
  • Horror
  • Seinen
• Related Titles:
  • Red Garden

Guide Review - Gantz: The Complete TV Series

The premise behind Gantz, adapted from the manga, is undeniably brilliant. Two unexceptional teenagers, Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato, are hit by a train while trying to rescue a derelict from having fallen on the tracks. (So much for trying to do the right thing.) The next thing they know, they’re in an empty apartment with a slew of other people who have all also died … and a large, black sphere known only as “Gantz”, which tells them: Your lives are now over. What you do with your new lives is for me to decide.

The sphere provides them with a bizarre array of weapons, bodysuits that enhance their strength and protect them from most damage, and a mission: hunt down and kill an “alien” somewhere in Tokyo.

Nobody believes it at first—certainly not Kei and Masaru, although they find out they’re fast learners. The game is very real and very deadly, and there is no guarantee anyone will get out of it alive: anyone who tries to skip out on the game is summarily executed. What’s even more unsettling is how outside the confines of the game, their own lives continue as if nothing had happened—but every couple of nights they’re teleported somewhere and forced to kill and kill again. Despite all this, Kei attempts to have relationships with a number of the other female players—the key word being “attempt”, since at first he’s too immature and impulsive to make it work.

The missions grow more complex and brutal. The real world becomes increasingly distant; the few alliances they make within the game are just as quickly destroyed. Masaru handles things a little better than Kei, assuming the role of leader and trying to inspire the others. Then Kei is abruptly thrust into the role of leader, and forced to command a hunt where he himself is set up as the target.

Gantz has almost as much against it as it has going for it. Aside from being loaded with brutal violence and seamy sexuality, it’s populated with a great many characters that run the gamut from being merely unlikable to downright vile. Worse, they’re used to populate a story that is relentlessly mean-spirited. No good deed goes unpunished, and the few good things that happen play like deliberate mockeries of all else that goes on.

A good deal of this nastiness is, amazingly, by design. It’s a way to explore what use is morality in situations where it pays better to be immoral, from the opening dilemma with the train to the brutal finale involving an unrepentant young killer. It is thought-provoking, and there’s no way to deny how effectively the show hurls itself from action scene to action scene, from cliffhanger to cliffhanger, with propulsive force. It’s easier to get caught up in it than you think. But for many people the overall mean-spiritedness of Gantz will leave a foul taste, even if it’s part of the show’s intention to depict a corrupt and insane world.



Disclosure: A review copy was provided by the publisher. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.