This is a preliminary review of Gantz: E. As of the time of writing, 51 chapters have been translated to English and six volumes have been released.

I feel like seinen manga has an unfair expectation set in the West. Seinen is assumed by default to be nuanced, complex, something that teaches a lesson. Something that hits home. The biggest caveat to this is that it blinds people to seinen manga that aims to be much less ambitious than that and is ultimately still worth experiencing regardless of any other arbitrary qualification. Gantz is in an odd place where it is both an aggressively shameless sci-fi action movie and a series that attempts to be much more than that – it attempts to ask deep philosophical questions that you may have also seen as a mid-high student’s Instagram captions. It’s ultimately not all that insightful despite Hiroya Oku’s best efforts – and those moments where it tries to be typically end up being the weakest parts of the manga. Gantz is at its best when its effectively just a really edgy battle shonen – people die in horrific ways, people overcome impossible odds using a combination of shamelessly broken weaponry and character-development fueled willpower, bosses finally die after the 20th seemingly lethal attack, and all the while Hiroya Oku is illustrating like his life depends on it. Gantz is, at its best, a mindless action movie manga and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you that’s a bad thing. It rules. Gantz is awesome.

For those unaware, the premise of Gantz is pretty interesting: once someone dies there’s a chance they’ll get revived and get given a mission to kill an alien target using some badass sci-fi weaponry. Usually there’s a main boss alien and a bunch of lackey aliens too. You get points depending on how many aliens you kill, but killing a boss alien alone can net you upwards of 70 points — sometimes 100 points. Once a mission is complete, you get sent back to the room you reincarnated in and get to live in the human world until you’re called back for a new mission — so you’ll get anywhere from a few days to a month between missions. Once you reach 100 points you are given the option to receive some overpowered ass weapon, revive permanently and forget about the Gantz program altogether, or a third option that isn’t immediately revealed that I won’t spoil. It’s a death game of sorts, but a much more action oriented one. It’s also chock-full of ridiculously blatant sexism and shock-value content. I’m not all that bothered by it personally, it’s just eyeroll worthy as far as I’m concerned – but it’s enough that I would be hesitant to recommend it to anyone without knowing them personally. The rest of this review assumes the reader is familiar with the main series, so just know that if you can handle Gantz you can handle Gantz: E. If anything, the content has (as of the time of writing) less offensive content than the original series does.

After I finished Gantz, I needed more. I read Gantz:G, and although I didn’t outright dislike it the short runtime definitely killed a lot of the love I could’ve had for it. I read Gigant, and it was a mess – but a fun mess. Not what I’d call good, but not an experience I regret having. I have yet to read Inuyashiki, but it’s most definitely on my list. When I heard that Hiroya Oku was writing a Gantz spinoff that took place in Edo period Japan, my curiosity was piqued. I had been reading a lot more samurai-related series lately: most obviously Vagabond, Gintama, Blade of the Immortal, Rurouni Kenshin, etcetera – so the idea of seeing samurai action in a Gantz manga was immediately appealing to me. So I began reading it.

Now, here’s a very surface level but also very real complaint I have about Gantz:E. There is about as much samurai action in Gantz:E as there was in Gantz. In an astonishingly low amount of time, Gantz:E goes from being a samurai story to being Gantz: Again. At least during the actual Gantz missions, there’s very little there that could set itself apart from the original Gantz series. Weapons are just as sci-fi flavored as they were in the original, the suits are basically the same, the aliens are mostly the same, the stakes are the same, there are even some action sequences that seem like outright recreations of famous shots in the original Gantz. Every trope you remember from the original manga is back in Gantz: E. Hell, after a while even the futuristic mechas and bikes you’ll recognize from the original manga start showing up with no explanation or even so much as a second look from the oddly unconcerned protagonists. Seriously, it doesn’t even phase these guys – it’s Edo-period Japan but after their initial introduction to Gantz weaponry they basically don’t get surprised by much of anything (tech wise, at least). There is one unique aspect of Gantz: E that has been introduced at the end of the second mission, but only time will tell how Hiroya Oku plays it. I am cautiously optimistic, but I’m keeping my expectations measured. Generally speaking, Gantz: E is more Gantz. If you like Gantz, you’ll be happy to know there’s more of that in here. If you – like me – expected Gantz: E to evolve the formula in drastic ways, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

The time between missions is admittedly different. Although they too suffer a bit from rehashing storylines from the original manga, the setting does actually have bearing over how those storylines play out. Not in any particularly exciting ways, but enough to keep it somewhat fresh. I do lament the lack of interesting characters, though – every character seems like an expy for another character from Gantz. O-Saki is Kei Kishimoto, the Princess is Reika Shimohira, Masakichi and Hanbee serve the roles Kei Kurono and Masaru Katou served in the original manga, and there are other characters that fill Sakurai, old man Suzuki, Oka Hachirou and Nishi’s roles as well. It’s pretty much the most shameless example of milking a series that I’ve seen, and it’s like that to a ridiculous degree. So why do I ultimately like Gantz: E as much as I do?

The reason I like Gantz: E so much is because it is genuinely one of most hilariously self-indulgent manga I’ve ever read. I don’t think Hiroya Oku means it to be as funny as it is, but it really is just so excessive to a point of self-parody. For one, even in the original manga the missions were ridiculously difficult to complete. Half the cast would be horribly injured if not outright killed just to defeat one enemy – only for another even stronger enemy to show up. Often times the final boss would be ridiculously durable too, tanking multiple lethal blows like it was nothing – the feeling of hopelessness you would get during these fights could be considered a series staple. I can’t even begin to imagine how excruciating this would’ve been to experience during serialization – or at least I couldn’t, but then I started reading Gantz: E...and believe me, Gantz: E ~~doubles down~~ TRIPLES down on that ridiculousness. It’s no longer intense, it’s just purely absurd. The missions seem to NEVER end. In the four years since Gantz: E’s first chapter, only TWO MISSIONS have been completed. Roughly one year of serialization was dedicated to a fight against one single enemy that just would not die. It’s not a Nobuyuki Fukumoto type of situation where the absurdly slow pacing is justified by psychological deep dives into the characters either, it’s just fights. Pure fights. It’s annoying...at first, but eventually it starts to become the reason you read it at all. It’s like a running gag, almost -- Of course the monster is still alive after getting cut in half, why wouldn’t it be? Of course that monster we lost most of the team to was one of a squad of six other aliens that have the same amount of power, did you expect anything else? Of COURSE all that effort only resulted in the protagonist getting 10 points, this is Gantz! There is one specific moment in the last mission’s final boss fight (it’s that year long fight I was talking about earlier) that I won’t spoil, but for me it’s the moment where it switches from tedium to hilarity. It’s so good in its own decidedly not-good way.

That’s the best description I can really give for this series, really. It’s not a good manga, but it’s kind of great at the same time? There’s no restraint to be found anywhere in this manga, it’s shameless, it’s ridiculous, it’s glorious. On Letterboxd there was a talk about how a two star movie you favorited means much more than a five star movie you have nothing to say about. That’s where Gantz:E is to me. I can’t follow its release anymore because Gantz: E works best when you can burn through ten or twenty chapters in one sitting, but a year from now I’ll hopefully have a whole new batch of utterly ridiculous garbage to chew through and remark “Wow, this is terrible! Can’t wait for more!”

If I were being objective, I think my rating for this series would be 4.5/10 with a huge asterisk adorning it. It's bad in the way I like it. Since I can't add that asterisk, though:

7/10