Gantz

My first impressions of this show were quite mixed. I had the horrible feeling that I was watching total crap again practically from the first episode. The fact that the main male protagonist Kei Kurono has a penchant for sexual perversity and undresses girls with his eyes until it makes him "get a hard-on" I thought was a pretty original introduction. I also accepted that he is a rather selfish prick without any problems; at least he has plenty of room for some development. However, I could not give a damn about the scene with the rescue of the hobo, as portrayed in this show by the anime's creators! It made about as much sense as in the opening scene of an anime series called Young Black Jack which was probably one of the stupidest and least logical scenes I have ever seen. SPOILER ALERT - A hobo passes out on some subway train tracks, and there is a large group of people standing around, just staring, thinking they are about to see him get killed. One of them swings into action for five minutes while the others stand and stare. The moment they do something, the others remain standing and staring. Kei enters to help the hobo, even though he does not know what he is doing; the others stand and stare and ask where the stationmaster is (where would he be if he is not there, no one called him, and everyone is just standing and staring?). The main male protagonist (Kei) and secondary male protagonist (Masaru Kato) try to pull the unconscious hobo off the tracks. It is only at this point that someone tries to help them, and only at this point does a train come into the station. People pull the hobo guy out, even though they do not stop to think that they need to pull both Kei Kurono and Masaru out quickly as well. Kei Kurono and Masaru do not try to get out either; Masaru says he must get his bags and his brother's umbrella. Instead of attempting to climb out of the tracks, which would make perfect sense, they decide to try and run away from the subway train (!!!) because it is slowing down as it reaches the station. However, they are hit by the subway train! I guess to make matters worse, there is a shot of a head flying off. SPOILER END After this scene, which gave me the impression that the characters in the show are just a massive bunch of assholes and that humanity as a species is a nasty bunch of people, I felt like dropping it and walking away. Well, I did not walk away. The mysterious room and the storyline with the orb and alien-hunting pretty much made up for it, though even I found most of the characters incredibly irritating. The only one who got my sympathy was probably the dog. The broccoli-eating alien and his Frankenstein daddy amused me quite a bit, and all the gore and severed limbs were not too bad. It also turns out Kei is not as much of a dick as I originally thought - quite a delight too. However, Masaru's hysterical outbursts alternating with some heroism bothered me more. The main female protagonist Tae Kojima did not do much either (although how I do not know). Also, it seemed that she was probably there only to give Kei Kurono someone to drool over, his hysterical friend someone to charm, and everyone else something else. Other than the dog, the best character is GANTZ and his witty reviews and scoring. After a good alien-hunting passage, there was another one that I found more or less moronic. It was Reika Shimohira and her "I can be your pet." and what was going on in the sixth episode just destroyed any positive impressions I had. All I could say about our lovely main female protagonist afterward was that she was totally stupid, and Kei Kurono was just a pompous jerk again. Then, after a few more strange occurrences came to another alien hunt, and this time it was also quite stupid and quite interesting in places. Eventually, these moments when it was interesting and those when it was scary alternated quite regularly until episodes fourteen to fifteen. It then picked up quite a bit, and suddenly I did not notice its shortcomings at all. Plus, there was a naked Lara Croft! There was finally an interesting female character called Kei Kishimoto, and both she and the male protagonists finally had some good moments. Well, it turned out exactly as SonGokussj describes in his review on FilmBooster (about how it is when you start liking someone in this show), SPOILER ALERT They would not even let me keep the dog, the bastards!!! SPOILER END I thought that the last couple of episodes were quite strange compared to what I saw in the penultimate hunt, and somehow they failed to move or excite me, and I am still trying to get over the conclusion itself. All in all, Gantz is a pretty decent piece of work with interesting ideas, pretty good action, and a good subject matter, even though it is also a collection of terrible crap, illogicalities, and utter stupidity. You can enjoy the characters sometimes, even though most of the time you get incredibly sick of most of them, and your opinion of the main male protagonist changes from one moment to the next. This work falls squarely into that category of "something I liked but at the same time was something that irritated the crap out of me," and so it falls right in the middle with 5/10. (12.02.2016) (menos) (más)