Anime Hajime Review: Gantz

***Warning, the following WILL contain spoilers for Gantz. Reader discretion is advised.***

Series Synopsis

Kei Kurono (voiced by Daisuke Namikawa) believes the world is garbage. That the people around him are nothing but vile, useless beings. Their mere existence nauseates him. That’s why he looks on when a homeless man falls unconscious onto the subway tracks.

Kei would've continued to do nothing too, had it not been for a chance encounter. Today of all days, Kei runs into his old childhood friend, Masaru Kato (voiced by Masashi Oosato). Unlike everyone else, Masaru jumps down to save the man. And he asks for Kei’s help.

This proved to be their doom. Though they saved the man’s life, Kei and Masaru could not get out of the way of the passing train. In an instant, they were dead.

In the next instant, they reappear in an ordinary looking apartment filled with strangers. No one has any idea where they are. And they’re all wonding what the strange black orb in the center is all about.

Known as Gantz, the black ball says everyone must hunt aliens wandering the streets of Tokyo. Although given access to advanced weaponry and armor, chances of survival are low. Kei and Masaru wonder how long they can last.

Series Positives

I dreaded this day.

Kei

When I first thought of doing Pre-Blog Month, I wanted to highlight anime from my past. Anime I have enjoyed and loved for a long time. I also hoped to give other series a fair second look. But there was one I knew I had to come back to. The month wouldn’t feel complete without it. If we’re going to talk about something great, like Nichijou, we’re obligated to look at the reverse.

Gantz. I f@#$ing hate this show.

Masaru

With Umineko, I thought there was a chance I had misjudged it. Maybe it was actually better than I remembered it being. I didn’t and it wasn’t, but the hope was still there. With Gantz, the mindset was more, was it really that bad? Yes.

This show was beyond disappointing the first time I watched it. The second watch was damn near insufferable. Before, the unknown served as a kind of buffer from the nonsense. I didn’t know what would happen. During this last one, I knew where all roads led. And they all sucked.

I’ve heard the original manga is quite good. Maybe it is and maybe I’ll check it out some day. There are also several Gantz movies. Both live action and animated. I’m not against giving those a look either. This, though…this is bad.

Gantz can be summed up in a single word. Boring. It was boring to sit through and there was little payoff for it. There was never anything to look forward to. Yet you could see where the excitement should have been. If only this show would do this. Or if only the story would do that. The set up existed. The set up was there. It’s why I think the manga might be good.

People are given a second chance at life. Except they’re then forced to fight unseen aliens wandering about. They’re given all the equipment necessary to carry out that job. They get crazy powerful guns and a suit which allows them to perform superhuman feats. Okay, that’s interesting.

The targets these people fight are dangerous. There are many who will die. And they will die in a variety of brutal, gore-filled ways. That’s a strong angle. There are a lot of things you can do with that.

To give credit where it’s due, the monster designs in Gantz were good. They were frightening. They were intimidating. They looked like creatures that would cause me to hesitate. But I would still find the resolve to fight back. Because otherwise I’d be killed.

Also, when there was an action scene, it was neat. For the two seconds when something would happen, I didn’t feel like I wanted to bash my head in. As an example, there was a moment when Kei decided it would be an idea to wear the super suit out in the real world. As well as use it. Hey, I enjoyed that. That was cool. Too bad it never happened again.

Gantz had a nasty habit of doing nothing. There were so many useless, pointless moments throughout. I’m going to try to keep everything short. But there are a lot of things I want to talk about.

Series Negatives

First problem, the lead into this show was stupid. This was one of those stories where getting past the front door was convoluted. Kei and Masaru got hit by a train. Why did they get hit by a train? Because they were morons.

Some fat drunk fell onto the tracks. Kei and Masaru jumped down to help. The rest of the crowd looked on dumbfounded. No one else was willing to assist. Before we move any deeper, there were some things I didn’t get about this scenario.

Every train station I’ve been to in Japan has emergency stop buttons everywhere. No one ever needs to jump down onto the tracks. And if they did to help someone, there shouldn’t be a fear of the next train coming. Would a crowd of onlookers continue to stand there without doing such a simple thing to help? Maybe, but it's irrelevant. There were two people who could have and should have pressed said button. Kei and Masaru.

Plus, there are just as many line attendants as there are stop buttons. Someone with authority should’ve seen this. 

I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and say both these safety measures weren’t around when the show came out. I’m okay with doing this since what happened next was even dumber.

Kei and Masaru succeeded in lifting this guy onto the platform. At a minimum, they had to have lift 250 pounds of pure dead weight. They had the physical capability to pull this off. Because I had already seen this garbage play out before, I timed it.

Between them getting the guy off the tracks and getting hit by the train was a solid minute and a half. You're telling me that two young, fit guys couldn’t pull themselves up in that amount of time. Instead, the better, more logical solution was to try and outrun the damn train.

From the beginning, you could see what kind of routes this series would take. When given a choice, characters would always make the wrong one. These weren’t moments when both options sucked. No, one option was clearly the s@#$ier one. Yet that was the one guaranteed to get picked.

So, that’s one problem.

The Animation

I never liked the look of Gantz. Visually it was unappealing. With the sole exception being the monster designs. Everything else looked, for the lack of a better word, dirty. It was all gross. The art was a visual representation of what bad BO smells like.

You could argue this was deliberate. I’ll admit, there may be some merit to that. The atmosphere Gantz seemed to be going for made the animation more appropriate. Except I’ve seen other shows do dark and gritty better. This series had a more realistic tint to it. But I’ve seen that done better too. Death Note, for example, did both these aspects in an amazing way.

While a weak argument, a justification for how Gantz looks exists. Or at least it did back in 2004. Not only is Gantz uncomfortable to look at, it’s also dated.

The way characters moved. The backgrounds. The painful use of CGI. It stuck out like a sore thumb. This tells me, as the years continue to move on, Gantz will only continue to look worse and worse

The Characters

Every character in this show was an ass. There wasn’t anyone who was likable. The only difference was if someone was one of the main three or they were secondary.

If someone was secondary, that meant they were cannon fodder. Don’t get used to people being around for long. If a person lasted longer than two episodes, they did pretty well for themselves.

That wasn’t the issues. The show trying to make us care about these characters was. For how little time most were part of the story, they were all treated as important. Like they may become one of the main cast. That’s bull s@#$. No one was important.

For instance, there was this one character who ended up falling for Kei. That was a mistake in itself, but I digress. This person showed up. Her and Kei had sex the instant they meet for no reason other than to have a sex scene. They promised they were going to survive. And then she was dead. Well great, I’m glad we wasted our time with her.

This was every side character. We had to go through the same motions each time. New people were introduced. They refused to believe what was happening. They got killed. Rinse and repeat four times.

And I don’t know which was worse. Dealing with that or dealing with our actual leads.

Kei was a prick. This wasn’t a lead you wanted to follow. Everything out of his mouth was a complaint. He never stopped whining. Anything and everything anyone said or did pissed him off. This was the type of person who never wanted to take responsibility. Nothing was ever his fault. Other people were always wrong. Kei was so special in his eyes. The worst part was, Kei was the least annoying character. At least he did stuff.

Masaru was all talk. Damn near every second he was on screen, he wouldn’t stop going on about how he would save everyone. No needed to die. He would protect everyone. Then when things started to go wrong, when people were in actual trouble, Masaru employed his go-to move.

Standing there.

It took him five minutes to act as he watched his kid brother get beaten. Granted, the person doing the beating provided a place to stay. But f@#$ off. Eventually, he did the right thing. Except he put his brother through quite a bit before he finally sacked up.

And then there was Kishimoto (voiced by Hitomi Nabatame). What a useless character. Kei may have complained and wondered why he was the one doing all the work. Kishimoto on the other hand never did anything. She relied on others for everything.

Then she would get upset when people didn't pull their weight. This was usually directed at Kei. And Kishimoto had this cringe-inducing habit of comparing Kei to how great she thought Masaru was. Masaru cared about everyone’s well-being. Kei only wanted violence. As we’ve already discussed, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Spoilers, Kishimoto died long before the end of the series. I’m going to talk about it too because it was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.

The one time, the one f@#$ing time Kishimoto decided to do anything was beyond stupid. She was fighting an acid monster with Masaru. The creature got the upper hand and attacksed Masaru. To protect him, Kishimoto chose to take the hit herself. Nobel, except, you know, she could’ve used the super suit she was wearing to push him out of the way.

And you know what made it even better? Masaru died in the very next episode. Again, spoilers, but you shouldn't watch this. So not only was Kishimoto’s one action moronic, it was pointless as well.

I hate everyone in this God damn show.

Inaction

This was the bane of Gantz's existence. Here was an anime with the potential of being a great action series. Then did nothing with it. There's a perfect scene which represents this.

There was a character named Joichiro Nishi (voiced by Tomohiro Kaku). Like everyone else, he was awful. His death took forever. And it didn’t need to happen that way either. I mean, I don’t care that it did. But it didn’t need to take as long as it did.

Joichiro started fighting this one alien. Since he had pissed everyone off before that, no one jumped in to help. Even Masaru who had been saying he would do everything to save everyone. Then for the next twenty minutes, spanning two episodes, we watched as Joichiro got his nuts kicked in.

What was everyone else doing? They stood there and watched. As time went on, they started to think someone should help him. No one did. Because Masaru said he would be the savior, you’d think he’d eventually act. No, he also just stood there. 

Kei at least had an excuse. He wasn't wearing a super suit. He was in no position to help. That didn’t stop Kishimoto from berating Kei anyway. Bitch he does not have the suit. You do. Why the f@#$ aren’t you doing anything?

F@#$ this show. I hope I never have to think about it again.

Final Thoughts

There was nothing good about it. I don't care about what I might have said earlier. There was nothing good about Gantz.

There is no reason to watch this show. None what so ever. The premise was botched. The characters were obnoxious. The action was sparse. The animation was subpar. Nothing ever happened. No one ever made the right choices. It took forever for anyone to do anything of note. And when they did it was the worst possible thing they could’ve done.

I usually don’t like to say what about to say because I prefer to perpetuate positivity. When I review a bad show, sure I recommend you not watch it. And I may even get a little pissy about it as well. Except this one is special. I have no qualms about saying this, this time.

Gantz is one of the worst anime I have ever seen.

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