GANTZ Volume 7

Coveted along with Elfen Lied as one of the most violent and extreme anime series to appear in recent years, director Ichiro “Violence Jack” Itano’s version of GANTZ has turned out to be a richly entertaining cocktail of exploding aliens, trashy teenage sex and sharp social commentary. However thanks to being produced half way through the original (and still on-going) manga series, we leave the show feeling some what unfulfilled and dare I say it, frustrated – big questions are still hanging over the premise – basically why, when and what is the big black ball called GANTZ?

Clearly Itano’s intention wasn’t to provide answers, but to get the viewer thinking about themselves, about how they would react, gun in hand, to a similar situation. GANTZ is merely a wise cracking Deus ex machina planted to provoke these thoughts, to callously trick the viewer into thinking the show had a story. Like I said, frustrating.

As it goes the final mission isn’t bad at all. There is a somewhat disappointing lack of alien prey and thus horrific fun, but the sadism of the new contestants is ramped into overdrive as the “kill Kurono” mission forces them to turn on each other and question whether or not it’s okay to kill another person to survive.

Pacifism rarely works in this situation because as much as you try to tell a sick bastard it’s wrong to murder, he is still a sick bastard. Some people are beyond reason, and if you want to live, you had better be ready to fight for yourself and pull the trigger first. At the same time, there is only one way to justify killing another – the decision and the blame is your own, and right or wrong – you must live with that for the rest of your life. It’s interesting how one of the aforementioned sick bastards attempts to justify his killing spree by desperately pointing to America invading Iraq; if a soldier kills under orders, does that make him a murder? Obviously the moral implications are important, but the ultimate answer will always be coloured by individual perspective; to decide whether or not it’s better to live as a murder or die as a pacifist. By the end GANTZ is clearly emphasizing that when the time comes, it’s most important to fight for yourself and stand up for your beliefs, it’s a terrible thing to die with regrets, knowing that you could and should have done more.

As is the case with the rest of this series, during final trio of episodes the violence continues to be rendered with gory aplomb by GONZO, but disappointingly they have done a fairly bland job with the animation overall. It mostly looks dull and flat, almost frozen in time and lacking physical realism; the characters rarely move with any real pace and the action is more like a fast moving slideshow – jerky and somewhat unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, GANTZ doesn’t look abysmal, but coming from a reputed animation house like GONZO (responsible for the likes of Last Exile), the sadly limited production values are a testament to the wasted potential this show will ultimately come to represent. It could have been so much more.

In Summary

While no means a total disappointment GANTZ just suddenly ends in the typically open-ended philosophical style we have come to expect of mysterious anime, totally leaving us bloated with feelings of frustration. The gory violence and especially biting characterisation was still viscerally entertaining, but without any real closure it’s hard to describe this as anything but an anti-climax.

GANTZ began as an enthusiastically brutal and darkly comic horror anime that delighted in the extremely violent slaughter of the naive masses, as perpetrated by a horde of hilariously over the top monsters, aliens and psychotic budda statues. Slow though it was, watching the characters grow in adversity from arse-holes and idiots to likable and brave personalities was endearing. A shame then that it had to end, and in such an abrupt fashion too.