All right everybody, calm down and listen up! We’ve got a lot of ground to cover here, and it’s in your best interest to take a second and listen to what I have to say! Now, if there’s anybody here who’s in this room for the first time, I have some bad news, some good news, and then some more bad news. To start, you just died. I don’t know how it happened, but if you’re confused right now, it means your life was extinguished sometime in the last few minutes. The good news is that, through some kind of divine intervention, you’ve been given a second chance at life! But the other bad news is that your new life belongs to Gantz, the giant ball bearing sitting behind me. Yeah, I know, believe me, I thought this was all nonsense at first too, but it couldn't be more real. Anyway, sometime soon, Gantz is going to open up and issue you a fighting suit and a gun, and he's going to send us out on a mission to hunt and kill some aliens. If you leave the designated area, you die. If the alien kills you, you die. Whoever is still alive when the mission is complete will get to go back to their collective lives, until we’re needed again. Understand? Ready to move out? No? Good, me either. Now let’s go kick some alien ass!

Studio Gonzo has had a pretty spotty history, all things considered, and their 2004 project Gantz is no exception to this. I’m not going to say there haven’t been any good looking anime that have come out of Gonzo in the past, but things can go wrong really easily for them, and when you give a bare bones budget to a director who already does not have a great track record, that’s a recipe for disaster. Director Ichiro Itano has had a long and productive history in the anime production business, but as far as his major directorial work is concerned, well, it’s not great. He’s pretty much only churned out forgotten OVAs, including one episode of Violence Jack(an anime that nobody was able to come away from unscathed) and Blassreiter, which is for all intents and purposes the worst and worst looking Gen Orobuchi anime. He’s big on gritty and hard hitting action, but he seems to get tunnel vision when it comes to animating and directing the stories surrounding said action, the results being unfortunate more times than not.

Again, when you combine this kind of directorial pedigree with a low budget, it should be no surprise that Gantz is famous for being one of the ugliest anime ever made. Animation is stiff and janky, characters are frequently drawn off model, to the point that the deadliest enemy in the whole series is probably the pause button, and just about every animation shortcut you’ve ever seen is on full display at some point. The only things in the show that don’t look sloppy and cheap are the gore and the nudity, which says a lot about Itano’s priorities. I guess that does put Gantz a step above shows like Master of Martial Hearts and Ikki Tousen, as the nudity and action are really the only conceivable draws for them and yet even those still look hideous. I do appreciate the extra effort in the fanservice, and the gore? Well, people are constantly getting decapitated, torn apart, gutted, blown up and more, and these scenes are lovingly rendered and full of immaculate detail. Still, if the price I have to pay for this is seeing character’s proportions changing from shot to shot to the point that someone’s chin can disappear leaving him looking like a Bob’s Burger character, it’s just not worth it.

As for the English dub, it’s kind of a mixed bag. It was an early ADV effort, so it’s both a star vehicle for their founding members, and a testing ground for those who would become legendary in the future. I’m a bit mixed on the late Chris Ayres performance as Kei, since he sounds like an annoying, screechy high school loser, but on the other hand, that just means Ayres read the assignment. His character is supposed to sound like that, and he goes hard with it... This is probably one of those performances where, if I heard a couple of lines out of context, I’d instantly know what anime they were from. Also, his brother Greg plays a villain in the second season, and when they’re interacting it sounds like they’re trying to out-annoy each other, which is actually kind of adorable. Illich Gaurdiolla also fits his character to a T, as while he might not sound as memorable, he does sound like the gentle giant with a strict moral code. Speaking of Kato, Luci Christan sounds absolutely heart-breaking as his little brother, who worships the ground his oni-san walks on even while being neglected, starved and maliciously abused by their aunt.

Jason Douglas is awesome as Tetsuo, the biker delinquent trying desperately to be a good husband and father. Kira Vincent Davis has a couple of small roles who sound nothing like each other, and good for her, I swear she gets better in the future. Chris Patton plays a sneering, cocky, misanthropic middle schooler, and he is just radiating sleaze and condescension, even in his most dire moments. There are a few sour performances, but nobody’s quite as bad as Shannon Emmerick, who sadly gets a huge chunk of screen time as the other Kei, a love interest of both Kei and Kato, kind of. I have no idea how to accurately describe what’s wrong with her performance. Her acting is okay. She actually over-acts quite a bit, particularly when her character is supposed to be emotionally invested in what’s going on or screaming in terror, and I do have a soft spot for over-acting, but it just seems... Different. Like they recorded her lines using inferior equipment or something. I don’t know, aside from her, the dub is more good than bad, and I wouldn’t NOT recommend it.

I have a lot to say about Gantz, and since most of it is decisively negative, I would like to start things off on a positive note; The concept of this series is freaking phenomenal. Think about it; At the moment of your death, you’re randomly selected by a mysterious entity to become reborn like the phoenix, and then that same entity immediately enlists you in its army of resurrected soldiers to battle against alien invaders hiding out among the regular population. That idea on its own, at face value, is immediately appealing. It’s similar in concept to The Suicide Squad, except replace the dead with Arkham inmates, and replace the mysterious entity with Amanda Waller, and that’s basically it. Seeing this idea play out at face value would be enough, but that’s not all you get. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I love seeing interesting ideas receive the attention and imagination that they deserve, and I often feel unfulfilled if the implications of said ideas aren’t fully explored... You may recall me tearing Smartphone Isekai to pieces over this... But credit where it's due, Gantz does not have this problem.

What happens to your old body when you’re resurrected? What if your body is revived in real life after you’ve already been revived by Gantz? What happens when you try to bail, or tell outsiders about your new life? Is this life exclusive to humans? How has nobody heard about this by now? They really put a ton of thought into this idea, and I’m always going to be here for that. I guess this is more of a byproduct of the manga than it is of the anime, but considering how easy it is to fuck up a cool idea through the art of adaptation, I can look past that. For example, the Excel Saga anime had a top tier concept that was invented by the manga and then bastardized by the director of the adaptation who used said idea to support his own brand of lolrandom comedic bullshit, so I appreciate however much the Gantz anime DID get right. Well, for whatever it’s worth, Gantz had a concept that offered it no excuse to not be cool, so why do so many people hate it? Where did everything go wrong?

Well for starters, there are no likeable characters in this show, like, at all. I am not exaggerating. And I know, at first glance, that shouldn’t be an issue, right? Everyone loves The Suicide Squad, a story about a band of convicted murderers doing the goverment’s dirty work. Well, yeah, there are some purely evil characters in that comic, but the ones that keep surviving missions and coming back are still written to have some likeable qualities, so even though they’re objectively despicable people who have done unforgivable things, you still root for them. Gantz doesn’t have that. It comes close with two characters... There’s a biker dude who gets introduced in the second mission, and he shows a ton of potential, but... Well, spoilers. Kato has a lot of positive qualities, but he suffers from not being the main character. He’s sympathetic, he has a moral code, he can be legitimately badass... But he’s also directly responsible for dragging both he and Kei Kurono into this mess, and he’s bogged down by a pacifist gimmick that should only ever be saddled on a supporting character at best. Also, both of these guys recoiled in fear and disgust when they heard somebody accused of being gay, so they can both eat a dick.

Kei Kishimoto is kind of sympathetic, as she initially died by suicide, but we never find out the reason she did it, just that she had a history of cutting. She also has some admittedly interesting circumstances, but they pale in comparison to the fact that she’s shrill, useless, and hopelessly pines over one guy while callously using the other guy for shelter. That’s not to say the other guy is any better... Kei Kurono is easily one of the worst protagonists I’ve ever seen in an anime. He’s a selfish, heartless fuckboy who only cares about his own survival and getting laid, two goals that are mildly interchangeable depending on the situation. True, terrible people can be successful main characters, but there has to be something there, guys. He has no sympathetic backstory to explain why he is the way he is, he’s not charismatic or funny enough to get by on personality alone, and he isn’t even motivated by a desire to better himself as a person. Those are the three most basic tactics for elevating assholes in a story, and even ONE of them could have helped Kurono, but nope. True, he has one badass moment in the season finale, but it didn’t do nearly enough for him.

I’m willing to believe the manga spent a lot of time developing him and putting him through a long, slow burn character arc to draw out the best version of him, but even if that’s true, the anime only covered a fraction of that. Finally, we come to Nietzsche... Or wait, it’s just Nichi, sorry, I get those two confused. Depending on how old you are, Nichi is either a pretentious little shit who needs to shut the fuck up and pull his head out of his ass, or he’s the smartest person in the room... Basically, if you’re the kind of middle school edgelord who believes Thanos was right, and the resource allocation issue can be solved by having less people, you probably like Nichi. I have no doubt that Nichi occupies the same role in this anime that Tyrion Lannister, Rick Sanchez, and early Brian Griffin all filled... The mouthpiece of the creator of the story, whenever he wants someone to make a point for him or call out something he’s trying to communicate to the audience. Problem is, it backfires in this show, because anybody with an ounce of life experience knows that all Nichi deserves is a spanking and PROBABLY also a trip to juvie.

The worst thing about ALL of these characters is that it takes them so... damn... long... To adapt to their situation and fucking DO anything! Don’t just stand their with a gun while the alien advances on you, you nitwit, fucking fire! Stop having philosophical debates in front of the bad guys! I know it’s kind of realistic for people in their first ever combat situation to freeze up and lose their nerves, but this is a fucking action anime, nobody bought the series to see that shit, this is a fantasy, and it is almost never any fun to watch! It gets tiring really fast seeing all of the inaction that goes on from scene to scene, almost as quickly as all of the scenes where new recruits to the Gantz party refuse to believe in what they’re going through and make idiotic decisions that get themselves killed. On top of that, there is way too much sexual aggression in this show. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those prudes who thinks you should never invoke rape or assault in a story, I think any subject matter can work, but when it starts to define a character? There are two alien hunting missions in this show, and in both of them, at least one thug attempts to rape Kishimoto while she’s naked, which is to say nothing to Kurono’s relentless objetification and groping of her inbetween missions. Yeah, I’m not offended by stuff like that in general, but at a certain point it stops feeling like a creative choice and starts feeling like an unresolved fetish.

The series also feels, like, weirdly xenophobic? It’s a show about random Japanese citizens(and a dog) being recruited to hunt and kill outsiders who are just hiding and trying to live their lives. It’s never made clear that even one of them is causing problems for anybody. It probably sounds like I’m reaching, until I tell you that from what I've heard, the manga explicitly refers to these aliens as “Immigrants” a few times. I know Japan has nothing to do with the political drama surrounding immigration in the US, but they have their own issues, as an overwhelmingly non-diverse country that can be extremely difficult to move into, and which still features offensive caricatures of non-Japanese people in its media to this day. Speaking of offensive caricatures, how about those aliens that look like a cartoony rendition of Bruce Lee, an American born Asian celebrity? How about the gay black character who only has two scenes; The one where he says he wants to fuck Kato, and the one where Kato beats the shit out of him for it? Kato’s conscience makes it hard for him to kill aliens, but punching a gay black man’s teeth out? I knew Japan had issues with conformity, but when you have to make a side character both a racial and sexual minority to justify violence against them, you have issues.

I guess I should wrap up this critique sandwich with another slice of compliment bread... In spite of all of its many issues, Gantz has its moments. It has random spurts of badassery sprinkled into the story every once in a while. Seeing Kurono use his super power suit to stand up to a cruel and sadistic bully is pretty awesome. It’s hard not to get sucked into Kato’s character arc throughout this season, as his circumstances are legitimately heartbreaking and you do want to root for him to get through it and protect his poor little brother. Even at their worst, the characters feel distinct and fleshed out, and none of them ever come off as bland. Even the ones with barely any screen time have enough personality and identity to leave some kind of impression. The fight scenes probably would have been really cool if they had been given the right kind of budget to support them. I don’t know, man, there was definitely some potential here, and it’s a damn shame that potential was never fully realized.

Gantz was originally available from ADV Films, but when they went under, Gantz was one of many properties they sold off to Funimation, who are the current rights holders. The original manga is available, now in a convenient omnibus form, from Dark Horse manga. A 2010 live action movie is not available stateside, but a CGI movie called Gantz 0 is available for streaming on Netflix. Kato is the main character in this one, and it’s actually pretty awesome.

I still remember my first exposure to Gantz. It was 2005, I had just started to seriously get into anime, and I found the first TWO EPISODE DVD at my local Walmart for 20 dollars. Yeah, compared to today, kind of a rip-off. It would be a few more years until I saw the entire series, and while I didn't particularly like it, I could kind of see the appeal, and weirdly enough, my feelings haven’t changed. The early to mid-2000s were a major breeding ground for edgy media that tried to be mature in the most childish ways possible... This time period was the heyday of Jackass, Adult Swim, Family Guy, Spike TV, so much in-your-face bullshit that tried to push the envelope as far as they could without being unsafe for TV, and I think that’s why anime like Gantz became popular, because they were all of that, but they were also willing to go the extra mile that American TV couldn’t. I can’t really say Gantz has aged poorly, as most of its issues were glaringly obvious even back then, but I can respect the value people saw in it at the time, even if it doesn't hold up well today.

I give Gantz a 4/10.