More people are called to fight against the alien menace with no instructions or rules communicated. Kei and Kato continue to fight and attempt to lead the various people despite their disbelief and/or ineptitude. Kato takes a powerful stance while Kei's ego is inflated by his newfound abilities and equipment.
Gantz is a series with an interesting concept, innovative creature designs, and completely mean spirited, gross execution. Kei continues to be a horrible person that we are apparently supposed to be rooting for. He abuses his powers by taking his suit to fight bullies and terrorize people only to have to fight aliens without it when teleported unexpectedly. He suffers a little, but somehow continues to succeed. For instance, he kicks out female Kei from his house for not sleeping with him only to randomly have sex with a woman who looks exactly like Lara Croft from Tomb Raider later. It's obvious wish/fetish fulfillment on the part of the author and completely took me out of the story. Kei throws himself into fighting and enjoys it because his life is boring and he doesn't excel at anything else. He's just a pathetic, misogynistic character that I hate.
The things I actually like about this story are Kato and the aliens. Kato is Kei's foil in every way. He refuses to kill the aliens, tries to save everyone he can, and is genuinely nice to everyone around him. Despite that one gross moment in the previous installment, he is the kind of person that should be the hero. Perhaps Kei is meant to be a deconstruction of the hero trope, but I don't have to like it. The aliens have such unique designs and abilities with a flock of bird-like creatures and gigantic statues that are actually alive. It's a shame that I hate almost everything else about it. The action is fast paced and the considerable gore impressed me.
Gantz 2 is better than the first because the misogyny is kept to a minimum. The characters are already established and most of the book is action scenes. There are still pin-up pictures of every female character at the start of each chapter which annoys me. I'm only reading up to the third omnibus because I already owned them . Otherwise, I would have stopped at the first.
My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins
* Gantz Omnibus 3
The team continues to fight the gigantic statue aliens, but the fight doesn't stay away from Kei's personal life anymore.
This installment of Gantz has tons of surprising losses that I never expected. Kei is already an awful person, as I've complained about many times before, but he manages to get so much worse. An alien attacks him at his school and he literally leaves his whole school to die when he's the only one who could even put up a fight. I'm just not sure how the author can expect anyone to keep following this "hero" when he starts horrible and gets progressively worse every single story.
At the very end of the manga (after extra drawings of each female character with even more gigantic breasts than they have in the regular art of the story), the author writes about how people complain about the many gratuitously nude or semi-nude pictures of women throughout his books. He makes it clear that it's for his own enjoyment and further states that it's the same thing as drawing attractive, tall men. It truly isn't. When every woman in the story (except the elderly) are objectified on every cell they're in, it's a lot different than depicting hot guys fully clothed (or censored when nude) and unobjectified. None of the women in the story have any motivations outside romantic entanglements with the male characters. I'm so done with this manga. Gantz has a lot of the same problems as the I Am a Hero series and it's depressing that both series are so popular.
My rating: 2/5 fishmuffins
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