In the past, I wished my mind would roam the universe after my death. Then I read the Discworld and thought, “it’d be nice if I could be taken by Discowrld’s Death”. And I wanted to make it so that I’d get a Darwin Award along, so I would remain famous forever.
Now I read something that changed my mind. It’s called Gantz. I haven’t seen the animé yet, but the mangá is nice. I’m reading Chapter 49 now and it’s great.
Briefing on what’s it about: some people are chosen by Gantz when they die. Right after their death they appear without any wound nor ilness in an aparment in Japan. They can’t get out. There is a big, black sphere in the apartment, which is Gantz itself.
Gantz makes clear to people who appear that their lives now belong to him, and that he may do what he wishes with those people. He gives them weapons, armor that gives abilities like super strength and invisibility, accessories like radars and a target. They are then teleported to areas of Tokyo where they must hunt powerful aliens. Gantz doesn’t give them any useful information asides the fact that they “defeat” the targets.
While in the hunt they are invisible to normal people, but can touch and be touched by them. Those who try to run away once in the battlefield die. Those who survive will be healed. Killing the aliens gives them points. Those who reach a certain amount of points (after many hunts) are fred… But most players die in their first round.
Reading this may make you think that the series is pretty shallow, but it has actually good subplots, and the characters have very interesting backgrounds. The main character is a 15-year-old guy who didn’t care if people would live or die - in the first minutes of the series he’s watching a beggar is the poor man is about to get roadkilled by a subway train - but develops a soul as he watches his companions die in the most horrible ways. Gantz is pretty different from anything I’ve ever seen (and more mature too - there is gore, nude, and rape references). It’s also written in a way that makes you keep reading just because you have to see what happens next.
I hate GANTZ with a burning passion. Wait till you get to chapter 200 and not a single interesting plot development or good non-misogynistic character has appeared and they’re just doing missions over and over. The anime series also sucked. Oh GANTZ how far you’ve fallen.
On the other hand, I LOVE Gantz. Things ARE changing in the 200+ chapters, but it would rock even if they weren’t.
For starters, Kurono is a great main character. It’s been a long, LONG while since I’ve seen such a well done development from “selfish asshole” into “reasonably considerate guy”. By this I mean that he never quite becomes the brave warrior who will fight for the good of all and all that crap. He is an extremely realistic character. And he starts to kick serious butt around Volume 8.
When I heard that there was heavy sexual content, I immediately thought it would be something like the oh-shit-plot’s-boring-throw-in-a-rape-scene Tenjo Tenge-style stuff, but to my pleasant surprise it was nothing like that. There actually isn’t even that much nudity in comparison.
Then there’s the completely unpredictable plot. The usual taken for granted facts are completely discarded, such as Katou and Kishimoto dying halfway through.. You really never know what the heck’s going to happen next or who is going to die/live.
Pierson is exaggerating. There are plenty of good “moral” characters. Most of them turn into mincemeat soon enough, yes, but the current team is made of perfectly moral people sans the extremely obvious exception (Izumi).
In short, go read it. It’s easily one of the most interesting mangas I’ve ever read.
Okay, I took that well out of proportion. While I agree with you that Kei’s transformation from asshole to leader was incredibly well written, little things in the manga bug me so god damn much that I find it hard to see past them, such as the incredibly short timeframes of the chapters, how nearly every female character exists as a sextoy for Kei/damsel-in-distress, creating plot-point-based characters and then killing them twenty chapters later (sup ESP guys) and having no follow-up and how the entire thing goes at a glacial pace. I loved it during the first 100 issues and followed it religiously but after two hundred chapters with plot-advancing ones that I can count on one hand I have no patience with it.
[SPOILER]Not really, just think about it. Everyone cried and whined when Katou died and voila! He’s back. Kurono might be taking a break from the series but this has happened before (ESP & Kaze side stories for example). This one may last longer, but one of GANTZ’s charms is the way you never know what might happen next. The way things were going, Captain Kurono and the GANTZ Rangers would have beaten the evOl vampires and rode off into the sunset in a typically crappy ending, this gives a new twist to the story.
Kurono may or may not be absent for a while. If he isn’t, great, if he is… well, just put up with Nishi and Katou for a while. And remember that even if his memories are gone, the Vampires and Aliens remember him, a fuckton people saw him butcher the Oni Alien, his own brother is a Vampire, his ex-classmates were butchered by the Dreamcast Alien and a whole lot other stuff. He is still very much tied to the story.[/SPOILER]
