Gantz/8

Gantz #8

by Hiroya Oku

Without giving anything away, suffice it to say that this might be the watershed volume of Gantz. It's the end of the great Buddha battle, and it doesn't seem to be going well. In fact, it would be amazing if anyone returned to the locked apartment overlooking Tokyo tower. It's really been the worst fight yet. But there's got to be a gleam of hope somewhere.

Also in this story, we meet a few more interesting characters outside of Gantz's hunting party, and it only adds more mystery to the mix.

Each volume of Gantz comes shrink-wrapped and carries an 18+ content advisory.

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

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

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 5 out of 5]

8 points ?!!! 8 fooken points, come on.
I mean kei killed the two guards at the beginning and the humongous Buddha and god knows if he killed anything else since i wasn't counting but 8 points only! that is cheap gantz!
this way we might see kei kurono till the end of the series.
How harsh can you get Hiroya? why did you have to kill kato? come on his brother is sure to be devastated.
i think kei is more sad about kishimoto than he is sad about the girl who took his virginity and i think he will get over them quickly he is that kind of teenager...
I like how the story of gantz is all over the Internet, and since kei got sent in alone for this mission, i think he should tell everyone that it is real so people would kill themselves to join him at least he would get the help of pros (reading this comment of mine in 2023 is weird, what was i thinking!) and btw these guys are very slow, they always act slowly how many times we have seen aliens coming out of other aliens, and they are not really that fast, while everyone just stands around and watch them, giving them chance to complete their transaction, i mean come on they can't be that stupid.
you know what send me in there i will take care of this :3

[James DeSantis · Rating 5 out of 5]

BAM BAM BAM! Heads rolling! Bodies...swirling? Well they getting sliced up. Boobies bouncing (I swear) and monsters turning into gigantic slug like monsters. Holy hell this volume was insane. No one is safe. Things get crazy and people begin to get picked off one by one. We lost 80% of the crew last time, but besides one major one the rest were throwaways. By the end of this...well let's just say we about empty on "heroes"

What I liked: The action was intense and easy to follow. The pacing was perfect. The ending was heartbreaking. The blood was everywhere. This was also the least amount of fan service. I mean a couple of boobs but that's it! Oh and a butt. Also the ending with the mystery guy asking questions get you hyped for the future.

What I didn't like: Pretty much love this volume. Loss is the theme and they handle it well.

Gantz just stepped into forth gear here, and I'm hoping it continues. From what I remember it falters but if I can get 3-4 more volumes like this I'll be a happy camper.

[Carm · Rating 3 out of 5]

dafaq?!

[Jesus Flores · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gantz 8

Termina la misión del templo, y wow, esto si que no me lo esperaba, digo si conforme lees, pero suele ser poco común que algo así suceda.
Después en la vida fuera de las misiones, aparece un posible personaje nuevo, que ahí es sospechoso.
Y pues un cliffhanger al final sobre la próxima misión

4.5 star

SPOILERS

Digo si, muchos murieron a manos del de muchos brazos, pero que si no esperaba que fuera único, es que hasta el que siempre.

[Jon Ureña · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two and a half stars. This is a loose review of volumes 3 to 8.

This series is a mess, but I’m fine with just a moderately entertaining distraction in my shitty life of working at a place that houses severely ill patients afflicted with the ongoing viral disaster, of going everywhere with a sanitary mask, of suspecting that any shortness of breath and weird sensation in my lungs is due to me having been infected, which would likely end up killing half of my family. That I know of, an aunt of mine in her sixties has it, which doesn’t fare well for her. And I live in the country with the worst rate of infections in the entire world.

“Gantz” has several problems as a fictional series: the protagonist is unpleasant and not just because he’s a misanthrope (disliking humanity myself, I usually get along fine with misanthropes): he’s almost exclusively motivated by his need to grope the juiciest breasts, regardless of whether the owner of those breasts wants it or not. Access to those breasts determines whether he gets along with some people. In addition, the enemies they face through the conceptual problem are silly, nonsensical and generally uninteresting. Even those problems could have been surmounted if the characters in general were interesting regarding how they behaved and what they said, but they make very questionable decisions, they fail to protect themselves against obvious dangers, and what comes out of their goddamn mouths tends to be uninteresting if not downright idiotic. Also, the author gets distracted by boobs even to the extent of featuring them prominently in the first page of almost every chapter. He used to draw in those pages the voluminous breasts of the main romantic interest, but as the volumes went on he featured women that don’t even exist in the world of the story. Now, I want to play around with tits every day like any other guy, but in this case it’s like a thirteen year old who has just realized that by pulling his dick enough times he can make white stuff come out.

Last time we saw our retarded main characters they had survived the first hunt organized by the mysterious “Gantz” overlord. The survivors were supposed to return to their regular lives and wait to be convoked again, but the big breasted, dimwitted girl, who had been recruited for the hunts because she had committed suicide by cutting her wrists, found out that her original self had survived the suicide attempt and was resting in the hospital. The people who are transferred to the hunts are some sort of clones. Unable to explain the situation (their heads will explode if they do), she flees and begs the borderline rapist protagonist to live in his house “as a pet”. What would fall into wish fulfillment territory turns into blue balls: the girl doesn’t want any sex, and doesn’t even listen to the protagonist when he talks. After he explains his frustration regarding having breasts so close but not being able to squeeze them, she reminds him that he agreed to take her in as a pet, and you don’t have sex with pets. He argues that he used to be quite intimate with his childhood dog. In general she can only go on about the protagonist’s 1.90 meters tall, earnest friend, the real protagonist of this tale so far. That doesn’t stop the protagonist from spooning this dumb girl and groping her breasts while she complains without too much effort.

As it tends to be the case in stories with heavily misanthropic protagonists, and I guess authors, people tend to be shittier than they are in real life. Both the protagonist and his childhood friend attend high school, and they have to deal with Yakuza-like gangs that extort money from them. They do the usual bully gang shit: they beat up people and collect their broken teeth, they beat up whoever comes to defend them, and force a kid they extorted to suck his own beat up father’s dick. These charming fellas were introduced to show how the protagonist, wearing the suit that grants them superpowers, evolves into someone confident enough to resist non-sexual-assault related evil, as long as he wears the suit. Also, a bunch of those gang members get killed in another gang’s ambush and end up participating in the second hunt.

The most interesting part of this series is how the main characters’ behaviors adapt to being repeatedly drafted into such insane, life-threatening situations in which they need to kill or be killed, and deal with newcomers who have no clue what’s going on. The protagonist quickly takes a leading role of his own. In the second hunt just five people survive, less than half of those who went in. When the protagonist goes back to his regular life as a non-entity, cooling down from having acted as a murderous hero, he has to face that he’s providing for a girl who doesn’t pay any attention to him and that just opens her mouth to say how awesome the other guy is and how much she’d rather be with him. Understandably annoyed, the protagonist tells in a more or less subtle way that he doesn’t want her around unless they fuck, or at least, I guess, allows him full access to her gargantuan boobos. She suddenly understands that leeching from a guy just to complain about how much she’d rather get fucked by someone else is somewhat obnoxious, and she leaves. The protagonist regrets it; one thing is being unable to grope freely a pair of breasts that live in your apartment, and another being unable to grope freely a pair of breasts that you don’t know where they are. We see him masturbating to fantasies of this dumb girl, and afterwards, as the waves of shame vibrate through his horny high schooler body, he wishes Gantz would forcefully recruit him again for another hunt, where the life or death situation gives meaning to his existence.

He gets drafted a third time along with his old pals and a bunch of not particularly interesting newcomers. As the protagonist witnesses the pair of big breasts squeezing themselves against his earnest childhood friend, he goes out to the hallway to cry like a little bitch. There he’s bothered by this older woman clearly inspired by Lara Croft from “Tomb Raider”. Despite her being in her twenties and the protagonist being an apparently 15-16 year old small guy, she comments on how cute he is, and when the protagonist asks her whether she wants to have sex right there and then, he ends up losing this virginity with this big broad. The pair of big breasts catches them in the act, and stuff gets uncomfortable between the protagonist and the still unrealized couple of the big breasts and his childhood friend.

This time they face xenomorph-like aliens that are hiding inside Buddhist statues. Don’t ask, I don’t fucking know. Even though the sort of veteran hunters know that these aliens possess weird, extremely dangerous powers that they can’t anticipate before they see them in action, they walk up to them, they stare them down, they even stand near to a twenty meters tall Buddha statue that could punt them to the next town. I feel compelled to hide the following plot points in spoiler tags, so at least the author has done that right: the protagonist loses an arm and a leg; it would be fine as long as he survives the hunt, because the clones get transmitted to reality in one piece (I’m guessing that their minds get transferred to new, cloned bodies). However, everybody else dies, including the big breasted girl who had been cloned from her still living original self, Lara Croft, and also the earnest high schooler, who had acted as the de facto protagonist of this series. When the protagonist gets sent back to his regular life, he can’t stand having been the only survivor, that everyone who knew the predicament he had ended up in has disappeared.

The protagonist knew that the big breasted girl’s original self was still around, and he waits in her neighborhood to befriend/seduce her. She’s creeped out by this suspicious guy who knows her name and who claims to have been living with another girl who shared her entire name. The big breasts flee from him.

Back in school, they get a transfer student. It’s a tall guy who looks very similar to the recently deceased earnest high schooler. I suppose the author realized that he had created a vacuum, and he resorted to filling it up with a clone of sorts. In any case this student attracts the attention of the girls the protagonist would want for himself, so that annoys him. But in addition the guy witnesses the protagonist resisting a beating from the usual gang, a beating that the protagonist can easily take thanks to Gantz’s suit. Not even his exposed face gets hurt, which doesn’t make any fucking sense. The student convinces the protagonist to let him into his house, where he tries to extract from the protagonist information about Gantz and its/his hunts. The protagonist cannot talk even if he wanted to, because he has a bomb implanted in his head. Apparently one of the hunters who had survived for a bit had created a website in which he went on about his nightmarish situation and even named other hunters, which include the protagonist. The student asks the protagonist to show him his suit, but he ends up leaving the apartment without seeing it. The protagonist keeps his brain unexploded.

The eighth volume ends with the protagonist having been drafted to his fourth hunt, only to find out that he’s the only hunter. He’ll be forced to kill an “alien” by himself.

Again, I’m enjoying it as much as I would enjoy a rather shitty B sci-fi movie. I regret how the author wasted his compelling concept. These are complicated and uncertain days in which I have to wait until friday to find out if I even have a job until the following friday. The rest of the time I can barely enjoy good VR stuff in all its variants (I already finished “Saints & Sinners”, so that’s a bummer), and hope that the next time I exit my apartment to go to work at a place that houses infected people I don’t end up catching myself a rather annoying disease. Fortunately I always knew life was a bunch of pointless, usually painful nonsense interrupted by very fleeting moments of pleasure, so I don’t expect much.

[Angel Torres · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am so curious about the changes that are happening with this story.

This is another strong volume but I'll admit that it feels a little odd. Let's wait and see what happens in volume 9 before we go into any issues in the story.

[Cristhian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kato.

Man. Al fin le agarro cariño a los personajes y me los matan.

[Dani Wladdimiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Todo la pelea de Katou es brutal, es una lucha incesante por sobrevivir, decir, quiero vivir por mi hermano menor. No lo logra, lo intento, férreamente, ferozmente, y no tuvo dudas en darle con todo lo que podía, ya sea con la cara de alguien inocente o con la de Buda. Pero no solo es eso, es también ver morir a la chica que quería salir con Kurono y cada personaje que estaba en el escenario. Porque eso es lo demoledor, en su rabia, quizá Kurono quería que los demás murieran, pero en el fondo, solo quería regresar con ellos y volver a disfrutar otro momento. Si bien, no me emociona al nivel de llorar, si me hace sentir esa adrenalina que me produce una película de terror o un videojuego de acción, y eso hace lo adictivo de pasar y pasar página, donde muchas veces no importa el diálogo, porque lo fundamental es el dibujo y lo que desea transmitir.

[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.

[Gustavo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este tomo es francamente cruel, no quiero arruinarle la historia a nadie así que no voy a decir nada, pero cuanta crueldad. Hiroya explora la relacion de Kato con su hermanito y su caracter de héroe. Kei Kurono descubre por un alumno nuevo de la secundaria un sitio web que habla sobre Gantz, y se entera de un foro conspiranoico que se dedica a comprobar las teorías sobre el juego y sus participantes. Espero que estos cambios en la vida de Kei lo hagan madurar un poco y ser menos insoportable.

[Dony Grayman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edición argentina, nueva y cruel etapa . ¿Último tomo en incluir aclaraciones de la traducción?

[Mykhailo Gasyuk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Мораль цього тому (якщо вона взагалі передбачалася): один в полі не воїн.

Остання частина арки про бійню у храмі. Істота на десерт виявилася багатофазною, з швидкою регенерацією, і лише випадковість позбавила її такої можливості. Занадто самовпевнений Кей у відключці, всім іншим непереливки. Це наче страшний урок про те, що треба діяти як команда.

Поки що це максимально жорсткий та жорстокий том, гуро викрутили на максимум.

Кей залишається один, ледь тримається, знову має конфлікт з шкільною гопотою. Аж ось у класі з’являється новачок, який згодом починає розпитувати головного героя про кімнату чорної кулі та Гантз, чим ставить Куроно в проміжну позу: ляпнеш щось зайве - і голови немає.

Новачок дізнався про гантзерів з блогу, який вів один з них. Отже, інформація потроху почала зливатися.

А у фіналі на Кея чекає дуже злий жарт.

Сюжет підвісили, невідомо, в який бік він рухатиметься. За один раз іслам прийняло дуже багато персонажів, які могли би бути корисними у майбутньому. Але автори не жаліють нікого. Чергова п’ятірка.

[mugiwara2410 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So the suit, it takes damage up to a certain point, let's say its maximum limit. Then if additional damage taken, suit will break and will not work again. But if you relax your attacks, suit will release its taken stress and go back to normal again.

"It's because you think you might lose. That's the type of person who loses."

In this game, everyone dies except our protagonist. Sad.

Another guy discusses about Gantz to our protagonist in real life. But shouldn't we not discuss about Gantz in real life? Nishi (player alien) told if someone does that, he / she will explode.

Edit: It turns out that Nishi is the one who is uploading all this information on a website called 'Gantz'. People came to know about Gantz in this way.

And I think only players will explode if they reveal about Gantz, not non-players.

[Paulina ෂ · Rating 5 out of 5]

PEDAZO DE TOMO EL QUE SE CREÓ HIROYA OKU. Superó por mucho las expectativas que tenía respecto a la historia, siendo honesta no me esperaba ni la mitad de todo lo que pasó, ya que he estado acostumbrada a que todos salgan vivos, sanos y felices a continuar con sus vidas y lo típico de que el héroe junto con su grupo ganan todo sólo con pérdidas verdaderamente significativas que ocurren después de un buen trayecto dentro de la trama. Estoy bastante agradecida (posterior a tener el corazón en un puño) que Gantz sea la excepción a esa regla.
Ahora tengo más esperanzas en estos mangas, espero que se desarrolle por buen camino.

[Hafeez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume 8: Chapter 83-94
Phase 1: Missions
Arc 3: Buddhist Temple Alien Mission
Arc 4: Shorty Alien Mission

Only Kurono and Kato left while others were dead. Kurono is facing death. Kato fight the thousand arms Buddha alien and managed to defeat it before it transform into its true form; alien with long neck and multiple arms. With strong will to live, Kato succeed in killing the alien. But, his chest was pierced by the alien's tail resulting in his death. Then, for this mission, Kurono is the sole survivor.

Storyline entering new arc. Kurono live in post-mission alone without his childhood friend, Kato. Then, a transfer student moves to his school, named Izumi. He seem knows about Gantz.

[Leonel Buelvas Garcia · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Kei-chan. ¿Por qué nunca pierdes?
-Eso es... porque piensas que podrás llegar a perder. Esa forma de pensar es la que te hace perder.

Y justo cuando se piensa que todo está bien en Gantz, este se demuestra lo contrario.
Buen número que nos narra el final de la misión, pero a un costo demasiado elevado: todos han muerto excepto uno. Y ahora, nuestro personaje, solo e impotente tiene que seguir lidiando con la normalidad que el mundo exterior tiene.
Pero la cacería sigue y la próxima misión no da espera. Solo que ahora, parecer que le tocará solo.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, I certainly didn't expect the way the temple fight ended. The final boss alien is finally something that resembles a more "traditional-looking" alien. And it's so much better than the changes that the anime made to the temple fight - the changes didn't even make for a satisfactory conclusion. Watch the first season, then just switch to the manga.

Poor Kurono (side note: the point system feels completely arbitrary). Before he really gets over what has happened, he gets dumped into the next mission, with a huge disadvantage. That Gantz ball is basically screwing with him.

[nadia ( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars: rip lara croft. also, i would like to rescind my complaint on kato. baby boy, i miss you my child. come back...i was just playing around no need to take it personally ahhaha. anyway, i like the fact that kurono goes on a solo campaign mission because seeing an entirely knew cast over and over again is so annoying. no point in remembering anyone's name since they're all angry, useless, and don't want to listen. except the last cast, most of them carried or helped a lot, too bad they didn't have their suits on. i didn't want them to die.

[Pablohoney Thebends · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gore y mas gore

Spoiler!!!!




la matanza en el templo ratei-in es increíble, sadako y idol, muertos cuando ya me caían bien, partidos por la mitad, kishimoto corroída por acido salvando a kato, kurono a punto de morir salvado por Angelina jolie. Ah y primera escena de sexo explicito entre kurono y angelina, kato con su pecho perforado por el pene del alien en su ultimo stertor, ¡... esto es gantz!, toda la compañía asesinada por confiada.
Finalmente con la última energía de kato logran acabar la misión, pero el costo es solo kei vivo….

[Dumb popcorn's manga · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok I did not expect the author to just kill everyone except for the protagonist. That was pretty interesting. But I'm a little bit dissapointed, I was starting to warm up to the new girl and the "homo" guy who I guess wasn't actually gay and had a moment with his stalker? I don't know, that was weird.

It seems like the next volume will also be really action-packed and now Kei is by himself, so that sounds interesting.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

The battle of the buddha monsters is finally finished and only one person survives to make it back to Gantz.

The fact that our 'heroes' aren't necessarily going to last till the end of this (very long) series makes things more interesting. I still think Kei is pretty much a shit person and wonder if he'll ever grow up.

[Matthew Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

1.5 stars at the max...
Nearly all hope has left me.

One question though:
So he gets like 38 points for defeating those tanaka aliens and he only gets 8 points for defeating like a dozen of those weird Buddha statue aliens? The mangaka doesn't seem to give a crap about logic and consistency.

[Peter Barr · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this, the 8th edition of Gantz, the battle at the temple continues. There have been casualties and at the conclusion, Kurono Kei returns to school to find more confusion in his teenage life. But Gantz goes on. The story is pretty good and the artwork is detailed.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of action.

[omar aguilar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tomo trágico. Me molesto lo qué pasa al final de la misión y creo que dejaría la historia un rato pero cierra con más misterios y nuevas interrogantes. Se volvió más interesante aún.

[Amelia Kow · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Isabelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jesus. This series is insane. So many people died since the 1st volume. It's pretty violent and raw but I am addicted to it. It's thrilling all the time.

[Andrea Aguas · Rating 5 out of 5]

crazy. it was only kei kurono who survived and now he gets to embark on a solo mission. i hope volume 9 gets me something better than this

[Alejandro Casanova vázquez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Waaay too much...

[Alma Guevara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kato... ¿Por qué?

Un chico alto, atractivo... Y pregunta cosas sobre Gantz. Magnífico giro, pero ¿a dónde nos llevará?