Gantz /20

Gantz #20

by Hiroya Oku

Acción, violencia, sangre, marcianos y chicas semidesnudas.

Genres: Manga, Comics, Seinen, Science Fiction, Horror, Action, Graphic Novels

208 pages, Paperback

First published December 19, 2006

About the author

Hiroya Oku (奥浩哉 Oku Hiroya, born September 16, 1967 in Fukuoka, Fukuoka) is a mangaka who is the creator of Gantz, Zero-One and HEN, all of which have been serialized in Young Jump. He has finished working on his most renowned manga, Gantz, which began in July 2000. His manga often contain explicit violence and gore, as well as sexual situations.

He won the second prize of the Youth Manga Awards in 1988, under the penname Yahiro Kuon.

He designed a character for Namco Bandai's Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 fighting game, Soulcalibur IV named Shura.

Reviews

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

The writer just killed his protagonist and his main villain after making him sacrifice his life, which makes you wonder if he is a villain after all?!
Killing off izumi and kei kurono and akira kurono like that...
I like this guy already!
I am sure he will bring kei kurono and izumi back!
The sad thing about Japanese manga writers is they do not keep writing the same genre for life they write many different things.
So if you like gantz there is probably nothing else for the same writer for you to read that is as epic as gantz :(
If you like hunter x hunter or one piece which is really sad you keep remembering the writer and how great he did in his main manga but you can not go read another thing by him because he is probably doing some silly romance or some silly comedy manga that you would better stay away from if you don't want to ruin how much you like the writer.
(speaking in 2023 i am hearing great things about Hiroya's latest two series)

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a high rush chapter.

At first a mysteriously new guy comes into the fold and explains to Kei that he was part of a Gantz group. Simple enough right? However, the vampire gang we've been learning more and more about comes into play and starts slaughtering the Gantz team. First going after the strongest members around. Kei is eventually a target and even without the Suit he fights them off. Will he survive? Is this the end? Well...

Good: The fights in this volume in particular were excellent. High speed, badass, bloody, and fucked up. Some shocking deaths here too. Also the ending leaves up a new status quo that I'm really excited to see where it's going to go.

Bad: The vampire gang seems like faceless drones most of the time.

Overall this is a lot of fun. I think I'm enjoying these chapters even more than the start chapters. A 4 out of 5.

[Anna Quilter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The end of the First phase/arc of Gantz and with it some significant "deaths".
no one is safe!

[DIYDylan · Rating 2 out of 5]

3/10. [This is a review and rating of the Japanese language digital versions of volumes 1 through 20, NOT just volume 20]

I started reading Gantz because of an acquaintance showing some of its weird art, and Super Eyepatch Wolf his video.
Gantz, a unique ake on the death game concept, is also a unique combination of terrible. ''Terrible'' in terms of the dark things that happen, which I was warned of and doesn't necessarily make something bad so I figured I could keep reading. But what it poorly conveyed is just how terrible it is in the morality of its problematic way of handling this subject matter, and how terrible its writing is. If you are a survivor of sexual or violent trauma, I highly advise you to read it with caution. I'm not, but I stopped reading at my first attempt because the way it treats women in general is just really fucking off putting, but hey..It's a manga/anime, and we know how they tend to be with that, but still. Get ready for misogyny, violent massacres everywhere, suicide, blatant homophobia, racial insensitivity (there's a blackface mass shooting for christ sake), PTSD, sexual harassment fanservice, sexualizing of minors, shock value rape and domestic abuse. Often NOT handled with respect.

Reading Gantz feels like its mangaka primarily set out to have an excuse to randomly:
1: Draw things he gets off to, like titties.
2: Draw things he finds edgy, badass or gruesome that probably remind him of his favorite movies.
3: Draw weird often big groups of giant aliens that look cool.
4: Shock or titelate the audience.
5: Do some unexpected shit with its rules and gimmicks while keeping things mysterious not because it fits the story but so people will keep reading and he can have climactic moments without them even being warranted.
6: Give some wish fulfillment for dudes.

Don't believe me? Well, almost every weekly chapter cover (that's hundreds of pictures), has a pinup girl on the front that's super sexualized and either naked or half naked. A lot of the time they have absolutely nothing to do with the story. I think that should be enough evidence for where this stories priorities lie. It's for edgy teen dudes who want to see some shocking shit, cool action and titties, but need some extra developments, moments and mystery to keep them reading.

A lot of Gantz reads like some fucked up fantasy of some dude with little rhyme or reason or logic. Sometimes people barely behave like human beings. There's this one part where the protag just asks a random chick that seemed interested out of nowhere (because everyone keeps falling for his dick for no reason) and he just asks her to have sex and..Then they do. It has nothing to do with the rest of the story. It wasn't earned. It just happens so that it happens. That's what half of this manga feels like. Female characters either exist for male characters and their personality is entirely about them, or for rape shock value.

This is ESPECIALLY evident in the early arcs with the first team (the first three battles or so). The first only female character is an absolute joke. It almost offends me, she PURELY exists for fanservice , to praise katou and to potentially get raped/sexually harassed (or..Licked up down there by a DOG?!), while they make light of her damn suicide. Let's also keep in mind this is a 15 year old with giant boobs who's naked all the time for no real reason, in a manga aimed at young adult dudes. Let that sink in. Thanks Japan.

The issue is that while gantz is bad..Somehow it's also kinda good? I mean, it somehow kept me reading for quite a while, and I'm still kind of intrigued even if I started to lose interest by volume 15. I feel like after the third battle things really started picking up and getting more interesting, and the mangas initial issues became less exaggerated.
But like, I don't know how to explain it.

At first I kept reading it in a ''so bad it's good'' way, but there's some things it's doing right. Hell, there's even a few heartwarming and thrilling moments that I genuinely liked, such as (I'll be vague to not spoil anything) katou and his brother, the thing with the big guy and the kid, the interactions kurono has with the older guy, that point kurono was alone, the sort of ''win'' moment for kurono around this point, the relationship with tae (probably my favorite part, oddly enough), some scenes between katou and kurono, the grandma and her child, kurono's development from interestingly assholy character to something else, the silly panda, just the whole concept itself and of the different battles, but the thing is, that's not really what most of the manga is. Let's be fucking real here, most of this manga is basically: Smut fantasizing. Not in the ''it's only erotic'' sense, I mean asin, it's not high art. It's mostly shock value and wish fulfillment. But It's like a disaster I couldn't turn my eyes away from.

It's not just the edginess that's the issue.
The pacing is all over the place, you kind of become decensitized to it all, the plot is all over the place and seems to switch rules as the author sees fit to keep the suspense and mystery up, the action scenes make no sense sometimes with a lot of people kind of standing around for no reason, most of its characters are ass (ESPECIALLY the female ones), the dialogue and character interactions can be rather awkward and unnatural, it's just..aaargh.

On one hand I fucking hate this manga and felt like Super Eyepatch Wolf did some inaccurate advertising, and on the other hand, something about it is kind of interesting. There are some very well executed moments, and I genuinely think Kurono has quite a unique character arc and relationship that I eventually felt invested in, but is it really worth it? I don't know how it ends, but I heard people who LIKE the manga talk about how its ending is shit, so there's that. We'll see, maybe I'll pick up the rest some time, but for now it feels like it's dragging on. I'm writing this review now because I'm losing interest, and volume 20 marks the end of the first of three ''phases''.

[Ryan Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

The head explosions are high quality in volume 20. It basically turns into a vampire hunter manga.

[Mustakim · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5/5

[Vendea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Díl naprosto o ničem, na druhou stranu tam ale nebyly nechuťárny, takže můžu zvednout i hodnocení! Kurona pořád ale nesnášim, takže to o moc nebude.

2.5/5*

[Jesus Flores · Rating 4 out of 5]

Los trajeados van tras Izumi (tremenda masacre) y Kurono(que ya no es Gantz, pero con cierto tip)

Y todo se interrumpe por que se activa la esfera, y al parecer Kurono

3.7 stars

[bri · Rating 5 out of 5]

we're so back ong (main character literally died)

[Gustavo · Rating 5 out of 5]

En este tomo se desarrollo un poco más el mundo de los vampiros, sus debilidades, y se muestra como dan caza a dos de los integrantes más importantes del equipo Gantz: Izumi y Kurono. Izumi muestra un poco de humanidad y Kurono demuestra que, a pesar de no tener memoria de su estadía en el equipo, su espíritu de supervivencia sigue intacto. El final es increíble, dan ganas de agarrar el tomo 21 inmediatamente.

[Monse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Se me pasó de largo marcar como leído este tomo. Me dió pena el final, no lloré (sería muy dramático) pero me dejo algo triste.

[Michael Sorbello · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of the entire series.

Synopsis: Gantz tells the story of a teenager named Kei Kurono, among others, who die but find themselves brought back in perfectly healthy bodies and forced to participate in a "game" where they must hunt down and kill aliens.

Review: I almost gave up on Gantz several times, but now that I've read it all the way to the end, I'm glad I stuck with it. The beginning is dragged down by repulsive and unlikable characters, a messily paced story, unnecessary sexualization and gratuitous violence without much substance. As it progresses, however, the character development becomes pretty incredible and the growing threat of the enemies feels truly well done. Once the real enemies are revealed, it's mind-blowing how the series had been secretly foreshadowing their arrival from the very beginning.

Although it takes a while, some really good characters are introduced later on in the series and they're the ones that made me want to read to the end. Some characters that were absolutely unbearable in the beginning became polar opposites of their original selves and even made me sympathize with them quite a bit. The protagonist Kei for example, I hated him with all my heart for the first third of the series, he became progressively more likable in the second third of the story and then he evolved into one of the most memorable, unlikely heroes I've ever seen in this storytelling medium throughout the final third. The last third of the series is unbelievably terrifying with some of the most gruesome and disgusting battle/survival scenes in the history of fiction. It's much more bearable and intense in the final third because this time the violence and horror is happening to people we actually care about instead of a bunch of unlikable nobodies.

The final third of the story is what made me feel so glad that I didn't give up on this series. It had me on the edge of my seat more times than I can recall. There are a ton of chapters but they're very short and full of action which makes the series a quick read despite having almost 400 chapters. So even though the first third of the story was kinda bad in my opinion, it doesn't last for long and the payoff that comes after it's over truly impressed me. It's a flawed, thrilling and horrifying action series that takes a while to kick off. When it finally kicks off, however, it kicks off extremely hard.

[Hafeez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volume 20: Chapter 227-237
Phase 1: Missions
Arc 8: Oni Alien Mission
Arc 9: Nurarihyon Alien Mission

Kurono was approached by a detective that investigates about Gantz. It is revealed that Gantz is not only in Japan; it is around the world. An underground organization that opposed Gantz which consists of the vampires will wage a war with the Gantz. They attack Izumi and Nishi at the Mizou Station. They survived the first wave. Here comes the second wave. Izumi and Nishi have already parting ways. Now, Izumi faced off the vampires alone. The high rank members of the vampires also come to kill Izumi. After a fierce fight, Izumi sacrificed himself to save his girlfriend, Ryouko.

The next target is Kurono. Even though Kurono now is just a normal human with his memories being erased, he can fight the vampires by using the sunlamps. His prowess is survival instinct. Kurono faced off the leader of the vampires, Hikawa and his subordinate, Chiaki. Kurono is being killed by Hikawa. The other Gantz team members arrived to Kurono's place and find Kurono is already dead. At the same time, they being transferred to the room. Hikawa and Chiaki hijacked the transfer process and getting transferred too to the room.

The end of Phase 1.

So many things happen in this volume. The main character is dead. The biggest MFs in this story is the detective. The vampires enter the Gantz's room.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lowest point of the series for me. Things got bloody again, but with the vampires instead. No mission at all. The appearance of a investigator digging into Gantz and finding a now-freed Kurono piqued my interest a bit, until that ultimately went nowhere and he turns into the tool with which Izumi and Gantz got identified. What a lousy way to end some lives. Izumi died first. And apparently, right at the end, he chose to sacrifice himself to save his personality-less girlfriend. Seriously, the girls of the protagonist and antagonist exist solely to kill off the main characters. A truly unsatisfactory end to his horrible deeds. Same with Kurono. He dies... because he couldn't handle a vampire assassins, yet had no problems dealing with humongous dinosaurs. I can only imagine that he died because the plot needed someone to revive him for later? Oh, and that brother Kurono suddenly had? Yea, this volume basically showed the whole point of why that brother needed to exist - to tip him off. That's it.

[Mykhailo Gasyuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Продовження прощання, або вампіри повертаються.

Кей забуває про все та живе звичайним життям, але натяки про минуле не дають спокою. А тут ще журналіст прийшов, який склав два та два, подивився відеозаписи після бійні з демонами (гентзерів вже видно, правила гри змінилися), почитав старий блог Ніші та зробив висновки. Та Кею нема чого розповісти, спогади старті, він може лише шоковано вивчати своє зображення серед бійців “чорних спецпризначенців”.

А ще так сталося, що журналіст напав на слід підпільного клубу вампірів. Важко було не напасти, вони аж занадто нагло водили туди дівчат на кормозаготівлю. В результаті, вскочивши в халепу, журналіст чинить професійно - зливає наявну у нього інфу про гантзерів кровосісям.

Кею починає надзвонювати брательник та волати, щоб він тікав з міста. На Ізумі нападають вампіри прямо посеред вагону метро, щоб вся сцена виглядала ефектніше. До Кея теж прямують вампіри, але він зв’язується з Рейкою та готується дати відсіч.

І все це без чергового полювання та з неочікуваним фіналом, якого не хочеш.

[Paulina ෂ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Izumi es atacado y por primera vez (dentro de la historia) no consigue salir de ello, por lo que el siguiente en la lista es Kurono, quien es advertido por el escritor y Akira (su hermano) sobre cómo podría derrotar a los vampiros, sin embargo, y aunque si consiguió deshacerse de algunos, el estado con el que nos dejan es en calidad de muerto, incluyendo que el equipo Gantz se reunió para tratar de ayudarlo. No obstante fueron llevados a la habitación (junto con los vampiros) para prepararse para la próxima misión, lo cual deja a Kato con el objetivo de revivir a su amigo.
Una vez más Gantz me recuerda a no comprometerte con los personajes y sus historias porque más temprano que tarde, Hiroya Oku se encargará de ellos (esto incluye a Akira, quien recién comenzaba a caerme mejor).

[V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this series up to this part, all in a rush (done in a week). Loved it but Oku lost me at the whole vampire thing going on and also killing off my favorite character*. Also, the plot kinda loses its charm when Oku goes out of his way to try and explain the nature of the Gantz sphere. I prefer mystery, so I'm not sure I'll ever finish this.

Note: I'm giving this one five stars but it goes to the whole story up until issue #19.



*SPOILER: Izumi.

[Dani Wladdimiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

En este volumen se siente ese descubrimiento sobre qué es Gantz, dado que un periodista está dando con distintas pistas sobre el tema, más todavía ahora que fueron visibles en la historia misión. Sinceramente, siento que fue pésima idea este personaje, porque realmente no llega a nada, y la explicación que dan después me da igual, podrían haber dicho cualquier cosa y lo hubiera aceptado, porque claramente no es el fuerte del autor, sino dar acción. En fin, de todas maneras volvemos a los vampiros y están peleando contra Izumi, donde finalmente muere, llevándose su karma por haber matado a toda esa gente en la masacre, pero lo más importante es al final, porque Kurono lo matan los mismos vampiros y también a su hermano Akira (aunque poco y nada importante). Por lo que ahora es Katou quién está decidido en revivirlo.

[Sharlotte Galán · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hola hola aprendiz y lector

Vamos a comenzar con la reseña de este tomo de Gantz (tomo 18)
Del género Fantasia y Ficción.
Con 208pag

Nuestro protagonista está pasando por situaciones que no entiende, su verdadero yo debe de salir pero ni el sabe cómo ni por qué.

Experiencia:
Se me fue volando este tomo, la historia fue super rápida, de no creerse todo lo que está pasando, necesito leer el siguiente ya.

Por todo esto y más le doy:
⭐⭐⭐⭐

[mugiwara2410 · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are men in black who are now hunting Gantz players and drinking their blood. Their current target is Izumi. Izumi is dead.

Chapter-236: Kei being the protagonist! So sunlight on them kills those vampires / men in black, huh?

Chapter-237: Wow! So while transferring to the game, if someone touches them they too will be transferred. Reika tries to touch hurt Kei but unfortunately she could not and he may die. This volume ends here.

[Peter Barr · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gantz is about a group of recently deceased people who are sent on missions by a black orb to kill aliens or vampires or dinosaurs, all while generally wearing what looks like black spandex body suits. The group changes as some die (again) and some return. It has held my interest through 20 volumes and that's saying something.

[Zuli · Rating 3 out of 5]

¡Ah! ¡No me pueden dejar así! ¡Necesito saber qué pasará con Kurono!
Oku definitivamente sabe cómo mantenerte al borde del asiento preguntándote qué demonios va a pasar, y esperando que no sea nada malo D:

[Andrea Aguas · Rating 4 out of 5]

i don't know what to expect when kei chose number 1, but i thought after his memory gets erased he'll be completely off the hook. that's not what's happening. and it's unfair because he's getting dragged into this vampire business without his memories of being part of gantz.

[IamKatsuo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gantz leido por completo. Lo tenía pendiente. Acción pura y dura, con ciertos momentos cuestionables en cuanto a trama, pero sobre todo disfrutable y entretenido.

Los paneles molan aunque a veces hay poca claridad visual, una pena pero muy enjoyable.

[nidah05 (SleepDreamWrite) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good volume. The art style has been really good but weird at the same time.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

More vampires! Another good volume.

[Isabelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh. my. god. The turn of events!! Goddamn this series is... crazy.

[Joe Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still my favorite manga of all time...

[Victor QM · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one escalated quickly

[Alejandro Casanova vázquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esto es otro nivel.