OMG Gantz

[lambda-driver]

I'm in awe of such an awesome anime but it's so depressing at the same time but it had some deep, deep messages!

I really hope they do make a second third one with all the anime but the blood got kind of old after awhile I know this was a dark / horror anime or something along those lines.

In theory the show / manga could go on forever the story would be slightly different though out I'm sure this anime has been discussed a lot and I apologize.

I just saw this anime and though I had to comment and give my 2 cent on the intertubes. Either way I loved the drama and the uncertainly of every episode and honestly I didn't expect the way the things would turn out the way they did I was hoping there was going to be a happy moment or something like that.

if anyone could recommend me other good drama anime's that would be great, a little less on the blood though that got to be a little much at times.

[Splitter]

I'm in awe of such an awesome anime but it's so depressing at the same time but it had some deep, deep messages!

I really hope they do make a second third one with all the anime but the blood got kind of old after awhile I know this was a dark / horror anime or something along those lines.

In theory the show / manga could go on forever the story would be slightly different though out I'm sure this anime has been discussed a lot and I apologize.

I just saw this anime and though I had to comment and give my 2 cent on the intertubes. Either way I loved the drama and the uncertainly of every episode and honestly I didn't expect the way the things would turn out the way they did I was hoping there was going to be a happy moment or something like that.

if anyone could recommend me other good drama anime's that would be great, a little less on the blood though that got to be a little much at times.

Please don't take this the wrong way but I've never heard the word "deep" when talking about Gantz.

Granted it is one of the best guilty pleasures I have seen to date. What else can you call the unholy fusion of Battle Royale and the Darwin Awards?

[ricecooker]

Would you care to venture some of these deep messages? Like Splitter, this series was more a guilty pleasure to me since we see stupid people getting theirs. Of course, most of them were annoying (especially the grandmother and her grandson) so it makes it more enjoyable.

[ohtori_akio]

I am one of those who ended up detesting Gantz as the depth was lost because of the way the story was told. I do agree that it offers some worthwhile messages but overall the delivery sucked big time!

[lambda-driver]

Ok maybe not deep is the right word but it had some worth while messages especially near the ending.

None the less it was an enjoyable show.

[JackProton]

Would you care to venture some of these deep messages?

Perhaps the illustration of the morally and intellectually bankrupt hypocritical sanctimoniousness of the bourgeois middle class in relation to a social order which values individuals according to their wealth and power while discarding those with none and to recast the pious self-delusions of social justice and opportunity in more appropriate terms of continual savage warfare againt "the other" for little more purpose than obtaining access to sex partners and abstract 'points'. But I watched it for the sex and violence. ;)

[HitokiriShadow]

Would you care to venture some of these deep messages?

"Man, Akira had an awesome ending. I think I'm going to do the same thing. I'll toss in a few references to Iraq and the evils of society and it'll look really 'deep'. It'll be the next Evangelion!"

That's the message I got out of it.

[JackProton]

Akira?

[HitokiriShadow]

I only vaguely remember Akira, but I recall it ending with the main character heading for the light or something like that, which is fairly similar to how Gantz ended.

[Splitter]

Would you care to venture some of these deep messages?

"Man, Akira had an awesome ending. I think I'm going to do the same thing. I'll toss in a few references to Iraq and the evils of society and it'll look really 'deep'. It'll be the next Evangelion!"

That's the message I got out of it.

Nishi did a better job showing Kurono the disturbing nature of society than that maniac did... but the maniac had a bazooka so he's still cooler.

[Onions]

I don't think people give Gantz as much credit as they should. All this talk of "guilty" pleasure doesn't really apply, to me atleast, either.

I think it comes to the fact Gantz was never explained that people thought it was simply gorey for the point of being so. However, I find the show was more about characters than an actual story - and each of their progression - and this was only heightened by all the stuff they went through.

Just recently I sat through the first 2 episodes of Speed Grapher, and to me that was pointless gratuity/content - as it was trying to tell a story, yet failing, all the while seemingly trying to push extreme situations into it thinking it'd help it be more "realistic"/"hard-hitting", what have you, when the rest of the show couldn't back it up.
I plan to watch some further - but given I sit through almost anything, and I just can't get the drive to watch anymore, just shows me how badly I thought it was put together.

What I find funny too is I thought I'd see what AOD reviewed/had to say about the show (the first volume atleast). And to my surprise the reviewer said the exact opposite I was thinking - that it had reason for the content while Gantz didn't!

It must come down to a person's point of view in the end, and whether it syncs with their vibe, thinking pattern, etc.

[Splitter]

That's nice and all but this is the Internet. The only people who care about your opinion is you.

[kakugo]

The anti-American propaganda shoehorned into the end of GANTZ is director ITANOU Ichirou continuing a campaign he started years ago in the Angel Cop anime, in which Japan was sold off to the American government to be a puppet state in which politicians could start conflicts to train men, test weapons and dump nuclear waste. Amazingly, this wasn't the most outrageous political aspect of the title. :D

Anyway, Gantz is a fascinating experience in the right context. Based on a seemingly unadaptable manga by OOKU Hiroya in which the reader meets interesting people and someone else kills them, Itano and screenwriter SOGO Masashi took the core concept of stupid people in dangerous situations and twisted them considerably to create a world in which selfishness, rather than stupidity, was the root of deceit and inevitable self destruction. What you end up watching are characters doing the exact same things they did in the manga (a few notable situations aside), but for totally different reasons... I'm going to ramble in a spoileriffic manner now, so if you haven't seen the show, for the love of all that's holy, don't read any further unless I say otherwise:

Nishi in the manga explaining that the first game is actually a game show makes sense, and that everyone accepted it at face value proved that the other players were gullible. In the anime Nishi explains what may be the truth: that they're hunting aliens. Everyone shrugs it off with a "whatever" attitude, and ignore anything he has to say. The same characters end up dying, but not for the same reasons. If the characters in the manga had listened to Nishi, they would have died in an instant... if they'd have listened to him in the anime, they'd have had a chance. Their own ignorance and self-reliance, their want to stay in a world of their own design and to ignore the reality standing right in front of them, led to their seemingly inevitable demise.

This is even more personified in the first episode when only Katou wants to help the bum that fell on the subway tracks. Every other character (including our hero) just shrugs it off, acting as if it's not their problem. Why should it be? A dead homeless drunk doesn't affect their lives one iota. And it's this exact thinking that is the recurring theme in Gantz that leads to pain and suffering. If anything, the people on the subway at best think that it's someone else's problem, and at worst are excited or feel satisfied that he'll probably meet his end. These thoughts are horrible... but no different from our own.

Are we as people really so horrible that we'd enjoy watching a stranger of no social worth die for our own amusement? The fact that we're watching Gantz proves that we are. We want violence, mayhem and destruction in our lives, we need it to satisfy urges both primal and humane in nature. People live in a society in which violence is forbidden, yet we seek to vicariously live out fantasies of the grotesque and exciting. The "Game" that Gantz pits players in leads only to violence, a game that we the viewers sit glued to with the same horrid, morbid fascination people have for reality TV shows, bloody documentaries, and vouyer pornography. We root for some characters, and hope to see others die... often the characters (such as the yakuza and biker gang) are unlikable, but does their being assholes deny them the right to live? At what point does a person, being so devoid of humanity, not deserve their own life?

For that matter, who is Gantz and what right does he have to pit players against monsters the likes of which they've never seen? For all purposes he is a God, a sardonic and cruel bastard who sets players up like dominoes only to smile as they fall over, all in a row. Gantz, horrible though he may be, cracks bad jokes in l33t type and gives players the opportunity to win, knowing full well that the players he chooses will throw their own lives away. Gantz is the jaded internet savvy part of modern society that wants to see the self-absorbed middle class of the world cannibalize itself for his own amusement, and with realistic expectations he puts them in a situation where he can do just that.

The most important message to take from Gantz, I think, lies in the first 2 episodes after the group of players descends on the first negi alien, guns in hand, grinning and stomping forward towards a pint-sized creature that, until scared, meant them no harm. Even the school teacher, a man who's job was to nurture and care for children, had a hand in destroying this child, and enjoyed it. When a moment after the small negi alien's life is over and the big one (I've always assumed it's father) shows up, tears in it's eyes and - at least in the manga - groceries in hand, it lashes out against the throng of heartless bastards standing over pieces of his son's corpse. The "monster" they were told to kill only acted in revenge for his fallen comrade, while the mostly innocent humans pulled the trigger without even considering the consequences. The world of Gantz is full of monsters and boogeymen, but much like the zombie films of George A. Romero, the only truly evil being is man. Gantz himself, after all, appears to be human.

Gantz has no story. But it does have a lot of context and meaning in the situations that arise from that lack of a story. Gantz literally has two things, characters and violence, but that doesn't mean either of these things don't mean something. Much like Pasolini's Salo, I think that while the director tried to twist the source material considerably to meet his own political and social agenda with mixed results, the remaining series manages to touch on certain issues very well. No, Gantz is no Evangelion or Ghost in the Shell, but it's subtext isn't nearly as stupid as the characters who personify it.

Or, that's what I got out of it anyway. Mind I also think Genocyber OVA 1 is a masterpiece and that Trinity Blood sucks donkey hoof, so my opinions seem to be anything but typical.

[JackProton]

I only vaguely remember Akira, but I recall it ending with the main character heading for the light or something like that, which is fairly similar to how Gantz ended.
Akira's ending was more of a 2001, a Space Odyssey science fiction mystical sort of deal. Gantz's was, I think, meant to be a write-your-own type of ending IMHO.

[JackProton]

Nice job, Kakugo. Great analysis. I was reminded a bit of Midnight Express when I watched Gantz though I doubt the creators of Gantz were as unaware of the way many viewers would see entertainment value in the violence itself.