Genre Action
Age Rating 18+
Price $12.95
The last thing Kei and Masaru remember was being struck dead by a subway train while saving the life of a drunken bum. What a waste! And yet somehow they're still . . . alive? Or semi-alive? Maybe it's reanimated . . . by some kind of alien orb with a nasty message . . . "Your lives are over. What you do with your new lives is up to me!" And what this orb called "Gantz" intends to do with their lives is make them play games of death, hunting all kinds of odd aliens, along with a bunch of other ordinary citizens who've recently met a tragic semi-end. The missions they embark upon are often dangerous. Many die-and die again.
This dark and action-packed manga deals with the moral conflicts of violence, teenage sexual confusion and angst, and our fascination with death.
One of the elements that strikes me when it comes to Gantz is its artwork: it’s almost photo-realistic, it has detailed backgrounds, and it’s not afraid of depicting gore and nudity when necessary. Of course from reading the notes at the end of the comic, apparently a good chunk of the manga was created using 3D-modeling technology and in retrospect that should be evident. But that wasn’t how I felt when I read and re-read Gantz unless you know what you’re looking for. The 3D technology was seamless and created a great product.
As for the story, it starts out with an interesting pace. It begins with what seems like the main protagonist for the series—except that he’s a jerk. Thankfully, Gantz has a huge cast of characters and if you don’t initially like Kei, there’s his foil Masaru to appreciate. After both die sacrificing themselves to save a drunkard, the weirdness begins as the pair are transported into a room with a strange black sphere. Apparently, deceased people are revived to participate in a weird game.
Gantz in my opinion revolves around the enigma and mystery, something like a cross-breed between X-Files and Lost. The first volume is enough to whet your appetite as it introduces the initial cast, the premise, and ends on a suspenseful note. It reads like it has this big potential and only time will tell whether it manages to make the most out of its premise (my initial impression was that it dropped the ball on some areas while it surpassed my expectations in others, but I’ll re-evaluate those views when the official volumes from Dark Horse gets released).
Fair warning though to readers: this comic has lots of violent graphic scenes. Perhaps not on the level of M.P.D. Psycho or Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service but it’s still there and expect a lot of action scenes in the future. On the other hand, the series also has a lot of fan service and the first volume should set expectations as to what kind of fan service one will read in future volumes.
Overall not necessarily the type that makes me say “wow, this is such an amazing manga” such as Death Note or Monster but rather it leaves me with the impression that “this title has legs and could go somewhere in future volumes”.
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