Gantz Season 2 Box Set - Active Anime
- Active Anime
- Holly Ellingwood
- 07/13/06
- click here
""Love it or hate it, but you won?t be able to tear yourself away.""
GANTZ SEASON 2 COLLECTION (ADVANCE REVIEW)
?Gantz. No one knows where it comes from or who sent it, but it chooses who lives or dies.?
The bloody path of reality game show meets science fiction continues in the second and final season of Gantz. Even more violent and more sexually explicit, the carnage factor reaches a whole new plateau as Kurono and the other resurrectees try to survive Game Three. Many will fall to gruesome deaths. The carnage at this stage is to the extreme of disgusting as you see body parts flying, blood and guts spraying and heads rolling. Those who survive the third game may think they?ve faced it all but it?s the final round, Game Four, when Kurono will be put to the final test as he faces off with a couple of new players who may be even more dangerous than the Gantz!
Even more thrilling and shocking than the first season, Gantz?s second season delivers on many points. They?ve upped the gore factor, an accomplishment in and of itself. They also upped the sexual content. They introduce some new and very interesting characters such as the beautiful Sei who is a welcome change to the always whining and whimpering Kishimoto. She is more in the moment, wants to live and proves to be a more suitable match to the lovelorn Kurono. The former love triangle of Kurono liking Kishimoto and her liking Kato now becomes more of a quandary as Kishimoto spies Kei with Sei and has mixed feelings. The serial killers introduced in this season are disturbing characters but ones that help draw a clear line between Kurono?s violence in his pitch to survive Gantz, and their cruel bloodlust and killing for the thrill of it. The final moments to see who will live and who will die are tense filled and often lead to graphic violence. The games become more ruthless, more complicated and in the final one, the rules change completely leaving Kurono in a spot the viewer won?t be able to see any wait out of for him. Can he survive?
What is interesting about Gantz is how it compares the various differences in why people commit violence, not just how. It is relentless in showing the bleakness of the life of the resurrectees. For an example, there is one scene where we see a boy being hit by his landlady and the scene goes on, and on with her beating him and we are helpless witnesses to it. There?s gang violence, rapes, murders of various sorts and these are all outside of the games. Gantz shows a grim and hopeless existence even should the players survive. Then there?s the violence in the games. The players have to hunt down increasingly dangerous and difficult creatures that are more likely to mutilate and kill the players than the players are of killing the targets. Even there, distinct differences are drawn. There is Kato who is uncomfortable with any violence, even to save his life. But slowly, due to the Gantz, he has been forced to come in contact with his repressed aggression. Even then, he still strives to get people to cooperate and help everyone. Kishimoto has also been there from the beginning but she?s cannon fodder, anybody?s victim due to her own severely emotionally damaged state from a life we only get glimpses of. Other members each deal with things their own way. We see a soldier wannabe who is excited at the prospect to finally shoot something, anything. There?s the Buddhist priest who believes prayer is the only salvation for them all. Then there?s Kurono whose will to survive and own personality leads to some death defying moments of heroics and sheer violence. To kill or be killed, to be or not to be. He feels the blaze of wanting to live, the rage at his situation but also is filled with exuberance when he wins. Last but not least are the serial killers and how they take brutality to a whole new level. They kill merely because they can, in or out of the Game. All through this we are shown a world and people that are apathetic to the violence in their lives. Though some may rail against it, they all succumb either as perpetrators or victims who surrender to their fate.
If there is a lesson in all of this, I couldn?t tell you what it is. Although Kato and Kishimoto seem to represent the compassion that could save humanity, that same compassion here leaves them emotionally and mentally crippled to be able to do what must be done to survive the games, to survive Gantz. The most relatable character throughout all of this is the main one, Kurono. He?s self-absorbed and rather single-minded (he?s often thinking about either how put upon he is or how much he wants to get laid). But he does care for his friends. He wants them to live, he wants to live and he?s willing to take down the targets to do it. When the third Game pushes him too far, we see him become something greater than he was, someone striving for more. Yet in this season we are never any closer to knowing what the Gantz is or why it does these cruel games. In fact, the major flaw this anime has is the ending, there isn?t one. Due to the fact that the manga is still ongoing, the anime production had its hands ties about how to end it. They couldn?t give the viewer a definitive ending as the series in manga form had yet to answer such questions as what the Gantz is and ultimately who lives. Therefore the viewer is given a very open ended final scene that answers nothing, is left for you to decide what you would like to read into it and as such is frustrating. Many anime tend to end a little on the open side in order to keep a door open for any possible sequel but in this case it was done merely because they couldn?t give it any real finality due to the ongoing manga series.
A lot of the show works despite the non-ending we?re given. Viscerally it certainly has enough graphic content to fill anyone?s violence quota viewing wise. The new characters such as Sei are great additions to the story. The Japanese cast is always excellent. The English cast has new additions to go along with the new characters that I really enjoyed. Sei is given a sultry voice by the talented Kelly Manison. Her character is one I wish there had been more of throughout the series; she?s personally my favourite along with Kurono. Speaking of Kurono, this anime wouldn?t be anywhere near as entertaining as it was, were it not for the outstanding job done by Christopher Ayres who voiced Kurono in English. He gives Kurono just the right amount of petulance to get across his immaturity, and in other moments, the perfect indignant tone and exasperation whenever Kurono is given yet another setback in the love department or hits another wall with trying to fight Gantz. He?s wonderfully sarcastic which doesn?t come across as well in the Japanese version. Another bit of fun is that in the English version, Kurono?s nemesis in Game Four is voiced by none other than Christopher Ayres brother, Greg Ayres. So it?s brother against brother in those final episodes for you to enjoy.
EXTRAS:Unlike ADV?s usual thinpack collections, Gantz season 2 is packed with extras. Along with ADV previews there?s clean opening and closing animation, Gantz video game commercials, Gantz music video, The Secret Behind the Impeccable Images of Gantz which is a feature that shows the animation and production as it was being done on the show, and there?s a truck load of interviews. The interviews with Japanese cast and crew include Ichiro Itano (Director), Yasuhiro Kato (CG Director), an interview with Hiroya Oku (Gantz Creator) by Chiaki Kuriyama (Actress), and an interview with Hiroyuki Hayase (Sound Director), Hitomi Nabatame (Kishimoto) and Masashi Osato (Kato).
IN SUMMARY:This has some of the most graphic violence ever seen in anime. Love it or hate it, but you won?t be able to tear yourself away.
Posted on Thursday, July 13, 2006 (Archive on Sunday, August 13, 2006)