Kei Kurono and his childhood friend Kato are coincidentally on the same subway station platform years after they've seen each other. A homeless man falls onto the tracks and Kato tries to help him, but isn't strong enough to lift the man to safety on his own. Kato spots Kei and calls over to him. Kei reluctantly helps because he's been called out in front of a crowd. Together, they save the man but are hit by the train and appear in a room with several other people. They are given a second lease on life if they follow instructions to defeat various alien threats with incredibly powerful weapons and high tech suits.
I quickly realized this series isn't for me. Kind of a bummer since I had been gifted the first three omnibuses. Kurono is the worst guy. He has a running commentary of the most insulting, arrogant thoughts but has nothing to back it up. At his core, he's just a pathetic, horny high school student. The minute a nude girl (also named Kei) who had killed herself arrives in the Gantz room, he's all over her, kissing and groping her unconcious body. Later, this same girl stays at his home and he pressures her sex. Kurono makes my skin crawl and the fact that he's supposed to be the hero is even more disgusting. I'm sure he probably gets better over the course of the series, but it's pretty hard to stomach.
On top of that, Kei is the only female character and doesn't have any dimensions beyond being naked and objectified. Kei is threatened or outright attacked by almost every male character in the book, including Kato, the nicest guy in the series. Her body is shown in minute detail from every angle while Kurono's nudity is censored. Her only purpose is to love Kato when Kurono wants her and be naked in almost every frame of the story in addition to full page pin-up style pictures at the start of each chapter. Even the Gantz machine depicts her topless and calls her "Boobs." It's terrible writing and all of this distracts heavily from an interesting story.
Random people who die are picked by Gantz to fight the alien enemy with appropriate weapons and armor. If they accomplish their goal within the allotted time, they are rewarded points and if they don't, they die for good. There's no instructions of any kind, so they just have to stumble around, hoping what they're doing is right. The creature they fight is weird and the fights are the goriest I've seen in manga form. Kurono and Kato repeat the process with different people replacing those who died with a different enemy and they act as guides with what they've learned since the first time. Too much time in my opinion is spent on if this is a game show or not. It's clearly real when everyone starts dying.
Gantz had so much promise. It is a fast paced manga with amazing fight scenes and excessive gore. However, the characters are just too awful to root for (even the supposedly nice ones) and the treatment of women is horrifically misogynistic. I will be reading the next two omnibuses since I have them and they take about an hour for me to read. I don't expect these problems to get any better, but it might surprise me.
My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins
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