Review by Frank Plowright
Any story aiming at success needs to hook readers from the start, and Hiroya Oku achieves that brilliantly with the way Gantz opens. Tokyo high schooler Kei is shown being judgemental about his fellow passengers waiting for a subway train, even Kato, his friend when they were younger, but when someone falls on the tracks it’s Kato who acts, while everyone else watches. With a train imminent he calls on Kei to help. The tension is superbly set, and augmented by the secondary awkwardness between Kei and Kato, who ignore each other at first. If Oku is putting so much effort into what’s just a means to an end, he institutes faith of Gantz being great.
While the Tokyo commuters see Kei and Kato die, readers see them manifest in a room full of other people, who we learn were also on the verge of death. Among them is a large motionless sphere. After some initial confusion and another disturbing arrival, those present are told their lives are no longer their own, and they’re provided with weapons and sent on a mission to hunt down an alien looking person.
Oku puts just as much thought into his art as he does the plot. People manifesting and disappearing do so gradually slice by slice leaving disturbing cross sections of bodies half in one place and half in another. Clothing and locations are detailed, and effects such as the look of the sphere are designed as distinctive for black and white reproduction.
As if the premise of hunting down and killing someone isn’t disturbing enough for what have until now largely been ordinary people, Oku’s alien is thoroughly off-putting, smelling strongly of onions, their conversation limited to onions and with skin texture resembling an onion. There may be an element of allegory, but the purpose is to see how far ordinary people will move beyond the bounds of normal human behaviour if pushed under stress. Gantz ends having proved that, and in newly distressing circumstances.
It’s a fine opening volume, pushing emotional buttons from the start in a horrific and compelling drama. Gantz 2 continues the thrills, or the first three volumes are combined in the first of Dark Horse’s pocket Omnibus editions.
