Gantz Volume 1

by Hiroya Oku

Book Overview

How long will you stay in the game? The last thing Kei and Masaru remember was being struck dead by a subway train while saving the life of a drunken bum. What a waste And yet somehow they're... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1593079494
• ISBN13: 9781593079499
• Release Date: July 2008
• Publisher: Dark Horse Manga
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.1" x 7.3"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Worth the monies

I know these scans are easily accessible but to have the book in your hand is pretty cool. Great story.

Decidedly Not for the Faint of Heart

The individual ingredients--teen angst, existential dilemma, sexual anxiety, purgatory, alien hunting, graphic violence, and computerized spheres that house omnipotent but catatonic men--could have calamitously collided. In fact, they could have made a grim, clumsy train wreck, like the one that launches the mind-bending, viscerally charged narrative of this fabled manga. But in the hands of Hiroya Oku, writer and digital artist, Gantz is one of the genre's most thoroughly addictive, eminently readable entries. The story follows sometimes friends Kei and Masaru on their surrealistic, supernaturally amped adventures through Tokyo, following a train accident that may or may not have killed them. In the realm of the undead, the less-than-dynamic duo--typical teens: angry, disenfranchised, mischievous, and constantly thinking of sex--is drawn into an underbelly of alien-hunting by a mysterious orb named Gantz, who apparently controls their destiny and promises to restore their quote-unquote real lives once they have completed enough missions for him. These missions (think Mission: Impossible meets The Matrix) come replete with high danger, cool gadgets, hyper-gory violence, and Big Bads named Onion Alien, Bird Alien, and Buddhist Temple Alien. New characters join Kei and Masaru. The female ones frequently shed their clothing. The males are quick to slice, dice, and otherwise draw blood. The series succeeds--over nearly 500 issues--by offering consistently inventive individual missions against the ongoing mystery of who and what is Gantz and what is the purpose of these body-splattering, alien-hunting assignments. Gantz is front-loaded with metaphysical queries (a la Lost), a hardboiled sensibility (a la Hammet or, say, Haruki Murakami), and graphic ultra-violence (think M-rated first-person shooter games, the ones where decapitations and downpours of blood are the norm), and is, resultantly, an awful lot of fun. Grim fun, but fun. The utter normalcy of Oku's teen characters makes their upstream paddling against their environment's endlessly enigmatic sci-fi shadings all the more delicious, while the writer's willingness to wrestle with recent historical atrocities adds a deft and deep--if oftentimes delirious--resonance to the storyline. Oku's artwork, digitally rendered, is breathtaking, even though it's often incredibly grisly--one that's decidedly not for the faint of heart. -- J. Rentilly

Men in Black + Violence + Sex = Gantz

Okay that's a simplification, but if you want the quick gist of what Gantz is about (since the title alone would tell you squat) then the above distills the concept pretty well. A group of random people, all caught in moments where they're about to die, are whisked to a mysterious room with a black orb. They're given high-tech weapons and suits and told to hunt down "aliens" night after night. This volume sets things up and tackles the first assignment, the "Onion Alien." Chaos ensues. What is Gantz and what's really going on? That's a question that really doesn't get touched on for a long, long time, and even though the Japanese run is 25+ volumes in, much remains a mystery. It doesn't matter though, because Gantz shines with its characters. Hiroya Oku hits a realistic portrayal of main lead Kurono Kei. He's an apathetic, hormonal-driven teenager who could care less about other people. Kei's a real jerk and anti-hero, and a lot of the drama/angst in Gantz revolves around the choices he makes and his treatment of others around him. It's grim, but its refreshingly accurate to life. Gantz also packs in a ton of sex and violence which should get just about any male reader's attention. The series is 18+, so the title pages are often scantily-clad pin-up girls carrying guns and our female lead makes her entrance in the nude (and is promptly sexually assaulted). Violence is brutal and gory in that torn-apart, guts splattering kinda way. If I have one complaint it's that like most titles in the genre, the action goes on for far too long at times, often extending for volumes before resolution. But what a resolution! Gantz is a completely unpredictable series, and none of the characters are safe. The roster switches up considerably as the series progresses, so there's always a sense of danger. Kudos to Dark Horse for finally bringing this series over (and putting it on a bi-monthly schedule). It definitely won't appeal to everyone, but if any of the above sounds like it interests you, Gantz is worth the investment.

Mind-blowing awesomeness

Brutal, hard-hitting, and gritty. But that doesn't quite describe the experience of Gantz. An enigma wrapped in a mystery, with [...] hanging out. It's not for children, but it is for people that crave sophisticated stories with fantastic artwork that almost makes you forget its artwork. Faithful to the anime so far, hard to improve when you're so close to perfection.

Neat Story Nice Artwork

I picked this one up on a reccommendation from a magazine for someone who is just looking to get into reading manga. I found the story to be intriguing, a bit of sci-fi and a bit of mystery as the characters struggle to understand where they are and what they are doing there. The artwork was very pretty and I definately look forward to reading Volume 2. I guess the reason I didn't give this 5 stars is because the story line is a bit confusing right now, but that just might be me being new to manga. I'll tell you though, don't flip back and forth from reading manga to american comics because you'll forget which way to read the panels :) Overall, B+/A-