Gantz
Tags: violence, satire

Plot synopsis:
A pair of high school students, Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato, are hit by a subway train in an attempt to save the life of a drunk homeless man who had fallen onto the tracks. Following their deaths, Kurono and Kato find themselves transported to the interior of an unfurnished Tokyo apartment, where they meet Joichiro Nishi, a Gantz veteran, and other clueless participants. The pair soon realizes that they are not allowed to leave the apartment. At one end of the room there is a large black sphere known as "Gantz".
After some time in the room, the Gantz sphere opens up, revealing a bald naked man with a breathing mask and wires attached to his head, and various weapons for them to use. These include the custom fitting black suits which give them super-human strength, speed, stamina and damage resistance, a controller which acts as a radar and stealth unit, X-gun, X-Shotgun, Y-Gun. Later on the series the Gantz sword, Gantz Bike are made available as well as much more powerful weapons are awarded in the 100 point menu.
When the Gantz sphere opens, green text appears on its surface, informing those present that their "lives have ended and now belong to him". A picture and brief information is shown of some of the Gantz' targets; Gantz orders them to go and kill them. Except for a single mission, all the targets are aliens living on Earth, which take on a wide variety of forms. During the mission, normal people cannot see the players or the aliens. Gantz transports them to the area of the mission, and they cannot leave or return until all the enemies have been killed, or the time limit has run out. If they survive a successful mission, each individual is awarded points for the aliens they have killed. Once a participant has scored 100 points, a "100 point menu" will appear. The menu offers three options:
Option 1: The participant can return to their normal life, never having to be summoned by Gantz again. As a price, their memories of Gantz and the missions will be erased.
Option 2: The participant obtains a unique and extremely-powerful weapon.
Option 3: The participant can revive someone who has died during a mission from Gantz' memory.
After a mission has been completed, points are tallied up, the participants are allowed to leave and do as they see fit until their next mission, with the exception of talking about Gantz which would lead to their heads exploding. During Kurono and Kato's third mission, all the participants including Kato are killed, however Kato kills the last boss giving Kurono a chance to survive. Kurono survives the third mission bleeding on the floor with his limbs cut apart. After the third mission Kurono starts to change inside adopting a hero, leader complex similar to Kato. As the series continues, Kurono participates with the objective of reviving his deceased friends with the 100 point reward option. A new team of Gantz players is assembled, which Kurono leads, as the most experienced veteran and one of the best fighters. In the Oni mission it is shown that with Kurono's "will to live" he becomes the most ferocious Gantz hunter in the team. Through his interactions with the other members of the team and his life or death battles, Kurono gradually grows into a responsible leader. After the Oni mission Kato is revived by Kurono, and soon after Kurono meets his demise against the vampires. As the series goes on, the rules of the missions change; they can now be seen by regular people, the aliens they encounter are increasingly more powerful and dangerous, and they participate in a mission with another Gantz team from Osaka. Kato becomes the center of attention in the manga and his quest to revive Kurono. In a desperate attempt to revive his best friend, Kato fights the one hundred point alien Nurarihyon which obliterates both Osaka and Kurono's team. At the end of the mission, similar to the first time Kato died, he defeats arguably the strongest alien in the series and is laid bleeding on the floor. The series depicts both the missions and Kurono's regular life, as well as the daily lives of other Gantz players (to a lesser extent).
After several missions, an old participant named Nishi, who knows more than the others about how Gantz works, shows them a "catastrophe countdown" on the Gantz sphere which the other players were unaware of. The countdown reveals that there is one week left until some unknown "catastrophe." At the end of that week, a massive alien force invades the Earth and begins exterminating the human race, while Kurono and his companions try their best to make use of Gantz' advanced technology and weaponry in defense. At the end, Nishi and Kurono are depicted to be similar, both of whom were despised by their family and were sinister; however, unlike Nishi, Kurono has a reason to live. Nishi, in the chapter "The Great Escape", is left for dead by Kurono, vowing vengeance against him and crying out for Gantz and mother for help. It is hinted that Nishi died, but his death seems to be unclear. The Japanese also learn of the existence of Gantz teams all around the world. After a long battle, the humans manage to stop the alien invasion and soon after, it is revealed that it was another, highly advanced alien species that provided mankind with the means to defend itself against the invaders, for reasons they refuse to reveal and calls it a whim. In a desperate last effort, the leader of the alien forces, Eeva, challenges the whole human race, promising to exterminate every inhabitant by himself by crashing their mother ship, killing both races if Kurono does not come to their mother ship to fight him. Prior to this announcement Eeva completely dominates all Gantz teams in his vicinity by killing all the hunters, giving the human race a sense of their mortality. The world calls on Kurono, which is broadcast to the entire world, and, with a revived Kato's help, Kurono bets all his chance of winning and saving the human race on himself. Kurono manages to defeat Eeva, thus preventing the alien mothership from destroying Earth. The series ends with Kurono and Kato returning safely to Earth and being greeted as heroes.

Review: The Gantz anime series is an amalgamation of events that occurred in the first few volumes of the manga.
There's a good deal of sex and violence as well as long stretches of philosophical banter and social critique, but it often comes across as being so self-righteous and ultimately defeatist that most messages would only be appealing to audiences that already had the same beliefs.The artwork is dark and is true to Oru Hiroya's concepts down to the intricately detailed weapons and power suits.
Gantz actually got my adrenaline pumping throughout the series and in effect almost made me feel like breaking in the television screen at some points.
You feel for the characters that you do not even know just for the sake of wanting him/her to survive Gantz evil game.
The only thing that got me kind of mad ws how the characters took forever to actually shoot a villain/alien/evil human.
When i was thinking that a great part of the animes were looking similar, i watched this one with no great expectations.I got surprised with the realism of the characters' actions.
This anime is great because it is really innovative and explores the characters like no other.
Chief among the questions raised, are: "Is life truly sacred?" "Is it kill or be killed?" and, "What, if anything, can one person do to change the world?" While the viewer may make his or her own conclusions to these questions, the director still hasn't given his answer yet, forcing the public to wait for "Gantz" Season 2.This anime contains adult themes including violence, nudity, and profanity.
I would recommend this DVD series to the most die hard Anime fans (meaning the like more then Naruto and Inyuasha great but not the best anime's.) So if you like blood, death, and maybe a little sex in an anime this is the perfect one for you.
just know you have to watch the last episodes a few time before you completely get what happens unless your some1 who catches on fast..
The subtle but strong colors, the simple character styles, the AMAZING music, the exciting storyline, everything is great about this tiny little adaptation of a longer (and even better) manga.
The characters aren't much for observation, or any thought that isn't self-involved and too rudimentary for the capacity for real self-consciousness.However, if you wanted to watch a pack of animal-order personalities get horribly mutilated -- no, forget that, they still don't die quick enough to sustain interest..
Yes, there are some things that aren't fully explained...but the end result, what happens to our hero(and/or heroes) is quite clear.In conclusion, it's an anime with a great concept, great characters to explore it, great animation, a ton of violence, plenty of nudity, a decent amount of action and some good social commentary.
Regardless of the manga, if you've read it or what you think of it, Gantz is a fantastic stand alone anime...and I think I'd prefer THAT to a seemingly endless story..
It does everything this show does (action, vulgar language, animation, story arcs, and characters, sexy women) ten times better.
The plot is that there is this orb with a guy in it called "Gantz" who randomly picks dead people and keeps them trapped in its apartment until it sends them out as a type of sadistic game to kill random monsters with skin-tight super-suits and weapons that, honestly, serve no other function than to create the most gore out of a battle as possible.
Sometimes they get past the fan service and actually come up with a great series.Gantz is one of them..
that's whats awesome about it I think because he's not some unrealistic mild mannered good guy, or an angsty 'the world has done me wrong' and 'woe is me' character so easily portrayed in anime.
I really like the Gantz manga, I've been reading it for some time and it's become one of my favorites, but the anime in my opinion is kind of bad.I know what you're thinking, I'm probably being unfair comparing the two.
But here's the thing, I watched the anime BEFORE I started reading the manga and still didn't like it.
But even that is only a minor problem.The story for Gantz is intense and violent for good reason, but with the anime, it felt kind of flat at times.
Not to mention that the endings to each episode are so sudden and nonsensical and each episode is full of random stuff that slows the plot down drastically, I can literally name at least 10 things in the first episode alone that didn't happen in the manga (for good reason) and screw up the continuity of the entire story.Also, the ending was complete time filler crap that was VERY similar to the aforementioned Cowboy Bebop at the very end.
I know that some anime like Black Butler do that if there isn't any more source material at the time, but that's not the case for Gantz.
By the first episode, there was a lot more story than they've got in the entire anime, in fact I'd say they only adapted a third of the existing source material at the time.
All that time, I was just asking "did they blow their whole budget on how many unnecessary monologues and scenes there are?" Apparently so, cause I can't think of any other way they wouldn't include more of it.On the plus side, though, the English voice acting is surprisingly good, Christopher Ayres in particular does a pretty good job as Kei Kurono, even if he kind of makes him sound older than he actually is.
I think this series could use a reboot with a better, more competent production team because Gantz deserves a good anime adaptation.
I thought it was a cool thing: guns, high tech and funny plot about a bunch of dead people who seems to be resurrected to fight alien creatures.
When they fight an alien like creature the first time I expected a bit action and well, there was action and blood, lot of blood and dead people.
Absolutely cruel (rapists, crime lords) to complete innocent people (grandma and the little boy) are send to kill aliens (well, send to die would match more)and absolutely nothing is explained.To summarize that: A bunch of flat characters are equipped witch guns an special suits to kill (or be killed by) aliens in very bloody ways.
There are several scenes that don't particularly add to the story but seem like they were added to display how good the animators are.
Some of the characters end up in long drawn out speeches that preach but make you feel like the writers were getting paid by the word.
I could tell you not to waste your time watching the anime, but i would rather tell you to download and read the manga at www.stoptazmo.com.
I actually wanted to grab the main character by the neck and kill him just to end the series early.
Usually that isn't a problem at other occasions: by hearing them many-many times you get to like the song, but with Gantz it just won't work: especially the ED is annoying as f.ck.
Recently, I started reading the Gantz manga and I had finished it just a few weeks ago, and I really liked it, so I started watching the anime and it was amazing, amazing story, amazing characters and everything I could possibly wish for in an anime, it had only one problem, and it was that the characters took way too long in making a single decision, sometimes the show needed to do it to make a point an, but sometimes they just did it to make the episodes a bit longer, you can tell which ones are filler because they are just unnecessary and add nothing to the episodes.
One of the things that makes the show so great is that it's unexpected, you never see anything coming until it happens and when it does, it is shocking (unless you have read the manga) it has amazing animation, especially for its time and great music.
I was enjoying every second of it, and then the second season started, at first, it was just as good if not better than the first season, and then they start adding filler character after filler character dragging everything on as long as they possibly could, and this is where it jumped the shark, at this point, Gonzo could not make any more episodes because they had caught up with the manga, so they ended the show with a horrendous filler finale that had endless plot holes, character derailments and general stupidity up to its nonsensical ending, I would have given this show a 9, or maybe even a 10, because of how good it was, but the ending left a bad taste in my mouth.
Let's start with the bad plot: A group of people who all die about the same time are sent back to live.....by a giant metal ball called Gantz!
For those people who want to watch it because they heard that it is gory: Well there is some gore in it but in my opinion The bad plot and the bad voice acting (And of course the annoying characters) would even scare of hardcore fans of Gore/Schlock.
The anime is just soo bad that i had to write a review to warn you people to not waste 2 seasons of your time on this anime.1) it is so badly written, plot is bullsht, characters whine non stop like a bitch, thank god for that kid and grandma to kid freaking lamely beemed to death 2) REALLY you will hate all that whinny characters, who you will not grow to love of any sort.
I would imagine most of us who haven't killed would question what is happening & those of us who are more tainted & aren't in the norm in life wouldn't find killing anything a problem.Gantz goes into the human physique & shows how the characters think like real human beings.
I think that Gantz is an intense thriller with unexpected situations that make the anime great.
The story is weird, as human life by itself, what I try to say is that as the characters in the anime appear one day in a room and they must survive, we born one day in a room and we must to survive too.
So I thought, more like hoped, to get at least some back story in the TV series.While there is sick sex like bestiality restating that normal has an entirely different meaning in the misogynistic Japanese society, there are no characters at all.
Just proves most anime watchers are just closet perverts who are obsessed with Japanese culture.I enjoyed the first and last episode, but everything in between was bland and actually pretty terrible.Throughout the entire anime, I was wondering, "WHY DON'T THEY JUST SHOOT THE DAMN ALIENS?" They are teleported to some surreal purgatory like place and see people close to them dying left and right in horrible ways (getting torn apart, mauled, etc.), yet they sit there just to get killed time and time again.
I cant get over the great expectation of this underrated show, i believe it is to be told a bad adaptation from the Manga, i did not think so myself having read the manga and then watched the show, i was fairly impressed and i think its time this show got a good review because it freakin' deserves one, the first thing i realised about this show is the amount of realism in the characters, The Lead character Kei Kurono: hes a perverted teen who thinks about nothing but girls, and doesn't want to help anybody, and has a huge level of arrogance and in the first episode is hit by a train along with his friend after they try to help a homelessman whom has fallen on the tracks.
next, Masuro Kato: always wants to help people, always thinks he is doing the right thing, and in the end gets whats coming to him also hit by a train, Kei Kishimoto: the female of the story commits suicide in the bathtub, does nothing but whine and does nothing about it and last but not least Joichiro Nishi: killed himself by jumping off his school rooftop, and i only have one thing to say about this guy...hes the best.
Gantz, the best Anime-series of the history.
And the most important thing, this Anime-series it hooks as any other one, it is impossible to see an I surrender and not to want to know that it will happen later...
Although I feel the main reason for my disappointment was due to the likable characters (that took around 9 or 10 episodes to get used to and like) dying right near the end, and being replaced with some really quite annoying characters.
this might be one of the best looking pieces of garbage ever...it doesn't follow the normal Japanese anime story of the hero, but that's not a good thing.The story goes like this.
i know i didn't i hate anything that kills off a character that you grow to like for no reason, there's no emotional center.
these people are going to die and that's what's going to happen...It feels kind of like watching Cube where people show up and they don't know what's going on and everyone has a different opinion.
it was stupid and at times really boring the characters come and go so quickly it's hard to like anyone, so it's kind of like just watching people die for 13 hours.
I really like gantz even though I didn't get the ending, but thats what I like about gantz the last episode leaves you hanging in the air not knowing what actually happened, I think it would be better if you watch it twice so you can get 'n better understanding of gantz, but in the end I know that it was an great plot and that it is directed very well!
There is quite a bit of nudity although it felt deliberately uncomfortable rather than the usual fan service.The episodes featuring missions are nicely action packed with plenty of exciting moments even if characters have a habit of talking when they should be shooting at times!
If you are the sort of person who wants everything explained by the end you may be disappointed but if you don't mind some major points remaining a mystery you are likely to enjoy this; I certainly did.
But the anime seems to be like bad side of 'Game of Thrones', they killed off nearly all of the likable or interesting characters early on, almost to the point of me not caring who lives or dies.
The anime tries to do both and it just doesn't work.I did like the main character Kurono, particularly when he keeps his chalkboard-scratching voice silent, only because he finally breaks the "frozen with fear" stage (a stage it seems everyone initially gets locked into), begins to discover the potential of their obscure suits and weapons, and actually kicks some alien ass in the 2nd and 3rd missions.
I was happily amazed to see some of the 2nd group (mostly just the three main characters though) actually bond and work together and with quite heavy difficulty, defeat the missions' first two big, stone warrior aliens, only to watch their efforts disintegrate in vain when the two fallen aliens are immediately replaced by six more stone like alien statues, along with an apparently stronger new head leader, that pretty much singlehandedly kills off all of our heroic alliance in a few bloody stabs and separations.Seriously, the path taken with the overall story was just downright depressing.
I found this series was pretty emotional to watch because people, aliens,etc are being killed one by one for so many different reason.
Gantz is an amazing anime and manga.
I want to write this just to answer to those who hated the show due to violence, nudity and weird stuff that did happen in the anime, and say that only perverts and anime fans will like it.In my whole life this is the second anime that I see.
So on I accidentally found Gantz and started watching it, and the story absorbed me until the end.
It all feels a little disjointed, with conversations seeming to start half way through, and finish just as abruptly.The plot, as far as I can figure it out, is this: Certain people, for various reasons, die before their time.
At this point, one of the gathered instructs them that they have to don a suit which is imbued with special powers, and go off to fight an alien(!) Thing is, they have no choice about fighting the alien, as they are transported automatically at a given point in time, at which moment the huge black ball starts counting down an hour - the time they have to dispatch the alien menace.It's all rather odd, none of the characters are likable in any way with no redeeming features, and it also has possibly the worst title music of any show I have ever heard - a hideous Japanese interpretation of 'jungle' - yet it is strangely compelling, and will keep you watching until the end.Far from the best anime out there, but still intriguing enough to recommend..
But I doubt it's gonna be worth watching.However Looking for Gantz 2 I came across this anime show.
Now I read the Gantz story on Wikipedia so for me the whole point of watching this show was to see that story, so Gantz training missions » alien invasion » beating the aliens » explanation where Gantz comes from.Imagine my disappointment after going trough all the immense slow progressing episodes and not even getting to the alien invasion at the end.Let me list some more things that made it so bad.* The lack of explaining stuff to newcomers just because people wouldn't believe it anyhow.