Genre: Sci-fi, Action

Range: 18+

Price: 12.95 USD

Easily one of, if not the most anticipated seinen titles in 2008, Gantz has finally made it to selected American bookshelves.

This scanlation sweetheart finally found a home at Dark Horse (after two years of negotiation, according Director of Asian Licensing, Michael Gombos). Dark Horse pushes the envelope on its "era of no censorship" with this mature manga manifesto. MPD-Psycho is a hyper-violent psychological fall into "CSI: Hades" but Gantz goes a different direction. The violence is still there, but the mental puzzle is shared more between reader and the characters. Simply put, the players in Gantz understand what is going on as much as the reader...something a little different from MPD-Psycho, where, at least at the beginning, the reader is the one out of the loop.

Gantz opens dynamically and perfectly. High-schooler Kei is on a Tokyo subway platform when he spots his old elementary school classmate, Masaru. Self-absorbed Kei doesn't know how to react when he sees the bad-boy Masatu jump onto tracks to rescue a homeless drunk, but soon he finds him in the most dangerous reunion of childhood chums. Just as the incoming train finds our boys in its path, suddenly the two are transported to a small Tokyo apartment occupied by a group of people (and a dog) who couldn't be more different from each other. A couple Yakuza, a teacher, a politician, and a strange-looking middle-schooler join our high-school almost-heroes, along with a non-cooperative asexual and, most importantly, a giant black sphere. Is this hell, heaven, or the beginning of a bizarre and violent game? Soon a busty naked girl is "written" into the scene in a TRON-like entrance. Sexy but biological at the same time, this will be a theme throughout. The pace is quick and there isn't much time to muse before the sphere begins to move...

Revealing too much more would take the fun out of peeling the seinen onion that is Gantz. Guns, games, boobs and bile, Gantz has all the mature male reader could ask for in a manga, and there is little question as to why Japanese publisher Shueisha chose manly Dark Horse over its usual American publisher, Viz for this release. Dark Horse will publish MPD-Psycho uncensored and to its completion. As much as I like Viz's recent mature and horror releases, I wonder if they would have made the same promise. On the other hand, MPD-Psycho ended at under a dozen volumes, and Gantz still continues as twice that. I do not know whether Dark Horse has committed to publishing all volumes of Gantz, but we do know that the first four volumes will be quarterly, and the pace will double to bi-monthly after that, so that is a good sign for readers, like me, getting on on the ground floor.

Already I have read criticism of later volumes, some which seems plausible (misogynistic themes) and some that doesn't (too much swearing). I have not read any scanlations of Gantz, but those that complain about the vulgar language need to understand that Japanese doesn't have "swear words" in the same was as English. Vulgarity is in the eyes of the translator and editor, and in my experience scanlation translators turn into Tarantino when doing dialogue for truly mature titles like Gantz. Thankfully translator Matthew Johnson and editor Tim Ervin showed some restraint in this first volume.

Look up "seinen" in the dictionary, and you might see a cover of Gantz. The absolutely perfect opening is only almost trumped by the explosive cliff-hanger ending. This long-awaited title is finally official in English. Enter Gantz at your own risk. The meek need not apply. 

9.5