Review by Frank Plowright

Kei’s secret life as a hunter and killer of aliens on Earth has intruded into his normal life as a high school student, and Gantz 10 picks up where Gantz 9 left off. The school is experiencing an alien invasion and the police have now arrived in force. Because Hiroya Oku’s pulled the same trick too often, few readers are going to believe the alien is dead, so it’s no spoiler to reveal it’s not. The astonishingly detailed sample art shows the eventual aftermath.

Gantz 9, was a breakthrough volume because Oku began compressing the plot and introducing new ideas, and that continues here when the attention shifts away from Kei. We’re shown suicidal Sakurai Hiroto and Sakata, the person he meets after a failed suicide attempt and who claims to be able to transform Sakurai’s life. From what we see, it’s no idle boast.

The remainder of the volume is spent with Sakurai, and as he mulls over how much his life might change in the next two days we learn what drove him to consider suicide in the first place. It’s a particularly pernicious form of bullying, and Oku ensures we become so caught up in his story that there’s no thought of missing Gantz’s usual alien encounters.

Another new character is introduced in the final few chapters, seen on the right of the cover portraits. Kazedaiza Emon is new to Tokyo, a giant of a man, and intent on establishing credentials by beating up the strongest guys he can locate. That’s when Kei returns. Those closing chapters are strange, and the reason why is eventually revealed as Oku dropping back on an old comics cliché, yet they work because he’ll deceive most readers. You’ll find yourself re-evaluating the earlier material wondering at which point reality diverged. Exactly how much is truth will be revealed in Gantz 11, unless you’d prefer the smaller sized Omnibus 4 combining them both.