Gantz
(26 episode series)
This is honestly one of the worst series I've actually bothered to muddle my way all the way through. Basically it's just otaku porn – filled to the brim with the kind of crap that the stereotypical otaku fanboy is supposed to just love the hell out of. On top of that, the series takes every possible opportunity to hit its audience over the head with as much clichéd bullshit as possible when it comes to denouncing how horrible society has become, militaries, the second Iraq War, the United States (you know, 'cuz it's evil), and ironically violence in general, despite being pretty much all about violence. And if that wasn't bad enough, the characters are all either unsympathetic assholes, too stupid to live, or both.
So what's it about? Well basically there's this mysterious, magical black ball with a bald guy on life support inside of it that apparently clones various people at their moments of death in order to have them compete in a sadistic game it likes to play. Basically it gives them these skintight powered armor suits and some sci-fi guns to go out and kill random creatures it claims are aliens, giving them a limited amount of time and a limited area in which to complete these missions. It rewards points based on the outcome of the missions, with the goal being to gain 100 points total.
The series follows "typical high school student" Kei Kurono, who apparently the average otaku is supposed to identify with. He apparently has a hard time (heh) paying attention in class, undressing his attractive teacher and all the girls in his class with his eyes and popping a boner on a regular enough basis that some of the girls in his class can tell when he's hiding one. They then go on to point out this fact to the teacher, who has some fun embarrassing him about it along with the rest of the class. He's the quintessential pervert, thinking about and doing things that frankly make even me think he's a freak. And if that wasn't enough to make me not like him, he's also a rather selfish asshole. Unfortunately for him, he crosses paths with a creepy old lady who apparently is a recruiter for Gantz. This is as he runs into an old friend of his from elementary school at a subway station, Masaru Kato. Masaru is the kind of noble guy I'm guessing all the otaku want to be like, because he always seems to be doing selfless, sacrificing things for anyone and everyone to the point that he's frankly quite annoying. He also tends to do way too much analyzing about things like the implications of using deadly force to defend himself and others that he's basically useless and indecisive during the various "games" Gantz sends the characters on. I say all this up front, because it's pretty much all Masaru's fault that both he and Kei end up dead with their clones fighting random aliens for Gantz's amusement. In the first episode a drunken bum wanders down into the subway station and manages to collapse onto the tracks. And since society is horrible according to this show, no one but Masaru wants to bother actually doing anything to prevent this guy from getting run over by the incoming train. He also happens to recognize Kei and calls out to him, so Kei apparently feels obligated to help out his old friend. They save the bum, but naturally they both end up getting run over by a train. Despite this happening in front of a crowd, no one believes anyone about what happened because not only are their bodies and all the blood mysteriously gone, but all photographic evidence is also gone.
Kei and Masaru find themselves in an unfurnished Tokyo apartment along with several other people, apparently having appeared out of thin air. Not long afterwards, we get to see how this looks when a wet, naked Kei Kishimoto also appears out of thin air, looking somewhat like a 3-D printer has constructed her. She'd apparently tried to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. She's also the reason why it's really obvious that all of the characters who appear in that room are actually clones of the dead originals, because as it turns out, her original was saved (just remember kids, it's down the road, not across the street
). Anyway, Kei Titty McBoobs is basically the main source of fan service for the series, at least until she buys it. She's also our allotment of moé-blob for the series. Actually it's kind of funny because while the opening titles make her look like a hot action girl, really the only function she serves aside from providing about 75% of the massive amount of fan service is to shriek, need rescuing, and ask plaintively for someone to do something. Oh, and there's a dog that likes to lick her crotch pretty much every time it sees her, leading me to believe that the people behind this show are even bigger perverts than I am.
Fortunately for everyone in that apartment, the stereotypical psycho kid was something of a veteran and smugly explained basically everything to everyone else, and by extension the audience, because Gantz never bothered to explain any of the rules of its twisted little game. Simple rules like not wandering more than a kilometer away from where it beamed them outside to fight whatever random enemies it had sent them after, the importance of the power suits, how to operate the weapons it provided, or to not try talking about anything related to Gantz or its games to anyone. The punishment of breaking the "don’t leave the area" or the "don’t talk about Gantz" rules was for Gantz to set off a little bomb it'd implanted into the clones' heads. Everything else was just a matter of making survivability of the characters and success of their missions more likely, or for that matter even explaining why earning 100 points was a good thing, or that they could leave the room after they'd completed a mission until Gantz transported them back for another "game."
There are so many other characters that show up and don’t even last through more than one of these "game" sessions that it would be pretty pointless to describe them all. I'll just say that they're all pathetically stupid to the point that they pretty much all deserved their fate. Don't get me wrong, some of them actually managed to be sympathetic, but they were still stupid. This is actually the thing that frustrated me the most about this series, because when they should've been gunning down the targets Gantz pitted them against before they killed them, most of the time they just stood around and talked, whether to argue about what was going on or what to do, or to agonize about making the really obvious choice to kill something or someone that represented a deadly threat to their own lives. But even when the characters actually started to do that, they tended to do really stupid things, like running right up to the creatures they were fighting to shoot them instead of doing it from a distance and out of range of the vast majority of these things' attacks, because guns can do that. For that matter, even these alleged aliens tended to just stand there for long periods to let all this discussion and/or argument take place. This also tended to stretch out the series and really slow down the pacing, so while there
is action, it tends to be spread pretty thin.
And then there's all the beating over the head we get about how horrible society is and ironically about how horrible violence is, despite how much the series actually glorifies violence in order to attract its audience. It does this by showing us examples of humanity at its worst. For instance, in the subway scene at the beginning of the series, we're given a taste of just how horrible everyone is by being given a window into their inner dialog and pretty much everyone is messed up in some way. And when the bum falls onto the tracks, the reactions range from thinking that someone should do something while being unwilling to actually do anything themselves to looking forward to the hobo's impending death so they can see someone die. One of the valley girl types even snaps a picture of Kei's decapitated head as it flies toward her. Later, when we're introduced to Masaru's home life, we learn that his parents are dead and that he's staying with his aunt, who is extremely physically and psychologically abusive toward Masaru and his little brother. A bit later on, we're introduced to two characters who like to go around and kill homeless people, including the bum Kei and Masaru gave their lives to save. The fun part is that at the end of the series, one of these psycho killers excuses his actions by going on an anti-military rant, which includes some shots at the United States just for good measure.
As for why this series is otaku porn, well, I have a list for that, too. Remember fan service girl Kei McBoobs? She's a virgin. This is only worth mentioning because apparently a lot of otakus consider this to be important, because they want their fan service girls to be "pure" or something like that. They also had her cling to Masaru, who was supposed to represent the kind of nobility that otaku are supposed to aspire for, even while Kei, the character they were supposed to identify with, lusted over her and had some very detailed fantasies involving her. Then there's basically everything Kei has going on in his head, between thinking about sex and women, and going around killing things. He also finally ends up having sex with a busty 30s-something woman who just happens to have a thing for otakus, being sure to explain how when she was younger, all the girls were totally all over the cosplaying anime nerds. And then there's Kei's teacher, who aside from carrying on an affair with another teacher, apparently got off on the idea that Kei was getting hard-ons in class because of her.
So if this show was so horrible, why did I watch all of it? Well, it managed to keep things just interesting enough for me to want to see what happened next. I admit I was somewhat curious to see who was going to die and how things would turn out. It also didn't hurt that all the clichés, fan service, and perverted content gave me something to laugh at. To be frank, the biggest problems I had with this show were the clichéd and moronic commentaries it offered, the extremely slow pacing, and all the characters acting so stupidly. Even if something isn't really what I'd consider good, if I can laugh at it I don't really mind it that much, but if I'm bored or finding myself rolling my eyes quite a bit, that really drags a series down. So really, despite the reputation this anime has for being nasty and messed up, that isn't what bothered me, it was just pretty much everything else. Actually, being messed up is the only reason I'd even tell anyone to watch this series, just so they can see it for themselves. If you could handle
Elfen Lied, then you'd probably be able to handle this one, too, you just might not enjoy it nearly as much. 4/10.