How long will you stay in the game? The last thing Kei and Masaru remember was being struck dead by a subway train while saving the life of a drunken bum. What a waste! And yet somehow they're still...alive? Or semi-alive? Maybe it's reanimated... by some kind of alien orb with a nasty message... "Your lives are over. What you do with your new lives is up to me!" And what this orb called 'Gantz' intends to do with their lives is make them play games of death, hunting all kinds of odd aliens, along with a bunch of other ordinary citizens who've recently met a tragic semi-end. The missions they embark upon are often dangerous. Many die - and die again! This dark and action-packed manga deals with the moral conflicts of violence, coupled with teenage sexual confusion and angst, and with our fascination with death. Hang onto your gear and keep playing the game, whatever you do; Gantz is unrelenting!
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The individual ingredients--teen angst, existential dilemma, sexual anxiety, purgatory, alien hunting, graphic violence, and computerized spheres that house omnipotent but catatonic men--could have calamitously collided. In fact, they could have made a grim, clumsy train wreck, like the one that launches the mind-bending, viscerally charged narrative of this fabled manga. But in the hands of Hiroya Oku, writer and digital artist, Gantz is one of the genre's most thoroughly addictive, eminently readable entries.
The story follows sometimes friends Kei and Masaru on their surrealistic, supernaturally amped adventures through Tokyo, following a train accident that may or may not have killed them. In the realm of the undead, the less-than-dynamic duo--typical teens: angry, disenfranchised, mischievous, and constantly thinking of sex--is drawn into an underbelly of alien-hunting by a mysterious orb named Gantz, who apparently controls their destiny and promises to restore their quote-unquote real lives once they have completed enough missions for him. These missions (think Mission: Impossible meets The Matrix) come replete with high danger, cool gadgets, hyper-gory violence, and Big Bads named Onion Alien, Bird Alien, and Buddhist Temple Alien.
New characters join Kei and Masaru. The female ones frequently shed their clothing. The males are quick to slice, dice, and otherwise draw blood. The series succeeds--over nearly 500 issues--by offering consistently inventive individual missions against the ongoing mystery of who and what is Gantz and what is the purpose of these body-splattering, alien-hunting assignments.
Gantz is front-loaded with metaphysical queries (a la Lost), a hardboiled sensibility (a la Hammet or, say, Haruki Murakami), and graphic ultra-violence (think M-rated first-person shooter games, the ones where decapitations and downpours of blood are the norm), and is, resultantly, an awful lot of fun. Grim fun, but fun.
The utter normalcy of Oku's teen characters makes their upstream paddling against their environment's endlessly enigmatic sci-fi shadings all the more delicious, while the writer's willingness to wrestle with recent historical atrocities adds a deft and deep--if oftentimes delirious--resonance to the storyline. Oku's artwork, digitally rendered, is breathtaking, even though it's often incredibly grisly--one that's decidedly not for the faint of heart.
-- J. Rentilly
The story follows sometimes friends Kei and Masaru on their surrealistic, supernaturally amped adventures through Tokyo, following a train accident that may or may not have killed them. In the realm of the undead, the less-than-dynamic duo--typical teens: angry, disenfranchised, mischievous, and constantly thinking of sex--is drawn into an underbelly of alien-hunting by a mysterious orb named Gantz, who apparently controls their destiny and promises to restore their quote-unquote real lives once they have completed enough missions for him. These missions (think Mission: Impossible meets The Matrix) come replete with high danger, cool gadgets, hyper-gory violence, and Big Bads named Onion Alien, Bird Alien, and Buddhist Temple Alien.
New characters join Kei and Masaru. The female ones frequently shed their clothing. The males are quick to slice, dice, and otherwise draw blood. The series succeeds--over nearly 500 issues--by offering consistently inventive individual missions against the ongoing mystery of who and what is Gantz and what is the purpose of these body-splattering, alien-hunting assignments.
Gantz is front-loaded with metaphysical queries (a la Lost), a hardboiled sensibility (a la Hammet or, say, Haruki Murakami), and graphic ultra-violence (think M-rated first-person shooter games, the ones where decapitations and downpours of blood are the norm), and is, resultantly, an awful lot of fun. Grim fun, but fun.
The utter normalcy of Oku's teen characters makes their upstream paddling against their environment's endlessly enigmatic sci-fi shadings all the more delicious, while the writer's willingness to wrestle with recent historical atrocities adds a deft and deep--if oftentimes delirious--resonance to the storyline. Oku's artwork, digitally rendered, is breathtaking, even though it's often incredibly grisly--one that's decidedly not for the faint of heart.
-- J. Rentilly
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this one up on a reccommendation from a magazine for someone who is just looking to get into reading manga. I found the story to be intriguing, a bit of sci-fi and a bit of mystery as the characters struggle to understand where they are and what they are doing there. The artwork was very pretty and I definately look forward to reading Volume 2. I guess the reason I didn't give this 5 stars is because the story line is a bit confusing right now, but that just might be me being new to manga. I'll tell you though, don't flip back and forth from reading manga to american comics because you'll forget which way to read the panels :)
Overall, B+/A-
Overall, B+/A-
By IronChefMIk
Format:Paperback
I just happen to read the manga on a whim, but I am glad I did. I had just finished watching the show, which I only thought was ok, but I noticed that the manga had wayyyy more chapters beyond where the show stopped. Sure enough, goes into some much deeper and crazier stories than I could have ever imagined. When ever I try to get a friend to read it, I always have a hard time describing it to them. The closest thing I can think without going into an hour long explanation is that it's like Power Rangers for Grown-ups. Which is funny because after I said that, I read that Super Sentai was one of the inspirations for Gantz. If you have not read it, you should definitely pick it up. Even if you didn't like the Anime as much you won't be disappointed with the manga.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gantz is great!
This is by far my fav manga. The content is a bit mature but, it's the best sci-fi storyline i've ever read.
Published 17 months ago by Rustomurder
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing Series though not for the faint of heart.
This series is fantastic but the things which occur in the manga are sure to alienate many would be readers.Not without reason as people are frequently killed. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Dojo Master
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good but not ne
I bought this product under the listing of new and It's a little worn but in good shape got here fast though and for the price I'm still very happy
Published on April 11, 2011 by Jeremie Gursky
5.0 out of 5 stars
My All Time Favorite Manga!
Okay now let me first start of by saying that Gantz the series is my all time favorite manga! I'm going to do a review on the series. Read more
Published on April 7, 2011 by hunter
5.0 out of 5 stars
(4.5 STARS) Most Dangerous Game in the World
The ordinary life of a high school student Kei Kurono is turned into a bizarre nightmare when he was struck dead by the subway train together with his childhood friend Masaru Kato. Read more
Published on January 13, 2011 by Tsuyoshi
5.0 out of 5 stars
Worth the monies
I know these scans are easily accessible but to have the book in your hand is pretty cool. Great story.
Published on May 25, 2010 by C. Muriel
5.0 out of 5 stars
Men in Black + Violence + Sex = Gantz
Okay that's a simplification, but if you want the quick gist of what Gantz is about (since the title alone would tell you squat) then the above distills the concept pretty well. Read more
Published on May 27, 2009 by Simon
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-blowing awesomeness
Brutal, hard-hitting, and gritty. But that doesn't quite describe the experience of Gantz. An enigma wrapped in a mystery, with [...] hanging out. Read more
Published on April 12, 2009 by D. Ricks
4.0 out of 5 stars
Violent but beyond the violence, there is an intriguing storyline
We had the opportunity to preview the first two episodes of the unedited/uncut version of the animated TV series "Gantz". Read more
Published on August 13, 2008 by Dennis A. Amith (kndy)
4.0 out of 5 stars
Anime vs. Manga
An anime's dedication to its source material is both its curse and its blessing. The first volume of Gantz takes us about midway into the Onion Alien arc, ending while the players... Read more
Published on July 20, 2008 by Cedric
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