Gantz (manga recommendation)

 

This post is part of 52 anime challange - I'll be recommending one anime/manga per week that I've recently watched. I won't be writing about stuff that I've watched long time ago and that I don't fully remember.

 

A high school student dies and is transported to a mysterious room from which he cannot leave. The black ball inside announces that from now on he must kill aliens on its orders. For this purpose, he receives a special outfit that increases his physical abilities and sci-fi weapons. Along with him come new recruits who, like him, have no idea what's going on, as well as veterans who died long ago and have since been regularly summoned to battle by Gantz (as the black ball is called).

Plot:

In short, there are guys running around with rifles and shooting aliens. Sometimes more people die, sometimes less. Sometimes the mission succeeds, sometimes it fails. As you can guess - Gantz repeatedly calls the protagonist to battle and this theme will persist throughout the manga.

Some of the fights were really interesting and kept me in suspense the whole time. I was curious if, despite the aliens' superiority, the characters would manage to win this time as well.
The quality of manga is very uneven. The beginning is okay, but I had the most fun around chapter 100-200. The protagonist has already gained experience, which makes the fights more carefully planned. New plot threads start to appear in the background. A new type of opponents appear, with whom they have to fight outside of the standard missions. Allies appear who have unexplained powers (the origin of which is never explained).
The relationships between the characters have already been built up by this point and part of the plot also takes place on the level of interpersonal relationships rather than just on the battlefield. It was the part that balanced on the edge of drama, touched on psychological themes, and at the same time had some of the best fights that drew me in the most and I had a great time with it.

On the other hand - from the 230th chapter to the end, the fights took on a scale to the point of absurdity. At some point, the relationships between the characters became shallow, and the fights became worse. Especially the elevation of the protagonist to the role of a demigod who, by the power of motivation (and love), is better than people who have accomplished far more on the battlefield than he had.

I wanted the plot to be good and all the subplots explained, because what was built up to half of the manga had a lot of potential. Unfortunately, if someone is mostly interested in an intricately built mystery straight out of Attack on Titan - then I would advise against reading Gantz.

Characters:

There are a lot of them, and only some of them who will not serve as cannon fodder are developed in any way. Virtually all the characters can be characterized by a single character trait. Few of them have a one-dimensional spectrum of personality that changes over the course of the manga. Don't count on heroes as a strength of the title - it's mostly about shooting aliens.

Art:

I appreciated that the manga panels are portraying the action well and I knew exactly what was going on at every moment - the fights were enjoyable to watch.
On the other hand, some of the characters are very similar to each other. The level of aliens is uneven. The aliens drawn with an "accurate" line look especially poor, because instead of introducing additional details, the whole thing merges into a black mass.
It's not good, it's not bad - the most important thing is that you know what's going on and you enjoy watching the fights.

Summary:

Strong first half - interesting fights and opponents, relationships between characters, and the growing tension of a mystery... that never gets unraveled. The series tends towards the absurd, which over time ceases to give satisfaction. The good relationships between the characters in the first part of the manga should not be confused with the fact that the characters themselves are interesting. Most are cannon fodder that can be summed up by a single character trait.
The artwork doesn't impress, but in each panel you can see exactly what's going on and you can easily follow the fights.