Review by Frank Plowright
Gantz is a compelling action drama with a great conceptual origin. At the point of their death random people are transported to a room in Tokyo containing a large, dark sphere. They’re given weapons, a protective suit, and tasked with killing an alien once they’re transported back outside. One of those present knows more than the remainder.
The focus at the start is on Kei and Kato, who knew each other when younger, but drifted apart. Now both fifteen, they’re very different characters. Kato is tall, strong, decent and brave, while Kei, on whom Kato once modelled himself, is judgemental and self-centred, more concerned with appearance than doing the right thing. This combination of three volumes, beginning with Gantz/1, is only the start of their long, strange, and initially compelling journey.
Japanese comics consistently throws up creators like Hiroya Oku who have an offbeat idea that lends itself to extended serialisation as all the ramifications are explored and the secrets are slowly revealed. The opening chapters are a surprisingly bleak comment on human nature, as many ordinary people given a second chance at life have no qualms at it being at the cost of another life. When the situation is revisited toward the end of the book, leading into Omnibus/2, it’s with a very different set of people, many already established as thugs.
Oku is a very tidy artist, good at establishing visual personality and ensuring one character is distinguishable from another. He opts for realism with an injection of horror in some situations, providing spartan, but functional backgrounds, and shopping in photos of street scenes for digital manipulation. The one concern about his art is the objectification of the only woman with a major role, a teenage girl with large breasts who becomes an object of lust for Kei. That’s natural enough given his age, but as Oku lingers on scenes of her naked and pulls some poses from nude photo standbys, the impression given is of his living out his own fantasies.
In the way of other serialised manga with mystery at its heart, much has been established over these 34 chapters. Gantz falls into the category of manga like Death Note, where more ground rules are constantly revealed, often via a smug young man without a conscience who’s survived several rounds of alien hunting. With a long way to go, though, the major questions don’t have answers. The title is disappointingly random, but sounds great.
Concerns about objectification are mitigating, but otherwise Gantz ticks a lot of boxes as a compelling action thriller underscored with a massive concept.
