Ask John: Does Gantz Live Up To Its Hype?

Question:
What’s the big deal with Gantz? I’m sorry, but I just don’t get it. Everywhere I looked there were reports that Gantz was this highly controversial show and after watching volumes 1-3 and 7, the show just seems to offer sex and violence to shock the viewer. Plus the animation is very inconsistent, ranging form average to sub-par and even at times it was too slick with the CG 3D backgrounds not meshing with the characters. The show just seemed to be all hype.

Answer:
Virtually anyone who’s familiar with my tastes in movies and entertainment knows that I have a taste for gratuitous violence, gore, and horror. I appreciate and enjoy the work of Japanese horror masters including Junji Ito, Hideshi Hino, Go Nagai, Tamakichi Anaru, Daisuke Yamanouchi, Takashi Shimizu, Hideyuki Kikuchi and many others (although Waita Uziga’s work is a bit strong even for my depraved tastes). So Hiroya Oku’s Gantz should be a natural fit for me. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s really very good, and I do think that much of the hype surrounding the title is mere smoke and mirrors.

The original Gantz manga, which I’ve read much of, is attractive looking, exciting, and intelligent because it contains subtle social critique. However, the Gantz manga is also very insubstantial because it attempts to straddle the line between being cryptic and being vapid, and regrettably seems to lean closer to being pointless and insubstantial. The Gantz manga teases readers with the suggestion of a major revelation and purpose, but my suspicion is that there is actually no yet-to-be-revealed significance within the story. My suspicion is that Gantz really is nothing more than endless superficial exploitation. And if that is actually the case with the manga, at least the manga has some intelligence and elegance in its simplicity.

The Gantz TV animation is an even bigger disappointment. Last year I stated my dissatisfaction with the anime. I completely agree with your perception that the Gantz anime has wildly inconsistent animation quality and poorly integrated 2D characters with 3D backgrounds. The Gantz anime tries to draw substance from its source material by emphasizing the original manga’s subtle psychological observations. The result, in the anime, ends up being heavy handed and clumsy- distracting instead of provoking. By attempting to emphasize the selfishness of the characters, the anime series turns them into annoying archetypes. Instead of being the reasonably believable characters they are in the original manga, the characters in the anime have wildly exaggerated personalities that make them roles instead of people: the hero, the martyr, the damsel in distress, the temptress, the fool, and so forth. The anime just feels stilted, artificial, and cheap instead of engrossing or moving. The original manga may not be exceptional, but at least it doesn’t have as many shortcomings as its anime adaptation does.

There’s been so much controversy surrounding the Gantz anime that hype has overshadowed and influenced objective critique of the actual quality of the anime series itself. When the Gantz anime premiered on the Fuji TV network in April 2004, the show was heavily censored. The censoring severely compromised the tone and pace of the already hamstrung production. The second half of the show moved to uncut broadcast on the satellite TV network AT-X. The Japanese DVD release was heavily promoted because it was the first time the show’s early episodes were released uncensored- creating additional anticipation for the show among anime fans. Then, when the series was brought to America, domestic distributor AD Vision made the surprising and unprecedented decision to release the series with only two episodes on each DVD, which caused a great deal of controversy among American consumers. AD Vision explained the release format as a marketing “experiment.” Half way through the series’ American release, AD Vision announced that its “experiment” in releasing less anime per disc at a lower cost was concluded, probably in response to intense criticism from the American fan community. Henceforth the second half of the American Gantz DVD release would have a more typical American episode count per disc. All of these unusual circumstances surrounding the Gantz anime generated a tremendous word of mouth buzz about the show. That massive swell of interest, coupled with the hopes of fans that the show would be good, led many viewers and critics to hype the show endlessly while (possibly unconsciously) ignoring the show’s flaws and weaknesses.

I have nothing but respect for the artists who toiled to make the Gantz anime, and I don’t wish to discourage any Gantz fans or potential fans from enjoying the series. But I do believe that Gantz is a very flawed and excessively hyped anime series that’s more popular and successful than its innate qualities are deserving of.