Review by Frank Plowright

Former friends Kei and Kato have been reunited in the strangest of circumstances, saved from certain death only to be plunged into a bizarre game scenario where they and others must hunt down and kill an alien. Gantz 2 ended with them restored to the real world in full health, but with the suggestion that they’re now cloned copies of who they were.

While Kei believes life will return to normal now, he’s mistaken, but crucially, he’s returned home still wearing the technologically advanced skintight suit he was given. Among the other survivors is a girl also called Kei, and it’s with her that this volume takes the strangest turn. It’s best experienced without spoilers, but Hiroya Oku delivers something sordidly compelling, given Kei is only fifteen. It means Gantz takes a turn from an action thriller into the comedy of frustration, but that’s only temporary, although the companion scenes are clumsily handled. They’re the method of also introducing gangster culture to Gantz, which seems to be the set-up for something in the future, but actually comes to fruition in this volume.

As before, Oku’s art is rich, especially in defining character, and while the backgrounds are plain, they convey what’s needed via what seems like shopped in and digitally altered photographs of street scenes often used.

By the end of the book variations on scenes from the first volume are played out in setting up Gantz 4, but with a very different breakdown of people, a different target, and with Kei having a possibly life-threatening problem.

While the fantasies of a teenage boy form part of the ongoing narrative, there is concern about Oku sharing them, as he objectifies the female Kei during several scenes. So far the feeling is that her presence is solely for that purpose, which is unsatisfactory.

The first three volumes of Gantz are also combined in the first of the smaller format Omnibus volumes.