Gantz

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"GANTZ" is an exception among action manga published by Jump Comics in that it depicts realistic human relationships. The world of "GANTZ" is the actual life of the average Japanese person, so the story feels somewhat believable. And unlike other Jump manga, this manga does not have a predictable harmony.

This work does not speculate on extraterrestrial life or unknown technology. The mystery that is the core of the story is only revealed at the end. So please set aside some unresolved questions that will not be revealed until the end of "GANTZ". The mystery and conspiracy of this work cannot be understood from the perspective ... of the residents of the GANTZ room, who are ordinary citizens.

The GANTZ room also depicts not only traffic accidents and illnesses, but also the detailed pasts and circumstances of people who died by bullying, suicide, neglect, and abuse. This is a topic that is rarely depicted in Jump manga, and it is an element that cannot be ignored. It also reflects the conformity and hypocrisy of the masses, and the ending is moving but also ironic.
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Gantz is a story that's interesting the whole way through, but it's also painfully bad. It can keep you invested all the way, but not with a great plot and well-written characters, but constantly shifting, interesting plot-points that are dropped as often as they are introduced, elements that allude to deeper concepts and meanings that are never explored to a satisfying degree, admittedly high quality drawings and tons of lazy "fan service". Some spoilers ahead:

In Gantz, upon dying, some people are transported a special room, where they are assigned missions to hunt aliens and earn points to be revived. It's introduced as a fairly straightforward ... death game type manga, but as I understand it, Gantz was one of the first to use this concept, so credits where it's due. While this mission structure is fairly formulaic, there's enough creativity in the alien designs and action, to keep it feeling fresh. Because of this structure, characters are constantly introduced and killed off, the problem is that very few characters are well-written, so at best, the deaths serve as shock value, while in other places it can even feel comical. The main character, Kei gets some decent character development, and there's maybe 3 or 4 other male characters who have some nice writing, but all the others are quite one-dimensional, including all the girls and women.

The first female lead, the 15 year old Kishimoto was transported to the room by attempting to commit suicide, but it turns out she actually lived, and the one transported is essentially a clone of her original body, so now there's 2 of her walking around. Do we get to explore the mental state of a suicidal teenager who returns as a fake copy of herself? No, but we do see her naked body a lot, and she does get sexually harassed and assaulted, including by Kei. Then there's an adult woman, who over the course of a single night, has sex with and falls in love with our 15 year old hero. After them, we get Reika, who exists for the fan service of a sexy, popular girl to falling in love with and chasing the main character, and so the author gets to draw the same girl with big boobs naked for the chapter covers. Tae, who ends up with the protagonist in the end, is really the only girl approaching a personality, but you can't really say more about her other than that she's shy, socially awkward, likes to draw and is in love with Kei. There's also Tonkotsu, who gets some brief, but interesting stuff, so if you mesh all the girls together, you might get a single personality out of them, but most of their characterisation just boils down to which male character they completely fall in love with over a couple of hours.

The fan service doesn't just boil down to the treatment and depiction of the women though, but also the main character. While he does get some decent development like I mentioned before, but a large part of his characterisation is just "guy who is a loser in real life is actually a super cool guy, saving the world and getting the girls" type wish fulfilment. Because of all the fan service, it often feels like you're reading the author's self insert wish-fulfilment and thinly veiled fetish, instead of the plot he's creating.

And speaking of the plot, there's a lot of points that are either dropped completely or are completely shallow in how they are explored. The whole cloning/copy element is left unexplored, even when Kei himself is the one who gets a copy made of him, since it's just there to be fan service, where he gets to be with his modest high school girlfriend, and the sexy, famous idol at the same time. Vampires are introduced as adversaries, who are in cahoots with the aliens, but their whole plot gets dropped completely. Kei is presented as cheating on Tae by going on a date with Reika, but her memories of that get erased and they never have to resolve the conflict. At the end, characters get to ask godlike entities about the nature of the world and humanity, and the things they say are treated as this huge emotional moment, with characters having outbursts and breaking down, but the things they're actually saying are fairly surface-level, that most teenagers have as shower thoughts.

The thing Gantz is best at, is how it looks, although it's not without its issues either. Character designs are quite good, there is some same-face syndrome, but that's not a huge deal most of the time. The alien/monster designs are amazing, and the author has a great sense of drawing of drawing unsettling, creepy and outright scary expressions on them - to the point I'd definitely read a completely horror-focused manga from him, if he ever made one, despite thinking Gantz was bad. The backgrounds are apparently made in 3D first, characters get placed into it, and then the drawing are made based on that. This creates a unique feeling of the environment, that I haven't seen from any other manga. It's mostly good, but there are times when it's hard to make out what's happening, with the black clothes the characters are wearing on the darker, more shaded backgrounds. The action can also be hard to follow, the motions and impacts are a bit clunky.

Despite its many flaws, Gantz can keep you reading all the way through. Maybe it's the possibility that just one of the interesting questions it presents will be answered, or maybe it's just for the sheer absurdity of it all, which did make me laugh out loud, especially in the first half. It's not a story with a great plot, characters or themes, but if you can turn off your brain and indulge in the fan service, you'll probably come out liking it. People who think gore, violence, nudity, sex and surface-level questions about the nature of humanity are deep and profound on their own, without the necessity of good writing to expand upon any of them, will likely also enjoy it a lot. So I think it will continue as a relatively popular work, through it all.

Gantz is the most overrated trash manga to grace human existence and anyone who considers it a literary masterpiece is a genuine incel that you need to watch out for. Here's why -

Right from the start of the manga its extremely obvious that the author is writing the manga as if its his own fetish journal. Sexualizing high schoolers isn't a new thing about Japanese mangaka but in the very first chapters there are so many unnecessary sexual scenes and fetishization that really kills the mood, especially when you realize that the sexual scenes are with a character still in her high school.

It ... doesn't help that the author decided inputting his nsfw fanarts on the start of each chapter instead of DeviantArt or something in the most inappropriate of scenes really fucking ruins any tension and mood you'd have while going over multiple chapters. There were many times where something fucked up is going on in the manga with people getting killed left and right in the goriest ways imaginable, characters crying over the deaths of their precious ones in one chapter and when you head over to the next chapter there is a naked lady standing with her tits and her bush out posing like a front page Playboy model. The author seemed to have gained some sense by the end because the finishing chapters actually have proper sensible covers but for the most of the manga be prepared to see a lot of naked ladies even if you didn't consent for them.

But this only covers the tip of the iceberg as this rampant sexualization roots to a deeper issue about the manga itself - the female characters. I've never read a manga where the female characters are so incredibly irrelevant despite making up a huge chunk of the main cast. The women in this manga are fucking helpless, lack any sense of independency and are there just to fawn over the cooler male characters in the series. Like, literally, a female character is introduced in one chapter and you can skip 5 chapters down the line and you'll see the same character fall in love with one of the male characters without achieving anything of her own. I completed the manga last night and I don't remember any major accomplishment that the women in the manga have done except what Reika did in the end (and even that accomplishment felt like it was done just to wrap up her character). For a 387 chapters manga that really tells you a lot about the quality of the female characters written inside.

Now that we're done with the most insufferable part of the manga, let's talk about the bad parts. We talked about the female characters being bad but the male characters aren't that far off either. It's hard to relate or feel anything for most of them because they're just so goddamn bland. They just appear on screen, do cool shit, most of them die while doing cool shit and that's it. Kei Kurono, the MC, is insufferable as well for the first half of the manga as one of the most selfish and inconsiderate main characters that you'll encounter while reading but gets a really nice redemption arc by the end. The only characters I personally liked are Nishi, Suzuki and Sakurai. I honestly wouldn't have minded if we had Sakurai as the main character from the start, even if he is too cliched as a shounen protagonist.

Speaking of cliches, Gantz tries to look cool by breaking a lot of them but fails miserably in the process. Gantz is that emo kid in your school who wears black and smokes in hopes to look cool in front of everyone but just ends up looking up like an idiot in the end. There is a lot of unnecessary gore fuckfest, casual mentions of rape and SA that doesn't influence the character or is brought up again (Berzerk is an amazing example on how to show the lifelong aftermath of SA, for example) and just a lot of sexualization and fetishization where it isn't needed. Case in point, there are a few chapters by the end of the manga where the author really tries to make a pedophile look cool and heroic.

There's also a general feeling that you'll get as you go further in the series where it feels like the mangaka intentionally wants to torture you either through gore, suspense or climax. It's really apparent in the ending and I'm not personally a big fan of it. As a writer myself, I get the habit of torturing your readers a little bit but there is a limit to how far you can stretch it and Gantz definitely stretched it thin.

By the end, Gantz attempts to be a representation of the modern world with its dystopian perspective and for a lot of parts I'd say it pretty much nails down what would happen, even if it takes a very cynical way of showing it. If the rest of the manga wasn't so dogshit I'd give Gantz 6 or 7 for its worldbuilding alone.

Coming to the rare good things that Gantz has and one very clear area where it shines the most is art. The art is fantastic and to his credit the mangaka has given a lot of details to the small things. That includes boob physics as well which I didn't think I would see in a manga done so fluidly but decades of drawing naked high school girls must've paid off for the writer I guess. Some of the backgrounds look really fantastic and there are a few panels where I actually waited for a bit and scanned each minor detail because of amazingly detailed they were. I saw a clip of Connor talking about how the monsters in Gantz are one of its strongest suit in his trash taste podcast and I would agree as well.

I liked the ending even though it felt really, really cliched and a bit rushed, which seems to be an unpopular opinion for the series. Absolutely not a big fan of it but it could've gone worse. Plot was good but not good enough to be worth the shit that comes with it. Action scenes were great but it's not something I look for in a manga when choosing to read/rate it simply because anime is a better medium to judge that.

Gantz has got a few things going for it and if you're a proud edgelord/incel you'll absolutely love this manga. For anyone else with half a brain and common human sensibility, I'd recommend avoiding this manga like the plague especially because it's a dumpster fire that you won't be able to stop reading until you've finished it.

4/10 - It's bad. Read at your own peril. You've been warned.