ntisocial 10th-grader Kei Kurono holds the entire world in contempt. When he isn't indulging sexual fantasies about his female classmates, he's judging everyone around him as worthless and shallow. Then he runs into an old elementary-school playmate, Masuru Kato. He instantly dismisses Kato as a probable thug, but when a drunk man falls onto the subway tracks in front of them, Kato is the only one among the crowd who moves to help him. When Kato recognizes Kei and calls him forward by name, Kei reluctantly jumps down to help, but after the boys maneuver the drunk to safety they're struck down and torn apart by an oncoming train.
The next thing they know, they're standing in a Tokyo apartment that's empty except for a huge black sphere and a collection of other people who remember dying: a first-grade teacher who was caught in a traffic accident, a cancer patient, a pair of yakuza who were apparently shot, a dog and an intense eighth grader who simply says "I fell." As they all confirm that they can't leave the apartment—their hands pass through the door and the window latches—a naked girl appears in the room, teleported in one centimeter at a time by the black sphere. One of the mookish yakuza promptly hauls her into a back hallway to rape her, but Kato intervenes on her behalf even as the others stand by fearfully.
Then a glowing message appears on the sphere: "Your lives are now over, you bastards. What you do with your new lives is for me to decide." It gives them an hour to kill a target called "the greenonion alien," pops open to reveal heavy weaponry and personalized skin-tight black suits, then teleports its new employees out into a nighttime street, where they encounter a hapless little green man who talks endlessly about green onions. Kato moves to defend him, the girl sticks nervously by Kato, and Kei stands clear and watches them jealously, but the majority of their fellow afterlifers seem perfectly willing to gun down a weak, unarmed creature, if only to get to play with their lethal new toys.
Call him irresponsible
That's the beginning of Gantz, a 26-episode supernatural-mystery series that ADV is releasing on DVD at the surprisingly sluggish rate of two episodes per disc. Given the show's slow pace—many things change over the course of the initial two episodes, but they rarely change quickly, or without a great deal of internal monologuing and sitting or wandering aimlessly around—that's likely to frustrate viewers. Still, by the end of the first volume, a very few things have been revealed. Most significantly, Kei is a jerk, a letch and a fairly pitiful excuse for a human being. Unlikable protagonists are common enough in anime, but it's rare to see one so wholly without merit in a series this serious and adult.
And make no mistake, Gantz is meant for adults, given the graphic nudity and extreme violence, not to mention the series' grave, talky nature, which may bore anyone tuning in entirely for prurient reasons. Kei is a particularly internal character who keeps up a vindictive, hateful and judgmental mental commentary, but rarely vocalizes his feelings, and the people around him don't seem to be much different, though the audience generally isn't in on their thoughts. So little gets said in Gantz, and the characters' motivations and intentions are often a complete mystery until they act.
That tends to give the series a tense, capricious edge, which is one of its great advantages—the story is so strange, and the characters are so opaque, that it's impossible to anticipate where it's going. The sheer unpleasantness may put some viewers off—the animation's sharp detail and fine coloration are quickly put to use in graphic and bloody ways—but at least they can't shrug it off as a same-old same-old show. Instead, it's a peculiarly graphic but quickly intriguing series that doesn't inspire a lot of sympathy for its cruel or rude or helpless protagonists, but does inspire instantaneous curiosity about what's going on and what, if anything, it all means. Viewers can just expect to have to wait a long time to find out, two secretive episodes at a time.
I was impressed by the emphasis these opening episodes put on personal social responsibility. The bystanders in the train station seem perfectly willing to stand by and watch another person die, if it means they don't have to take any risks—and that they might get to see a mangled corpse. Kei and the other sphere refugees seem similarly willing to stand by while a helpless girl is raped, either because they fear violence or because they don't care enough to act. Only Kato is willing to stick his neck out for a stranger, but in both cases, his courage and his willingness to buck the crowd make all the difference in the world to the would-be victims.
— Tasha
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