Review by Frank Plowright

There’s been a progression to Gantz whereby Kei has gradually become more assured the more times he participates in games, resulting in the latest bunch of contestants taking his advice and looking up to him. However, Hiroya Oku brilliantly disrupted that state of affairs in Gantz/15, by shifting the rules of the game. Instead of the contestants surviving by dealing with an alien threat, the mission is to kill Kei’s girlfriend Tae. He’s not keen on that idea, but everyone else knows their own survival is at stake.

The situation being do or die makes for one hell of an exciting volume. The more pleasant participants are reduced to the same status as everyone else knowing they’ll die if they don’t complete the mission, and it seems to be everyone against Kei, whose situation becomes desperate. Just when all appears lost, though, Oku offers a sliver of hope and gives Kei greater motivation than previously. It’s a masterful piece of plotting.

Oku also introduces a clever twist on use of technology. It’s a sort of invisibility effect, and leads to fights going on when others stand by and can’t see what’s happening. There’s also a brief variation on a trick Oku pulled in Gantz/10, a self-referential joke, but this time just that.

From halfway through the focus switches away from Kei, first to Sakurai, carrying an enormous guilt about what’s been happening, but given the opportunity of redeeming that guilt. Only a couple of chapters are occupied, but within them Oku builds an effective picture of a sadistic killer preying on women. It’s a shame he can’t connect the dots between that and his own behaviour objectifying women via his pin-up pages.

What follows is even more disturbing as an abused and neglected child is sucked into the world of Gantz. This is another compelling volume of an ever more compelling series, and as ever Oku ends with a cliffhanger heading into Gantz/17. Alternatively both are available as part of the sixth Gantz Omnibus.