Story-
Most of the story of Gantz plays on the moral decisions the main characters must make. Although a lot of the intensity from Gantz is trying to push the viewers sense of morality and sensibility as well. Meaning. They don't really hold much back here. There's profanity, Gore and sex. And plenty of it. You also have a lot of pointless dialogue. I would be willing to bet if they would have cut half of the aforementioned -
Guy1:"shoot guy!"
Guy2:"I'm gonna shoot!"
Alien: kills guy 3
Guy1:"you really need to shoot guy!"
Guy2:"I'm really gonna shoot guy!"
Alien kills both guy 1 and 2 and a girl.
Girl's assets are exposed at death.
They would have lost about 8 episodes worth of time. Seriously that's just about every battle scene. So by the time any character almost reaches a decision. You don't really care who dies as long as they move on to the next scene. That being said. Gantz does well enough to make you feel for the characters separate from those occasions.
Art-
The animation is pretty good keeping in mind when it came out. Most scenes and characters are polished and have a good feel to them. Though apart from characters the way they decided to animate camera shifts and some objects is strange to say the least. Maybe a better word would be cheap. A scene will look decent such as the first subway scene. Then they'll either zoom and the image will distort in quality or the other objects don't keep up with the background when the camera shifts. Apart from that it's really clean and easy to watch.
Sound-
Gonna be honest. I really don't remember much of the soundtrack besides ambient scifi music. Which fit but isn't memorable. So I gave it a mid grade. Got the job done. But nothing special.
Character-
As far as characters go Gantz really goes from one stereotype to another. That can be good or bad at times. Where it really pulls is when characterA is clearly a stereotypical thug 70% of the time. But then circumstances cause a change in character and said stereotype becomes slightly less stereotypical. That's only for a few characters though.
Enjoyment-
I enjoyed it when things had proper pacing. But most of the time it's like ascending a roller coaster and when you hit the top and prepare for your descent. It plateaus. Except everything outside of the Gantz game. The pacing there is pretty realistic.
Overall-
It's not bad, but it's not necessarily great either. It is different and you probably won't find something much like Gantz out there. It's a good sci-fi to some extent, but in reality it focuses much more on the human element. I'd advise most people to skip the anime and go for the manga. Not to be punny. But as a sci-fi title the Manga and anime are worlds apart. The manga is easily one of my top 5. The anime on the other. I highly doubt I'll be watching it again anytime soon. If at all.
