Gantz 1

Gantz #1

by Hiroya Oku

Kei und sein Freund Masaru eilen einem Obdachlosen zur Hilfe, der auf die Gleise der U-Bahn gestürzt ist – und werden selbst von einem Zug erfasst und getötet. Doch statt im Jenseits erwachen die beiden in einem leeren Raum, in dessen Mitte sich eine mysteriöse schwarze Kugel befindet: Gantz.

„Euer Leben ist beendet. Ich bestimme, wie ihr euer neues Leben führt.“

Kei und Masaru sind nach ihrem Tod gefangen, aber sie sind nicht allein. Umgeben von Fremden, von denen jeder ein anderes tragisches Schicksal erlitten hat, erfahren sie den Grund für ihr unerwartetes Überleben. Gantz hat sie zu sich gerufen, um sie dazu zu zwingen, an einem tödlichen Spiel teilzunehmen. Ausgerüstet mit speziellen Anzügen und Waffen sollen sie Aliens vernichten, die heimlich auf der Erde leben ... oder selbst den endgültigen Tod finden.

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

800 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

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

[Noah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Never had much faith in love or miracles / Never wanna put my heart on the line / But swimmin' in your water's somethin' spiritual / I'm born again every time you spend the night (Locked Out of Heaven – Bruno Mars).

Reading Gantz is dealing in the business of extremities. Heightened violence, excessive gore, overwhelming dread, and off the charts levels of… horniness? Yup, it’s all here and it really doesn’t mesh well together to make a cohesive story at all. But I guess that all tracks for an edgy manga written in the early 2000’s by an author who’s emotional maturity never seemed to have matured passed fifteen. Okay, maybe that’s a little too pointed, too personal, but I did see a couple of screenshots of him answering question on Twitter on whether or not he liked any manga from his contemporaries, to which he bluntly said “no” to each and every title thrown out. I mean, anyone can have an opinion, that’s fine, and I think authors having a certain level of intense ego is important to having confidence in their work, but come on now… we’re talking about the man who wrote Gantz, a horror manga that has nude women on the cover of every chapter for absolutely no reason other than fan service, the manga that added an Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft lookalike character in the story so that she could be the self-insert main character’s girlfriend, trying to say that he doesn’t like Vinland Saga and Berserk!? Be for real, my guy. But I feel I’m getting ahead of myself, because I haven't even talked about what Gantz is about! Well, I'm glad you asked, because I don't really know! Really though, the story centers around an incel high school student named Kei who along with his friend Masaru get struck down by a subway train and wake up in a nondescript apartment alongside several strangers. What follows is a twist that no one could possibly expect (because it makes no sense), because an odd black sphere that's sitting in the middle of the room suddenly opens up with weapons and armor and tells the strangers that their mission is to use the tools provided to kill aliens masquerading among human society within the allotted time period. Now look, if that at all sounds batshit insane, that’s because it is! And no, reading it firsthand doesn’t actually help matters at all. Why does this sphere take in people who had just died? I don’t know. Why are they killing secret aliens Men in Black style? No clue. Why is there a time limit and a Fortnite arena given to the characters where the sphere will activate a Suicide Squad chip in their brain and blow them up if they leave? I do not know! They don’t tell us, and you know what? I’ve grown to have a pretty low tolerance for mysteries that just feel like they’re endlessly stringing the reader along, because it always becomes more and more clear the longer things keep chugging, the reveal will be all the more disappointing. This manga isn’t the result of careful planning, but rather a mad scramble hoping to assemble some kind of cohesive structure, and in turn instead makes for a bloated mess of ideas that would have been better off left in the drafts.

Rather than a well thought out horror story full of mystery and intrigue, Gantz reads more like an amalgam of whatever the author just happened to have been watching at the time. Just a bunch of different things of varying styles and themes mashed together into one ugly mass of Frankenstein’s Monster proportions. Okay wait, that’s an insult to Frankenstein’s Monster, because in the book he was described as creepy in a doll like fashion rather than truly hideous, and I need you to know that I know that! He’s more in the uncanny valley realm like M3GAN rather than a Chucky type of deal. Anyway, what I’m getting at here is that this manga reads like a little boy playing with his action figures. It's the Dave Filoni approach to narrative structuring, if you will, because even though the questions brought up are all interesting, I can’t help but feel like they go unanswered simply because the author himself doesn’t really know, rather than a well thought out story that’s just gearing up for a grand reveal. Asking a bunch of questions only for them to get answered in the most unsatisfying way possible? Hey, It’s the J. J. Abrams approach to narrative structuring! Oh wait, I already said this was like a shitty Dave Filoni Star Wars script… well, it can be two things at once! I mean, Gantz felt the need to combine everything into one big Katamari ball anyway, so why can't I? The comparisons fit together, I think. So yeah, even though a lot of what drives this manga forward is the mystery to what's even going on, I think my biggest problem with Gantz is that it answers just enough of the questions posited to help the reader realize how little thought actually went into the series beforehand. For example, the only reason why I was able to give you the details about the characters dying or that they’re fighting aliens or that there's a Battle Royale time limit is because these are details announced without proper setup and for no apparent reason. What I’m trying to say here is that I would have enjoyed this manga a lot more if nothing was given to us for as long as possible. And I mean nothing! In my humble opinion, because of how dumb the story is, it would have been much better off if they just didn’t reveal anything right away, but rather throw out information through character guesswork over time, because then at least you’d be able to argue that Gantz is an interpretive work! I mean, maybe I’m just being selfish here, because I know a lot of people love this manga, but it’s frustrating because I know for a fact that I would have loved it as well had it been structured more like that one episode of Twilight Zone called “Five Characters in Search of an Exit,” where a man wakes up trapped in a cylinder like prison with four other strangers dressed like caricatures, all of which have no knowledge of how they got there or who they were before being in the prison.

And even though the twist reveal at the end of the episode didn’t really do much for me, I still love how most the episode builds on the intrigue and horror around the lack of context, because it also lead to some powerful monologues on the nature of consciences and what it means to be alive. Besides, it would work well for Gantz considering the characters never amount to anything other than caricatures anyway, so might as well pretend like there's some depth. Look, I’m not saying that Gantz should have just copied Twilight Zone one for one, but I mean… it has already reheated everyone else’s nachos, so might as well try to copy from something that would actually compliment the tone they were going for, right? Nonetheless, now that we’re at the end of this “compliment sandwich” that only has one compliment, I concede that this manga does a few things right. For one, the alien designs are downright fucked up and I would often find myself swiping real quick to the next page just so I don’t have to look at them any longer. That’s always a good thing in a horror manga! And second, the sense of ever present dread woven into each and every panel is incredibly effective, as characters and reader alike are never given a moment of safety, which in turn lends the story a level of credibly that would have otherwise been completely taken over by how distractingly horny the author clearly was for the duration of the writing process. And if nothing else, Gantz is unrelenting in its pacing and addictive in its nature to where you can’t help but binge several hundred chapters in one sitting. Which is sadly exactly what I did, I just didn’t really feel like flooding people’s timeline with nine volumes of Gantz, so I think I’ll leave it here. Besides, I’ve said Gantz so much in this review that it doesn’t even sound like a real word to me anymore. Wait, it’s not actually a word! What the hell does “Gantz” mean anyway, huh? Just another unanswered question to add to the never-ending list of unanswered questions. Moving on though, I guess the reason why I kept reading through this manga despite my growing disdain is the exact same reason why I keep watching The Conjuring movies, because I sure as hell don’t watch them for their high quality, but rather because I’ve always had a crush on Vera Farmiga and the like to marvel at the fact that you could easily slot Patrick Wilson into every role Chris Pratt’s ever done and imagine a much better performance. Yeah well, I’ve read this for equally shallow reasons, as I can’t help but get hooked by a “mystery box” type of story, even if I know for a fact that the answers aren’t going to satisfy. I didn’t like Gantz, and look, I can’t in good conscience recommend this to anyone, so I won’t. But... if you like horror that’s not good like I do, then Gantz is worth it for the few laughs to be had if nothing else.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been just tipping my toe into Manga and finding just mediocrity, that is until I came across this series. A tragic, but partially darkly comedic incident leads to the death of two one-time childhood friends, or does it? They reappear amongst a group of other 'recently deceased', and with both I as a reader and them as characters, are giving little to go on before they are sent on a mission! Therein lies the core of what makes this series so good (so far), the sense of endless mystery and suspense, that kept me gripped to this very well constructed reality and story. In just 200 + pages the size and depth of this saga is already self-evident. The pretty good monochromatic art works well. The only negative is on Goodreads; the Goodreads blurb which is chock full of spoilers not yet revealed in this volume (wtf!). A firm 8 out of 12 Four Star magnificent Manga read.

2024 read

[Tawfek · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might be the start of an epic, can't wait to read the whole series.
Its too easy reading compared to comics, its fast paced its too addictive, and you find yourself in so little time finishing more then 200 pages
(My first manga ever)

[Mayank Agarwal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a marathon reading all 383 chapters in one go- took me two days. The manga can be divided in three Arcs and i will give different ratings to them

Arc 1- (rating -5/5) - Original concept- starts off slow but the interesting plot with the beautiful art keeps you hooked. The battle scenes are unique in being clean and well drawn (normally battle scenes in manga are just plain bad).Loved the Buddha battle scenes. Add in the character development, love angles , suspense , story - we end up with a awesome manga- This is almost 237 chapters

Arc 2- (rating- 3/5) - The art or the scans deteriorated.The story focused on battle scenes which were not as good as arc 1. The plot went hey wire with the vampire angle leading no ware. With the battle scene shifting to Osaka the art/battle reminded me as if Gantz met Nurarihyon No Mago(Nura: Rise of Yokia)

Arc 3- (rating 4/5) - I really enjoy the Alien invasion and there treatment of humans - very original. The art while improved as compare to Arc 2 was not as clean as Arc 1. The ending felt rushed but liked the mysterious element added to the last chapter.

Overall a very good Manga.

[Chad · Rating 1 out of 5]

If a series cannot interest me in the first book, it loses me. Problems:

1. The concept seems to be wrapped around the idea of some alien technological thing with a person inside that sends people out to murder aliens just because they smell funny, or something along those lines. It was lacking in any meaningful plot-hook, as far as I saw.

2. There were only two people who displayed any redeeming qualities at all by the end of it. One died without actually contributing to the story except as a warning for others. The other was completely over the top in how he was portrayed as making difficult decisions, and instead of coming across as a complex character making difficult decisions he came across as a whiner.

3. The reader gets treated to the thoughts in one character's head -- someone I started hoping would die after only a couple of pages, and the feeling only intensified as this volume wore on.

4. Out of a group of eight or nine (not counting the dog, and I'm not interested enough to open the book again and count), only one was a female. Okay, whatever -- but the only contribution she made to the story was obviously as a sex object and an excuse for men to behave in various ways around a woman. Almost the first view of her is of her pubic hair; she arrives by appearing out of nowhere, draped over the perspective character; she gets sexually assaulted within a couple of pages (three times if you count the dog licking her crotch, prompting some idiotic joke from the perspective character) and gets rescued once by the hammed-up caricature of goodness; she's completely useless throughout the story; she never puts on any clothes that are not actually handed to her (just a jacket); and the way she is drawn at times is obviously meant to show physics-defying gymnastics performed by her cartoonishly wobbling breasts. Did I mention she has the personality of wet cardboard?

5. Onion men. Seriously. I don't even know what to say.

It comes off like it's just trying entirely too hard to be "edgy", but pointlessly so. All femininity is strictly gratuitous. One moment of sexual theme might have actually been "edgy" in a good way, and non-gratuitous, except the writer fucked that all up. The gore is absurdly exaggerated and, at the same time, not convincing at all.

Ultimately, I just did not find anything worth wasting my time reading in this, so I'll stop after one volume. There are many better manga in the world than this.

I watched the CG anime feature, Gantz:0. I have not seen the anime series. That CG anime seemed to be based on a world with superficial similarities to this manga, but wildly different in all the ways that mattered. I rather enjoyed it. I have nothing to say about the anime series, which I haven't seen, but if you have a choice between the Gantz:0 anime and this manga, choose the anime.

[Petros · Rating 4 out of 5]

The French may have said “Make love, not war” but then Gantz appeared and said “Why not do both”…

Gantz is one of my favorite dark sci-fis and I gladly suggest it to everyone who likes this sort of themes. The characters are all unmoral and carnal, violent and devoid of sympathy, a bunch of miserable cowards and horny creeps instead of idealistic super-powered kids. It is both a plus and a minus, depending on what types of people you want as a main cast. I personally have gotten fed up with the idealistic good hearted heroes so I really like them for the bastard nobodies they all are. It doesn’t mean they are meant to be hated as in various moments they show signs of heroism and ideals; but to the most part they act selfishly like any average person would, so that tends to make them more plausible. Most of the magic of the story is how these bastards need to find the guts to get active and cooperate against their deadly adversaries instead of being apathetic idiots, waiting to be slaughtered like sheep. It was a social commentary around the modern way of life of sorts and I must say it was brilliant.

It also packs a very violent and mysterious story that can easily glue you just to see what will happen next. It also has a very slow build up that usually confuses you since it is never clear at what it is this fuss all about. Why are all these things happening in the story? For what purpose? Again, this is a very unorthodox approach to storytelling as most people want a clear goal early on and yet all they saw here was a bunch of unsympathetic people being ordered to kill stuff. What for? The penalty for not obeying is death. The penalty for not playing right is death again. Ain’t they all dead already? So what is the point of fighting? Yet the series plays along in a way to not offer anything clear. Not even the rules of this game are explained at the unwilling players. Many need to randomly be killed just so the rest can figure it all out on their own. There are even some who have played the game before but refuse to reveal everything and just use the rookies as cannon fodder, distraction just so they can flank the enemy themselves. All that create a very aimless and seemingly pointless premise that leaves the average viewer at a complete disarray. And that is the beauty of it.

Imagine your average moe show that lacks an objective, other than to make you feel fuzzy inside with its easy going plotless stories. Gantz tries to do the exact reverse. You don’t understand the ulterior motives of this continual bloodshed yet you need to endure it. That actually works as means to think of stuff on your own and give your own interpretation of what is going on. So besides mindless action it was also a mystery that was asking from the viewer to solve it himself, without nothing be spelled for him. That of course can look as if the scriptwriter is too lazy to think of a story and just makes everything cryptic just to make it look cool. Sure, you can say he is. It also works fine because I was constantly thinking of possible reasons for all this mess.

The experienced eye can also figure out fast enough that everything is basically a social criticism of the modern way of life. The aliens in the story all represent various negative aspects of life, such as immigrants, NEETs and religious fanatics, all are in fact extensions of human folly that the average Joe needs to fight even if he doesn’t want to. Why? Well, because he is forced to do it, in the same way we are forced to spend decades in schools and workplaces. What is the ulterior motive of all that? Why, to survive in an industrialized world that cynically treats you as an expendable peon. There is no ulterior motive other than that. That is also what the show is all about, dressed with extreme doses of violence and sex. Because down to it, our most basic desires drive us no matter how idealistic we think we are and most hobbies, wars, studies, work hours end up being pointless time, existing just to keep us occupied. Even the dead can’t rest and are thrown to survive a second time in a perpetual on-going struggle for the most basic of all needs: Survival. The purpose is not to win but to stay alive. Indefinitely!

Even if you don’t think so deep, the show is still violent and sexual enough for you to just mindlessly stare at it. It is exaggerating a lot in terms of gore and in depicting everybody as idiots and bastards as means to make you angry or disgusted with all that. And they do have some cool suits and weapons to break havoc if they ever manage to figure out how to use them properly. All that create potential for a numerous possible outcomes and it hardly feels it is predictable. I mean, in an average show you know early on how everything will end. The heroes will survive and beat the monsters and get married or something. Gantz is not like that since you don’t know who the main villains are. Plus, anyone can be killed at any given moment. It is its unexpected, violent, sexual formula that makes this anime extremely special. Highly recommended.

[Raj · Rating 2 out of 5]

I speak for all volumes here.

Gantz starts like a wet dream of a sci-fi nerd and grows into an uncooked narrative, with zero pointers, made up as the story rolls forward. You know, bare bones "cool" stuff: edgy characters, their dumb decisions, weird happenings, aliens, vampires, unabashed gore — inventive at times, I concede — and breasts. Lots of breasts.

Barring all that, it spiraled into some genuinely toe-curling moments. Those were far too far and spread out though. Later on in the manga, Oku started slapping some awesome ideas around, but with unsure hands. His use of CGI-inspired art looks clean, detailed and alien designs are commendable. But you may have that nagging feeling of looking at still snapshots of an action movie instead of the frenetic fluidity in lines that makes a manga so alive. I had the same experience while reading his other work Inuyashiki. Love it or hate, it's part of his stylistic touch.

The saving grace of the series is that it's immensely readable if you turn off the thing between your ears. It keeps you wanting for next step it takes. Treat it like bad yet fun pulp fiction, which is what manga can be at its worst.

Aye, look, whatta harmless onion boy.

[James DeSantis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Holy fucking shit I thought this Manga ended at like volume 12 or 13. This is triple the length of that. So I only read up to 12 when I was a teenager. Time to get back in to it! So Gantz starts off with death (and boobs.) Kei is the main character and his old buddy from back in the day decides to save a bum on a train track. Kei is like "man you dumb as fuck" but then decides to help his bud out. Then they try to outrun a train and BAM they dead. They end up in a room and are told to go out and kill these "targets'. This is how Gantz begins!

What I like: I love Kei. He's a piece of shit, only thinks of himself, and a dick but he's so fun. His lines are great and his "who gives fuck" way of life is fun. I also enjoy most character designs. Everyone has their own look that really sets them apart. I love the weapons in this, very unique. Pacing is near perfect always keeping it fun yet disturbing at parts. I also really enjoyed the interaction with the other characters. Oh and BOOBS! =D

What I didn't like: The dog licking a vagina I could have done without. Just saying. Always seemed weird...

[Nilo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vi algunos cuántos episodios del anime ya hace años y francamente me pareció regular, ahora, depurando mi librero me encontré con este tomo en el formato de la ya extinta editorial Mundo Vid, misma que si conocieron sabrán que dejó mucho que desear pero en fin, que esto va de la obra e igual, mi percepción es más o menos parecida a las impresiones que recuerdo tuve con la animación y tampoco me fue tan shockeante, perturbadora, sangrienta o cualquiera de los adjetivos a los que refieren cuando se habla de Gantz.

Tal vez sea que esto ya me suena de otra serie (o de esta misma), película (pienso en The Cube, por decir alguna) o que tiende a tambalearse más hacia el lado del morbo y el fanservice innecesario, como cierta escena con un perro durante una de las presentaciones del personaje femenino, ¿realmente era necesaria? El caso es que a pesar de ser entretenida y que cuenta con un buen gancho para que quieras seguir leyendo no son tantas las ganas que me genera como para hacerlo pronto.

[Mizuki · Rating 4 out of 5]

This series...this....thing...it basically and actively goes out of its way to mind fuck you.

Is it a good thing, or is it a bad thing? It depends on how much mind fuck you can handle and how willingly you can allow yourself to get mind-fucked over. *smirks* It also depends on how much you can put up with nudity and half-naked girls as gimmicks.

[JoAnna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well... Basically the exact same thing as the anime so far, which I was expecting. I don't think much will be different till about volume four.
I have pretty much the same thoughts that I did when I watched the anime. I like the strange idea of Gantz, but don't care much for all the sexual aspects. I'm in it for the gore, the aliens, and to find out WHAT THE FUCK GANTZ IS!!!! Also a little spoiler....... The part where they killed the little onion man was just awful . Poor little guy: ( Could that have been the first test of Gantz? A defenseless alien and they all ganged up on him and killed him. And now..... Gantz will punish them all??? Or where they really supposed to kill the little onion guy?????

[Fraser Simons · Rating 1 out of 5]

Made it about halfway in and then started rapidly skimming. Just massively not my thing. Narration from horny incel boys are just my kryptonite, and that precludes me from enjoying a lot of manga, let’s be real.

[Carlex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tres estrellas y media.

Empecé por el segundo tomo pero había visto los primeros capítulos del anime, así que daba un poco igual. Al final he podido leerlo y bien.

[aleksandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75/5

Well, it was certainly… interesting? I think. Also, really weird and kind of fucked up—at moments not in a good way. I’m honestly not sure if I’m going to continue. For now, I’m not exactly invested, but I might give it another try some other time. Maybe.

[Ray Flores · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trigger warning: violencia explícita, desnudos, lenguaje altisonante. No se recomienda para un público menor de 18 años por contenido gráfico.

Kuroko y Kato, dos chicos de preparatoria, fueron arrollados por un tren al intentar salvar a un indigente tras haber caído a las vías, pero en lugar de morir, fueron transportados a un lugar donde un puñado de gente se encontraba encerrada.

Al parecer todos (incluidos hombres, mujeres y hasta un perro) deberán de participar en un siniestro juego: la misión es aniquilar a unas criaturas extrañas llamadas “cebollines”. Pero en realidad, ¿de qué se trata este juego?

En el primer volumen no tenemos mucha información y me parece que sólo fue la introducción a los personajes así que de momento no hay mucho qué decir. Eso sí, me agrada que sea un seinen que no se censura en absoluto. Son algo más de 30 volumenes para todo Gantz, así que hay un largo camino por recorrer.

Este volumen contiene los capítulos 1 al 10.

[Candice M (tinylibrarian) · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh. Will definitely appeal to fans of violence, gore, action and tons of FANSERVICE. The main character is basically a sexist jerk and looks down on the "idiot" that tried to save a girl from raped. It is marked "For Mature Readers" on the back cover and some copies have stickers that say "Parental Advisory" on the front.

Personally, that's not my cup of tea, but I'm sure it will circulate like crazy if you add it to your collection.

[rory (jess' version) · Rating 3 out of 5]

someone recommended this to me so here i am.

peculiar, bloody, and very graphic. there's also an attempted sexual harassment so take note of that before reading. it's too fast paced for my liking and not that gripping (yet)

[Tom Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

(A review of the entire series)

Gantz is probably the most adolescent comic I have ever read. That's meant in a good way as well as a bad. The energy (Oku is a wonderfully clear choreographer of fights), the hunger for sensation, the morbid imagination, and the sheer compulsive hookiness of the plot and its casual cruelty - these are all good things. On the other hand, the characterisation is risible throughout and Oku's treatment of his women characters is truly dreadful - a parade of embarrassing stereotypes: the simpering love interest, the busty lust interest (who asks the hero to keep her as a pet!), the Lara Croft lookalike who jumps him and promptly dies, the famous pop star who naturally falls in love with him... none of them get even the rudimentary hero's journey development of the lead, remaining half-dimensional mannequins until their near-inevitable death - though here, at least, Oku is an equal opportunity slice-and-dicer. It's like an excruciating tour of a 14 year old boy's dreamworld.

Luckily, the "characterisation", while rough going, is at most 10-15% of an otherwise crisply drawn and inventively violent manga. The plot is simple, Riverworld meets Suicide Squad: the recently dead are harvested by a high-tech gamesmaster and given a second life as agents sent into gory battle against clandestine aliens (who often, quite reasonably, ask why they're being targeted). Survivors get points, and points mean prizes - weapons, freedom, or the opportunity to resurrect former players. The gamesmaster will happily shove anyone into a battlesuit - punks, criminals, salarymen, grannies, small children, pandas, and, inevitably, quite a few angst-filled high-schoolers. Who survives? The answers are (occasionally) surprising. Over the course of extremely long, fast-paced, videogame-style battles against a variety of aliens, a team solidifies, in time for a wider alien invasion. At which point the manga lurches into apocalyptic bio-horror, and a lot of the energy bleeds away. Perhaps Oku, after over a decade of drawing this nonsense, got bored of drawing cyberpunk fights - though he finds reasons to keep the nudity quotient extremely high.

Gantz is often reprehensible but generally compulsive - it's a fast, bloodthirsty read, suspenseful even though most of the characters are cyphers, and much though I'd like to mark it lower I still ended up reading the whole thing given the opportunity to. Even the relatively feeble final act kept me turning the pages - though at least there's the magnificent payoff of a giant nude alien woman with Hitler's face in her stomach, informing the reader that God does not exist. Peak adolescence has been reached, the rest of comics can go home.

[N.M. Martinez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the strangest series. I started reading it, and I can't put it down! manga doesn't usually catch me that way, especially when there's a lot of action involved.

But Gantz is so strange. The best I can figure this is what's caught me:

1. Great action scenes. Yes, they're bloody, but they're always clear. No exposition is ever needed.

2. An interesting mystery. What the hell is going on here? The main character learns a lot along the way, but it's never THE answer that he's looking for.

3. The characters. They aren't always the most developed. (The one girl that first appears annoyed the shit out of me for being so-- ugh. But I'm not going there.) There is something about them though. Even the side characters that show up have a history that never really needs to be gone into. It's in their clothes, on their faces, and sometimes in their actions. When some of the side characters lose, I do find myself gasping.

No one is safe in this book.

[Baal Of · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought the entire run of this manga without having read any of it, and now I'm going to work my way through it. My intent is to read one volume each day. We'll see how well I stick to that plan. It starts off a bit weird, with the odd onion alien, and no explanation as to what or why. The characters are pretty straightforward so far - typical manga tropes. The premise is interesting, the artwork is good, and the violence is well done.

[Whitney (The Cover Collector) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4th reread and it’s still good.

[Anna Quilter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Currently I'm reading this and Beserk from Volumes 1 for the first time.

Obviously their reputations proceed them.

I have to say...this was one of the best first volumes of manga I've ever read.

Very intriguing....draws you really into it on a number of levels.

And I can see the influence this had on future manga and tv series..

[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.

[IzamaRi H. Fabela · Rating 4 out of 5]

RESEÑA COMPLETA: http://goo.gl/dSBGaj


Gantz nos presenta a Kurono un adolescente que un día está viendo una revista porno en el andén del tren. Cerca de él esta Kato un ex compañero de Kurono. Mientras Kurono está rememorando sus días de con Kato, un indigente cae a las vías del tren y nadie alrededor parece querer salvarlo hasta que

Kato se lanza a las vías para ayudar, sólo que el hombre es demasiado grande para él y al buscar ayuda descubre a Kurono al cual ínsita ayudarlo.

Kurono y Kato logran sacar al hombre de las vías pero ellos no tienen tanta suerte y son arrollados por el tren. Los últimos pensamientos de Kurono son acerca de no querer morir y de pronto se encuentra en un cuarto pequeño con varias personas y una esfera negra en el centro. A su lado esta Kato igual de confundido que él mientras que las personas a su alrededor no dejan de divagar acerca de lo que está pasando. Entonces la esfera se abre y les encomienda su primera misión… matar al alíen cebollence.


Este primer tomo tiene diez capítulos, en los cuales conocemos a nuestros protagonistas y sabemos muy, muy, muy poco sobre la esfera y por qué ha reunido a ese grupo de personas ahí.



Debo decir que Gantz es uno de mis animes favoritos, a pesar de todo el ecchi y el gore (luego soy bien chillona con la sangre) que contiene siempre me vi envuelta en el gran misterio que representa la esfera y el humano que está dentro de ella.

Uno pensaría que después de ver el anime y saber el final me sentiría un poco aburrida con el manga pero no es así, pues al igual que sucede con las películas y los libros, los mangas siempre muestran más detalles que en el anime se pierden y yo tengo muchas ganas de descubrir todos esos detalles que en el anime quedaron fuera.

Este primer tomo resulta bastante introductorio y puede que algunos llegue aburrirlos un poquito, pero créanme cuando les digo que conforme la historia va avanzando la cosa se va a poner mejor y mejor y mejor, a tal punto que no podrán dejar la historia.


Y ya para terminar tengo que comentarles que la edición de esta manga es distinto a otros mangas de la editorial ya que además de ser de diferente tamaño (ya les enseñaré en el vídeo de mangas su tamaño) está un poco más suave que los otros mangas lo cual no dificulta su lectura a la hora de abrirlo como ocurre con los demás mangas de la editorial (insisto, en el Wrap up de mangas les mostraré de que hablo).


RESEÑA COMPLETA: http://goo.gl/dSBGaj

[M. P. · Rating 1 out of 5]

After listening this series get praise from a friend, I was curious to see what exactly it would be like. Colour me hugely unimpressed by this first volume of Gantz!

The mature content promised in the back cover ended up referring to the amount of gore and gratuitous, pointless female nudity that had no other purpose besides providing the reader with an object of lust. If I could have detected anything that'd given me even a weak promise of this series having hope of becoming more interesting, story or character progression-wise, I might have made an attempt to get my trooper on and will myself through the tedious beginning. Alas, I saw no such thing - though that might have been due to the mind-numbing tediousness of the chapters compiled here. I spent the entire volume waiting for things to really get going - somehow a bunch of big man-children ganging up on some bizarro version of Bart Simpson didn't seem to qualify. The art was, well, not exactly unimpressive, yet not very memorable to me either. Very detailed backgrounds and intestines, and that's about as far as I can muster myself to praise it.

Perhaps the comic gets better later on, as is really the case with most manga. I don't know. Nor do I really care to find out, for that is how deeply disappointed I was. Gantz does not seem like a series for me. If you are the type that can be driven solely by gore boners and a love for tits, by all means, go for it. You'll get at least something sticky out of volume one.

[Maria · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m SO annoyed. The beginning was quite interesting but after chapter 2 it’s been getting progressively worse. The characters are all a bunch of scum bags (with the exception of one guy), the art style is not my cup of tea, sorry, and what’s with that boob-ass fan service on each issue cover? 🙄 LAME.

[Xwirus · Rating 4 out of 5]

próximamente...

[Jon Ureña · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars. I’m reviewing the first two volumes.

For this last year and a half or so I’ve rampaged through so many manga series that I’ve reached the terrifying situation that I can’t find any other obvious one that I would be interested in reading, and the few novels I’ve tried to get into in this period have pushed me out with what passes for good in the West these days (mostly virtue signalling how much they agree with certain toxic ideologies). To find the next series, or even a one-shot, I scoured through the best ever manga list, but none seemed interesting enough. I can’t get into the traditional shonen stories (“My Hero Academia”, “Black Clover”, “Seven Deadly Sins”, “One Piece”, etc.), and neither into the sports ones (“Haikyuu”). Regarding the numerous fantasy heavy series, I care even less about those. There are some intriguing ones I haven’t gotten into and have also discarded: “The Promised Neverland” (I enjoyed the anime very much, but I heard the manga’s quality dips beyond that point in the series) and “Made in Abyss” (I haven’t been able to get invested in the anime although I’ve tried twice, and apparently the manga even has more suspicious child nudity; however, I heard that it gets fantastic some volumes in). “Dorohedoro” seems too cheerfully bizarre. I tried the anime version of “Fullmetal Alchemist”, one of the most recommended animes/mangas for newcomers, and found it annoying: the tone is all over the place, which really hurts the worldbuilding. There was one series that I had attempted to get into almost two years ago but I had given up then: “Gantz”. Having nothing better to read, I’m getting into it now.

I had watched the first few episodes of the anime. Even though I’m autistic myself, the instinctive impression I got from those was that the story had been written by an angry autistic teenager, which wasn’t a good thing in this case. Those few episodes are contained in these first two volumes of the manga, but they are more palatable in this form.

I love the concept of this series: a few people who recently died find themselves trapped in an apartment they cannot escape from. The room also contains a big metallic ball that supplies them weapons and special gear. They are pushed to hunt down “aliens”. The recently deceased either die again fighting these creatures, or they survive and get awarded points according to their performance. During these hunts, that take place on the streets, the hunters and the creatures are invisible to regular living people, although they can affect their environment and even kill living people if they wish to or fuck up. The hunters that survive are allowed to go home for a bit, but will be forcefully dragged to the next hunt. If they achieve enough points maybe they’ll earn their freedom, although that isn’t clear at this point.

Unfortunately the series fails at its execution. Those aliens could have been made really interesting, but they are disgusting and annoying in a Garbage Pail Kids sort of way (those trading cards disturbed me as a kid). While the characters aren’t exactly terrible, they do stuff that tests the limits of the needed suspension of disbelief; I’ll get into it as I summarize the events of these two volumes.

As a protagonist we have a mostly misanthropic high schooler. He’s introduced commenting on how any kind of person nearby is shitty for one reason or another. An old woman approaches him for directions and he shoos her away. He sees another high schooler waiting for the train: a childhood friend he had lost contact with. After a drunkard falls on the train tracks, the earnest childhood friend jumps down to help him, and as the high schooler asks for help to move the limp body, the protagonist feels compelled to jump down and cooperate. The drunkard gets saved, although he was too fucked up to appreciate it, but both high schoolers die. They get transferred to the room mentioned above, where they meet other recently deceased people who have no clue about what’s going on.

Pretty good so far. The next person they see get transferred in, which happens as if they were 3D printed, is a naked young woman with big breasts, maybe a high schooler as well. She’s wet and has wounds on her wrists from having attempted, and I guess succeeded, to kill herself. The protagonist holds the unconscious naked woman and gets hard. Moved to action, he french kisses her, which another dead girl complains about. Two of the people that had ended up in the room were Yakuza goons. One of them drags the naked, now conscious girl to a hallway, where he intends to rape her. Only the earnest high schooler tries to stop it and succeeds without any significant trouble, but then he throws her some clothes to cover herself with, or else, he says, he’ll rape her himself. A random dog that also apparently died and was convoked to the room beelines towards the naked, wet woman’s pussy and licks it enthusiastically. Someone drags the dog away while commenting that it must have belonged to some lonely office worker.

Now, I live for vile and disturbing shit, but my problem with this sequence is that people just don’t act that way, and arguably dogs neither. I’m fine with any crazy stuff as long as I can buy the motivations and behavior of the people involved.

One of the people present is a hardened looking young guy maybe around seventeen years old. He informs the others cryptically about the situation they are in, suggesting it’s part of some TV show. In any case, the big metallic ball opens up and supplies them with some weapons and futuristic looking suits. Only the protagonist puts the suit on. They get transferred to the streets, and somehow are guided to find one of the aliens they need to kill. It’s an annoying and mostly uninteresting creature that I won’t get into, but the other characters argue whether this whole situation is real or not, if they should shoot him, etc. One of the characters, a politician who had died of cancer, attempted to leave the play area, and his head exploded. Four of the most hardened and uncaring characters pursue the alien and end up killing him. Their weapons are guns that don’t seem to do anything after they fire, but seconds later produce an explosion. They really don’t make any goddamn sense, and there would be no reason for anyone to make them like that. In any case, the alien seemed to have a father, who, enraged, attacks those people. All of them are slaughtered. The earnest high schooler, trying to avoid violence yet being pursued by the grieving alien father, manages to escape it. The protagonist wanders into the scene next to the helpless big breasted girl, whose purpose seems to consist in being helpless and producing boners; it usually doesn’t bother me if my fiction contains eye candy, but she’s simply not interesting as a character, and due to how her face is drawn she’s not even that attractive.

The alien father pursues the protagonist, who along the way loses the girl he had intended to protect. The girl had been following the earnest high schooler like a puppy because the guy saved her from the Yakuza goon, and the protagonist resents that she’s not slobbering over him. The protagonist faces the alien father and in the process discovers that his own suit gives him superhuman agility and strength. He doesn’t entirely beat the alien, but enough for whoever organizes the hunt to send some futuristic equipment to restrain the creature. The mysterious kid wanders in, congratulates the protagonist for his performance and offers him to shoot the alien to earn those points. However, the protagonist is annoyed at this whole thing, and he antagonizes the mysterious kid for knowing too much and keeping generally quiet. The mysterious kid kills the alien. All the surviving people get transferred to the initial room. Only the protagonist, the earnest high schooler, the big breasted girl, the mysterious kid and the dog have survived. The ball displays their scores as it mocks them.

The main characters antagonize the mysterious kid further because he’s hiding information. The kid reveals that he’s been forcefully dragged into these hunts for a good while now, and that although they’ll be allowed to return home for a bit, they’ll see each other again. Also, if they attempt to explain their predicament to anyone outside the games, their heads will explode. After they exit the apartment they find out that they can now be seen by regular people, having been turned into regular people themselves. They all go to their respective homes.

Generally interesting so far. The artistry is more competent than the average, although I don’t like how he draws the faces. I enjoy the violence and general disturbing aspects except for the faults mentioned above. Fortunately I heard that the series improves along the way.

One of the characters who perished in this hunt is a girl who looks almost identical to Annie Leonhardt from “Attack on Titan”, down to the grey/white hoodie. Given that “Gantz” came before, I don’t see how you can see her and not believe that Isayama copied that look for Annie. This character was also nihilistic and misanthropic, although with a far emptier head on her shoulders than our dear crystalline dame. In any case, she dies. So goodbye, original Annie.

At the end of the second volume the author explains how his team drew this manga: they created the storyboards with posed 3D figures and modelled backgrounds in computers, and then the author drew his characters over the 3D figures and also traced the important lines of the modelled backgrounds. Can’t argue with the results, given that they are more competent than usual. However, I heard that the technique went over his head, and after he finished this series he founded a company to develop the technology to create mangas entirely from modelled 3D figures and backgrounds. The results didn’t improve on the drawn stuff, a lesson that the animation industry of Japan should have learned as well (that adaptation of “Dorohedoro” looks unwatchable for me), and the poor guy went bankrupt. I think he’s doing fine now, though.

I’m not too eager to continue, but I have nothing else going on right now.

[Jimmy Ding · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the entire series immensely, recommending Gantz would be akin to sending someone a video of a drunken street fight or public indecency.
It is ultra-spectacle. It is watching Transformers with porn playing on the second monitor. Seinen manga is a genre that is overflowing with gratuitous violence, sexual content, sexual violence and gore. Gantz starts modestly enough but it is continuously magnified until it is pushing the limits of its genre. The visuals mature with the series and often bloom into stunning, massive landscapes of hellish disasters and monsters bordering on incomprehensibility. By the end the art can barely keep up with what is trying to be conveyed and begins to become illegibly cluttered.

There are pacing issues which are almost always the case with a serialized medium, but the ending is relatively strong compared to the truly dismal performance of its peers. Its treatment of female characters is also not the worst in the genre, but it isn't remotely close to good either. There is one outrageously inappropriate and bizarre instance of blackface.

And yet, under the hood lives a compelling, touching narrative about human nature and the unifying hope that lives within all of us. It has a unique way of showing how humanity can be cruel, selfish, and ugly, only to turn around and highlight how we are just as capable of heroism.

Despite the steady death march of increasing violence, I never became desensitized and in fact was emotionally invested. Despite a massive, rotating cast of characters, I found myself caring for them in various ways. The characters feel human. They are flawed and make mistakes, but they also learn and grow and form connections, and their actions largely feel meaningful.

Buried under a mountain of flaws and action that is thrilling but lacking in substance, Gantz delivers some truly unforgettable moments. Don't read it.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Stuff I Read - Gantz Vol 1 by Hiroya Oku Review

This manga was weird. I mean that in both positive and negative ways, because strangeness can definitely be entertaining and fun, but there is also a rather frustrating part of the weirdness, because I had no idea what was going on for most of the volume. Or maybe all of the volume. It's really odd. And it's very violent and a bit senseless and the characters aren't entirely formed, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This was a strange volume of manga, but only the first volume. It's possible that anyone reading these through a second time will take something completely different away from them. But the first time through and all I can say is okay...

I guess I should write about some of the other aspects of the manga. The art, for instance, is very striking, some some really over-the-top depictions of violence and some really weird looking stuff. This is a sci fi I think, but I'm not really sure what that means yet. The art is surreal in places, which is nice, and also gives the setting a sort of unreal feeling, like the moment that the characters are transported away they've dropped down the rabbit hole.

The story is more of a mess. The main character is sort of a loser, which isn't surprising for this sort of manga. And all the characters are sort of terrible people with the exception of maybe one or two of them. But this is a strange situation and it's possible that their terribleness makes them better at whatever is going on. It's a neat concept in any event, and I wish I knew more what was going on. Because as is all I know is that there's a group of people that are in some sort of game where they're supposed to kill an alien, and kind of do. But then things really start hitting the fan. It's a horror manga, really, which is interesting, but I was lost for most of it.

It's something where I'm willing to see where it's going, though. I hope that it's a bit more interesting and makes some different points as it goes on, but I guess that only time will tell. It's hard really to rate and review this because it ends so abruptly and the story doesn't feel fully formed in this one volume, but so it goes. I will have to try to keep reading and see where it goes. Until then, I'm giving this volume a 6.5/10 and calling it a book.