Gantz

Thought your life was bad? Sometimes, death is worse. There is no salvation, peace, nor god waiting to receive you into their care. But wait, a god? Maybe you are talking about that big black ball stuck in the room with you. Now you are thrown into a game, fighting green aliens and robot monsters for the chance to survive.

When Kei Kurono is killed, he thus finds himself caught in such a game—a test of his skills, morals, and will to survive. His life is not his own; his death is spat and trampled upon over and over again. What happens if he does not listen? God knows.

A word of warning: Gantz is not for the faint-hearted, but neither is it as simple as it looks. Gore, rape, and violence is rampant, as are portrayals of greed, violence, and all the ugliness that one sees in society today.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Background

There is also a live action film adaptation that was released in 2011, and a video game by Konami released on PlayStation 2 in 2005.

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Related Anime

Adaptation:	Gantz
Sequel:	Gantz 2nd Stage
Other:	Gantz:O, Gantz x Senran Kagura New Link

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Characters & Voice Actors

Kurono, Kei

Main

Namikawa, Daisuke
Japanese

Katou, Masaru

Main

Yamaguchi, Mayumi
Japanese

Kishimoto, Kei

Main

Nabatame, Hitomi
Japanese

Nishi, Jouichirou

Supporting

Yabe, Masahito
Japanese

Sakuraoka, Sei

Supporting

Sonozaki, Mie
Japanese

Gantz

Supporting

Suzumura, Sadayo

Supporting

Kakazu, Yumi
Japanese

Nemoto, Tetsu

Supporting

Kawanago, Masahito
Japanese

Hojo, Masanobu

Supporting

Kamiya, Hiroshi
Japanese

Kanda, Mika

Supporting

Sasajima, Kaoru
Japanese

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Staff

Itano, Ichirou

Director, Storyboard

Hayase, Hiroyuki

Sound Director

Ayres, Greg

Script

Auten, Christine

Script

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Opening Theme

"Super Shooter" by Rip Slyme

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Ending Theme

"Last Kiss" by Bonnie Pink

More reviews

Reviews

Oct 8, 2009

Maur

Mixed Feelings

Gantz is gritty. Gantz is gruesome. Gantz is a show where a bunch of people who have died essentially become the Japanese MIB, only with a Battle Royale twist.

Now that may sound like an intriguing premise, but let me continue. I'm a pretty easy going guy and I can tolerate more nonsense than most people. For instance, I've actually watched (and in some cases enjoyed) Ikkitousen, Elfen Lied, Mezzo Forte and even some hentai, so I know tasteless when I see it. Gantz is many things, but someone would have a hard time trying to defend it as tasteful. Everyone, including old folks, kids, ...

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May 5, 2015

Corbert

Mixed Feelings

Good guy A: I'm gonna shoot it!
Good guy B: Shoot it now!
Alien: *kills random guy*
Good guy B: Shoot it already!
Good guy A: I will for sure!
Alien: *kills another guy*
Good guy A: Okay, I'm serious, I think I should shoot it right now...
Good guy B: Yeah, sounds like a good idea...
Alien: *kills nearly everyone but good guy A and B*
Good guy A: *finally shoots the alien*
... -mission cleared-
==========================================

Fun aside, but this is mostly what this anime felt like. It's not that it's bad at all (the story is quite interesting and offers great potential to make this show an awesome anime), but there's still so much that made me feel uncomfortable watching this show. But let's start with the good thing:

Story:
The main characters die in the very beginning and get kinda reborn in an appartment in Tokyo. They receive some super cool weapons and a suit, that offers superhuman strength, as well as the mission to use this equipment to kill some aliens, that are hiding in town, within 60 minutes. Why they got to do that remains unexplained, but I didn't mind that.
That actually seemed to be a pretty cool concept to me, and I did enjoy the first episodes.

Characters:
The characters are cheap... like... really cheap. We got the generic loser, that fell for a beautiful girl, we got the generic beautiful girl, that fell for a tall, muscular guy, and we got the generic muscular guy, that's not interested in the girl at all. Besides that we have a lot of annoying side characters, that are mainly used to be crushed by some aliens. Also there's no bit of character development in the course of the anime, which would be necessary to make the characters even a little more interesting. So long story short: The characters aren't really bad, but they're also far from being special or at least interesting.

Animation/Artstyle/etc:
The anime looks alright, no more, no less, a 5 out of 10, the least you could expect but nothing better. I'm really struggling how to describe what the show looks like, but I think "alright" just describes it perfectly well. There's a lot of splatter and a lot of nudity; fans will like it, others won't. The design of the aliens is alright aswell (an onion-frakenstein's monster-hybrid and birds without wings). Nothing to get excited about, but they're okay.

Sound:
The soundtrack is actually pretty good. It fits the whole scenario and accompanies the action scenes as well as the not-so-action-scenes. The opening's still stuck in my head right now by the way.

Enjoyment:
First of all I did enjoy most parts of the show, because I like the idea and the way the story is told. BUT! Now we get to the big minus, that made some of the episodes a pain in the ass: The fighting scenes are sooo drawn out. I heard a few people comparing it to Dragonball Z, but Gantz is completely different (in a bad way). In DBZ both the hero and the villain stop fighting for hours just to talk about how much they hate each other, but at least they're as fair not to attack their enemy while he's still talking. In Gantz the "heroes" stop fighting to do nothing, while the aliens keep crushing them. It sometimes felt like they didn't even want to kill these monsters, and I personally really do hate that. It even made me fast forward some scenes because I just couldn't handle it, and eventually it's the reason I rate this anime not as good as I'd actually like to.

Recommandation:
Don't watch it if you can't see blood. Don't watch it if you don't like sex scenes. Don't watch it if you get worked up over characters standing on the sidelines. Watch it if you're into sci-fi/aliens/mystery/superpowers/whatsoever, and you'll be having a good time.

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Aug 1, 2007

nervous_system

Not Recommended

Skip the anime, read the manga. The pacing is awkward and the artwork pales in comparison to that in the manga. The artwork of the manga is drawn over 3d models whereas the animation is completely flat. Also the exquisitely drawn blood and gore of the manga is translated into a few seconds of short unskillfully animated blood squirting. I suppose they could not invest any money into animating most of it since they knew it would be edited out for several releases.

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Gantz Manga to End in Two More Chapters

Gantz series creator Hiroya Oku noted in Miracle Jump Magazine that the series would be ending soon. The 24th issue of Young Jump Magazine this year, announced that ...read more

May 15, 2013 8:20 AM by Brand | Discuss (114 comments)

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