GANTZ Volume 1 Review
A Seinen Manga Review
The opening shot of Hiroya Oku's sci-fi epic GANTZ is a full-page panel of a buxom woman in a bikini posing in front of the ocean. In the corners of the page are the thoughts of Kurono Kei, highschool freshman and protagonist of the series, lamenting how girls like the one in the magazine he's reading don't go to his high school.
The chapter continues at a subway terminal where Kei Kurono observes those waiting with him, evaluating their worth by their appearances while assuring the reader that even though he may look stupid, he's "better than everyone else in the world."
A drunken homeless man stumbles of the station platform and onto the tracks. The crowd discusses finding a station attendant (but never bother to) while Kei's heart begins to pound as he imagines the train running over the homeless man, thinking "I've only seen that in movies and manga."
Another high school student jumps onto the tracks to help the man and Kei recognizes him as a classmate in elementary school. The other student, Masaru Kato, sees Kei and pleads with him to help. The crowd glares at Kei until he drops down to help. Kei and Kato push the man back onto the platform and attempt to flee down the tracks before being struck by the train, killing them instantly. As Kei's severed head floats across his last thoughts are about how noisy and disgusting everyone around him is.
The Reflection of Kei Kurono
GANTZ does something interesting, if perhaps foolish, in creating a protagonist with an awful personality but who tries to hide his thoughts from others. There's numerous characters in manga that are impenitent villains or callous yet have a hidden, sympathetic nature but rarely is a manga's main character an arrogant pessimist. Kei is surprisingly realistic in that there is no reason given for why his personality is so unattractive, making him more relatable than altruistic heroes or vengeful antiheroes of manga.
It may be an insult to the readership of Weekly Young Jump to assume that they can see more of themselves in the selfish, conceited Kei Kurono than traditional manga protagonists. It's hard not to draw this conclusion when the manga quickly transforms into a wish fulfillment fantasy by sending Kei into a posthumous death game where's he armed with futuristic weaponry and is accompanied by more of the recently deceased, including a nude teenage girl with massive breasts.
The problem with this scenario is that GANTZ is 200+ pages of gore, blood, and nudity supplemented with a commentary about the superficiality of modern culture and its anesthetizing effects. The characters literally cannot believe that they ever died and that the hunt for the child-like "onion alien" must be a game show despite the weapons they're given do very real damage. This would make for a somewhat effective satire if the violence wasn't so over-the-top and if the only female wasn't relegated to a sex object and damsel in distress.
Conclusion
GANTZ seems to be focusing on Kei being faced with the dark reality of his fantasies and ultimately rejecting them, but there's nothing conclusive in the first volume. The technique of indulging in fanservice while wagging a finger against it doesn't quite work and the series will eventually have to choose a side.
GANTZ Volume 1 Cover
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