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Gantz is a franchise that has a lot of heavy handed and confrontational subject matter. Being that it is a Seinen, it's rife with gore, fanservice, extreme violence, and honestly just a lot of really rapey and racist shit. This page is not for the puritanical or the faint of heart, nor should it be viewed by anyone under 18. You've been warned...

WHAT THE FUCK IS GANTZ?

As you pass by the scene of a recent car wreck-- police officers, firefighters, and paramedics milling about-- you tell yourself not to look but… you just gotta. A morbid curiosity grips you; maybe you'll see something horrific, you might see something cool or instead something that will turn your stomach.

Whatever the thoughts fly through your head it's almost certain that you'll try to get a glimpse, it's just human nature.

GANTZ is a Japanese sci-fi horror manga series written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku. It was serialized in Shueisha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump from June 2000 to June 2013, with its chapters collected in 37 tankōbon volumes. It tells the story of Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato, two high school boys who died in a train accident and become part of a semi-posthumous "game" in which they and several other recently deceased people are forced to hunt down and kill aliens armed with a handful of futuristic items, equipment, and weaponry. An anime television series adaptation, directed by Ichirō Itano and animated by Gonzo, was broadcast for 26 episodes, divided into two seasons, in 2004. A series of two live-action films based on the manga were produced and released in January and April 2011. A CGI anime film, Gantz: O, was released in 2016.

WHAT DOES GANTZ MEAN TO YOU?

Gantz is a weird, complicated series. It's one of those shows that contains all the elements that made parents (made? make? I haven't been a 13 year old dork explaining Air Gear cosplay to my out of touch financial caretaker in about 14 years, lol.) believe that all anime are pornographic gore-fests made by those wHaCkY aSiAnS. Nudity, violence, sexual tension, gore, fanservice, vampire gangs, aliens that range from everything to "horrific eldritch dieties clearly ripped right off the cover of an Incantation album cover" to fucking "this guy clearly just got high and started thinking about listening to Seiji Tanaka as a kid", rife with batshit insane and often nonsensical plots that somehow perfectly crescendo of gripping story telling and heartwarming/breaking observations on the impacts of loneliness on the human psyche, and how friendships and second chances can heal these wounds.

Hiroya Oku is a weird, complicated guy. In a lot of ways I think our brains are similar. He just kinda does whatever he wants and doesn't really care if it makes sense to anyone or not. He likes violent movies and cute girls, so he draws guys getting eviscerated by Buddha statues with 10 swords that move faster than you can blink, and then draws intermission art of pretty women with their tits exposed holding cool weapons. He watches Blade and starts drawing vampire gangs to chase his protagonists around for a while, then gets kind of bored of them and just kills them all off or forgets about them halfway through the arc. He watched Jurassic Park for the 15th time in a row, so he made an arc about dinosaurs who could speak decent English and could run around like people while they hunt. He writes manga for a living, so he'll reflect the protagonists of his series as your standard Shonen fan and the other as your standard Seinen fan, with the former routinely being punished and called names for being a good guy who cares and actually tries to help people, and the other being sardonic and bitter and self serving, never punished quite as severely by the universe for his cowardice and fixation on sex because, lets face it, this is a Seinen manga in a Seinen world and sometimes the good guys lose and everybody wants to fuck somebody. He's a one of those guys that has managed to keep in touch with his zany, "yeah this would be cool, fuck it" spur of the moment 16 year old boy habits while still being capable of writing deep, inspiring shit. He's an artist I've really come to respect over the years.

I first found the manga through a friend in high school in about 2015. I'd never heard of it before, but I was on a bit of a Seinen manga kick at that time; I was young, spiteful, horny, and on the cusp of manhood, so I wanted stories with characters and plotpoints that reflected those feelings. I was coming off the tails of the freshly ended and optimistic worlds of Naruto and Bleach, and moved toward reading a lot of Berserk, Oyasumi Punpun, Prison School, Hellsing, and rewatching the Devilman: Apocalypse of Amon OVA constantly around that same time, and even before that I'd had my brain irrepreably altered by watching new episodes of Deadman Wonderland every weekend on Toonami 3 years earlier, so it was inevitable that I would stumble upon the bleak, unforgiving, misanthropic world of Gantz.



Let's be honest, if you've made it this far on the website, you've seen the excessive glorification of sex and violence, the implicit age regression tendencies, I don't think I really need to explain why this manga has left such a deep impact on me, lol.

PLOT

High school students Kei Kurono and Masaru Kato die after being struck by a subway train while attempting to save a drunk homeless man who had fallen onto the tracks. Upon their deaths, they awaken inside a barren Tokyo apartment alongside other confused participants. Trapped within the room, they encounter a large black sphere known as "Gantz". The sphere assigns missions where participants must hunt and kill alien targets hidden on Earth, providing them with advanced weaponry—including skin tight gimp powered suits, and kickass energy weapons.

During missions, the participants are transported to the target location and confined there until all enemies are killed or the time limit expires. Normal humans cannot perceive the players or the aliens. Those who survive are awarded points based on their kills. Upon accumulating 100 points, a participant gains access to a menu offering three choices: returning to normal life with erased memories; obtaining a powerful weapon; or reviving a deceased teammate. After their initial missions, Kurono and Kato face brutal battles that result in heavy casualties. During their third mission, Kato sacrifices himself to defeat the final target, allowing Kurono to survive despite severe injuries. This experience profoundly changes Kurono, who adopts a more heroic mindset and resolves to revive his fallen comrades. He later leads a new team of Gantz players, demonstrating exceptional combat prowess and leadership. Eventually, Kurono revives Kato, only to perish himself in a subsequent battle against a group of vampires...

INCREDIBLY DOPE SHIT