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| Watch | 8 | 10 | 9 | 6 | KBanger1 | # | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Although I bought this before I saw the entire series, I got hooked after renting disc one. I'm not a big fan of ultra-violence but this I believed had some potential. It's actually hard to explain the series. The main point of Gantz is that when died, Gantz (the big black sphere that's in an empty apartment) gives you a second chance at life, with a twist. You see, you have to kill whatever it tells you to kill. It's all supposed to be a game, but it's a hunt for survival. Even though the point is cut and dry, what kills it are the certain episodes that are in it. I was curious as to why some of the reviews were a bit harsh. That just added to my curiosity of this series. There are a bunch of episodes that really weren't necessary. What got to me was the fact that even though the characters were acting like mechanized sheep, you can imagine if that was almost portraying what humans are really like beneath the facade. In the last few episodes, I realized that the entire series could almost be exactly like how humans could be portrayed as. In Gantz, the underlying theme was about killing. What was justifiable or not. That's what I think the series was about, past the gore and sexual innuendos. It was just simply about killing. Whether it would be human or otherwise, does it all have a point? That's what I saw in this series. Senseless killing and no real justifiable cause. Perhaps there was no cause. That's why I rated this as a "Watch" because it was just senseless killing until the end. It was one subject that was branched out into nothing. I would put avoid, but if you're into senseless bloodshed, little plot, and a lot of sexual references, then please be my guest. Last updated Sunday, July 27 2008. Created Sunday, July 27 2008. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Buy | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 9 | Lordcloudstrife | # | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I know a lot of people aren't big fans of the series, well I am. Gantz is a great anime. However it does have problems. One I noticed is, since I started watching it at the 5th episode it is a confusing series for people starting late. I've seen volumes 3,4,5, and 7. So there are a lot of gaps.Missing 1,2,and 6 is sort of a problem. I can tell what I know though when you are severely injured you get sent to a room. You have 2 bodys when you are sent. The injured body and the body sent to the room. Confusing huh? Then you go and fight aliens. Sounds corny but it is really cool. Of course keep kids away from this. It has everything, sex, nudity, swearing, violence, child abuse, and anything else bad you can think of. The art is one of the best parts. It isn't like kiddy anime where the characters have giant eyes and make weird faces. Its more like Zoids art but better. Gantz may have some flaws like focusing too hard on the art and sometimes having pointless episodes, or of course having an extremely wierd storyline but I still love it. I'm giviing Gantz a: 91% B+ Last updated Saturday, May 05 2007. Created Saturday, May 05 2007. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Avoid | 8 | 7 | 4 | 7 | 1 | 5 | Devil Doll | # | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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[Score: 48%]
The reasoning of blue-haired Hajime ("It's okay to kill people because others do it as well") was so obviously flawed that I couldn't help but laugh. So we're back in the stone age or what? Civilization and human rights never existed, eh? Oh my god, what a collection of nonsense. And to think I spent 10 hours watching this series... The concept looked promising, then again the show is nothing more than a ghastly splatter orgy, and the characters appear overly simple and one-dimensional, with not a single one of them being likeable. Had this series been using one third of the characters and allwed them to cope with the series in a reasonable manner then it might have become a lot more reasonable. What bothers me most is that (unlike in Elfen Lied) the violence is depicted as a "natural and good thing". The elements of "sex & violence sells" are dominant; although the DVD version has been rated "PG 16" in Germany and the airing time of this show is right before midnight the TV channel has censored the zoophilia scene (which seems completely unrelated to the story anyway) in episode 2. The ending sequence of every episode shows scenes that completely spoil the suspense about events that still aren't completed as of the end of episode 7. I hate things like this, even more when suspense is a main driving force of the series. Starting with episode 12 the characters suddenly began to show a brain - which doesn't save the show for me but gave it a fair chance to get a "Watch" rating in the end. Unfortunately, it failed to live up to this promise. What makes me so absolute about my rating is that most of the characters completely fail in this series. They're supposed to act as humans, meaning on the intelligence level of their race. But being put into a rats' experiment by Gantz, they behave like rats. They hardly ever ask questions. They take everything Gantz (or the first guy they met) tell them as granted, but at the same time don't spend a single thought about finding out what it takes to survive in this clearly surreal environment. They're so stupid that it hurts. For example, with Nishi dying they all just stand there and watch (instead of hunting the other alien in time and triggering Gantz to call them back so that Nishis wound would be healed - the ruled have been explained a number of times before!)... heavens! A band of ten year old boys would understand the rules of the game and act accordingly... And this series tries to make up for this complete failure of characters by violence, pornography, and more violence. So there can be only one possible rating for this show from my point of view. I watched this series until the bitter end, but actually I'm considering it a weird comedy now, given the incredibly dilettantish performance during the fighting scenes. This anime fails in all aspects, except for offering excessive amount of senseless violence (and hentai in episode 15). So if you're interested in anime and consider watching Gantz, my advice would be:
Elfen Lied had about the same amount of violence, but it provided a story, which Gantz does not. Last updated Saturday, February 24 2007. Created Monday, August 14 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Rent | Jan-Chan | # | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Humm …. I think that I finally understand why so many anime series appear to crash-and-burn in the last few episodes, and fail to carry through with the quality of the initial story. In Boukyaku no Senritsu (Melody of Oblivion), the last few episodes are sacrificed to bring the story to a conclusion. In the series BECK, the last fifteen minutes of the last episodes are used to wrap the story up. A friend of mine shared with me the 19-volume GantZ manga series, which sat around for a bit. After watching the first 13-episode boxed set of this series, I got hooked and made time to read the manga series (which is quite good). And then I was able to watch episodes 14-26 of the anime series … and I was very disappointed!! Where as the manga series is free the continue the story, the anime series has to try to find some sort of conclusion – which often results in a loss of momentum in the story and a jumbled ending. And GantZ suffers from this in a major way. Episodes 1-13 are true to the manga series and are well worth watching. And then episodes 14-26 (which is being sold as a 2nd boxed set, but is really a continuation of the first season) are just a jumble of a number of the manga story elements patched together, culminating in a pathetic and bewildering whimper of an ending. While I do like the strangeness and wild ideas of the GantZ story, I think that it is just a bit too much to be cohesively condensed into a 26-episode anime series. And because of this (or perhaps because I am enjoying the manga series too much), I can only offer poor marks as a rating. It should be noted that when the GantZ anime series was first aired on Japanese TV, it pushed the limits of permissiveness and was actually censored due to high gore, violence and racy content (yep, there is a modest hentai scene). Episodes 1-13 are really interesting and worth watching. In episodes 14-26, there is a big drop in the quality of the story and the ending – well, lets just say that the story ends. This series is worth watching, but the manga series is infinitely better and far more satisfying. Last updated Saturday, July 08 2006. Created Monday, July 03 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Rent | Stretch | # | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Despite all the hype about it, I find Gantz to be a seriously flawed series. This is especially disappointing because Gantz is a show which begins with a clever and intriguing premise: persons who by all rights ought to be dead find themselves alive and well in a strange room occupied only by a mysterious black globe. But their resurrections come at a price: they have been drafted to serve as hunters, tracking down and killing bizarre aliens which they had never dreamed existed. Furthermore, refusing to take part is punishable by death, and even if they cooperate their chances of survival are slim--what's a person to do? Unfortunately, the characters do very little, with their brains, that is. All sorts of questions leap to the viewer's mind--is there a way to escape from being controlled by Gantz? Who, or what, is Gantz, anyway? Why does it want these aliens liquidated? Is it possible to communicate with Gantz, and reason with it? But I find it exasperating that the same thoughts never seem to occur to the characters themselves. They never discuss their freakish experiences, in order to make sense of them. They seem instantly resigned to this new fate of theirs, without doing much pondering about how or why it has come about. In short, the characters in this show simply do not behave in a realistic, believable manner. I wonder, was it the intention of the manga's author to depict the average human being as a shallow-minded person who seldom thinks about much of anything? I think Gantz kind of shoots itself in the foot in the sense that the "real world", human vs human violence it depicts (crime, gang warfare, etc) is considerably more frightening and disturbing than the battles with the aliens themselves. It's unclear whether the aliens actually pose the slightest threat to humanity unless provoked--you can even feel sorry for them at times. On the other hand, the gang members, punks, homeless hunters, etc, are all too brutal and sadistic. Was the message here supposed to be that we pose a greater threat to ourselves than "aliens" ever could? Personally, I thought the combat scenes (during the second hunt, especially) were done in a rather sloppy manner. Timing is especially poor, which kills a lot of the excitement. Blood is splattered all over the place, but it's not animated realistically enough to be shocking or nauseating--it's closer to laughable. I would much rather have gotten a few G-----n answers, anyway! I felt like I was being force-fed sex and violence, but starving for clues about where the plot was going. I have to give this show credit for the sheer weirdness it includes--like the alien which is invisible to ordinary humans, yet makes a point of paying for the stuff it takes from a convenience store (I wish there had been more touches like this). The third hunt was a wild, roller-coaster of mayhem. Despite all my frustrations with Gantz, I remained eager for some sort of explanation, no matter how long it took. It gradually dawned on me that there would probably never be any explanation of who or what Gantz is, or how it came to exist on earth, and sure enough, there isn't. I'd heard that the ending would be extremely ambiguous and frustrating, so my hopes weren't particularly high going into it. Maybe that worked out for the best, because as a result I found it to be better than I'd expected. What exactly the meaning of the final scene was is anybody's guess, but I think it made some sense, and wasn't particularly ugly. The one word which comes to mind when summing up Gantz as a whole is "cynical". People are portrayed as either bad at heart, or, if they're not bad, as idiots. It gets exasperating at times, and this bad attitude left a sort of bad taste in my mouth. But the story remained interesting enough to keep me coming back. Or maybe I should say that the mystery behind Gantz was so addictive that I was willing to watch to the end just for whatever scraps of an explanation I could get. My favorite line: "Tell me why, Gantz!" --Tetsuo Last updated Friday, December 15 2006. Created Friday, June 23 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Buy | 9 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 10 | Kari | # | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Gantz is probably my favorite anime series thus far. Not only is it extremely violent, but it has a good plot, character development, and great acting by both the Japanese and English casts. I bought the ADV released thin-packed box set of season one for $44.00, which includes the first six volumes of the series. I watched all six volumes that day, and then ordered the other four online that night. Volumes eight and ten contain the best episodes of the series. The music is nice. I don't care for the ending theme, and I don't think it fits the series, but the opening theme is nice. So is the instrumental music, and that inserted vocal song. Of course the animation is nice, this is a Gonzo title after all. ADV did the dub for Gantz, and I love it. Chris Ayres is wonderful as Kei Kurono. Illich Guardiola and Chris Patton are also great as Masaru Kato and Joichiro Nishi. I also think Greg Ayres and Shannon Emerick both did fine jobs voicing Hajime and Kei Kishimoto. For a show as entertaining and well-written as Gantz is, it's a shame it only had 26 episodes, instead the amount of episodes Fullmetal Alchemist has. I recommend buying the ADV release of Gantz. Last updated Tuesday, April 04 2006. Created Tuesday, April 04 2006. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Buy | Forbin | # | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gantz is probably one of the most violent series that isn't a undead flick. Blood, Blood, and MORE Blood. It puts Elfen Lied to shame with the amount of blood and guts shown. While some people are just unreal (Cuttting off a mans arm would result in immediate death in real life), Gantz tries to keep their characters real (A pacifist, a horny boy, a love starved girl, a murderer, a yakuza, and a politician). A lot of people would scream STEREOTYPE but honestly would you rather have a bunch of uninteresting characters that all blend together? My particular favorite is the Grandma and her spoiled grandson. They are so real I think my neighbor was the mold for that one. Gonzo did an EXCELLENT job of the 3d animations. When they reach the temple the CGI really shines with tons of 360. This also shows in a later anime Full Metal Panic. I have read the manga and while it goes a different path (Around episode 20). The writer in the manga has sorta wrote himself into a corner. The anime avoids all of that by giving an 'Artsy' ending that gets you thinking about what happened and how it ends. Now that I have finished it, it was completely enjoyable. It addressed many issues especially Pacifism, and how it affects society. I am upgrading this to a BUY. Forbin Moment: Gantz primarily features the one Anime character type I hate! Clones But in this sense clones were written in from the beginning and each character has to deal with the fact that they are a clone and how it affects the outside world. Last updated Friday, January 20 2006. Created Wednesday, July 20 2005. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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