Let me start by saying I have not even finished this anime, nor will I. I stopped around episode 16, with the giant statues. I also won’t go into further detail on plot because I do not want to give anything away to those poor souls who are actually looking forward to this garbage.

I heard great things about this series in my scouting of new shows to watch so I decided to give this one a shot. Boy was I wrong to even consider this. It’s not the asinine plot that goes nowhere episode after episode that disappoints me. Or the “state of the art” animation which blends CG and hand drawn about as well as scat and ice cream. Its the ridiculously slow pacing.

In some cases, the character spend half the episode (no joke) debating whether or not to shoot an alien that is threating their lives. In the show, the characters are granted these amazing weapons that appear to have unlimited ammo, no recoil, really no faults. So what do our awesome heroes do? Nothing. Thats right, nothing! The creators are obviously trying to build suspense, but ultimately fail and, instead, create a very boring and uninteresting cartoon.

Despite what most say, the animation is horrible. The CG is primarily used for scrolling backgrounds when the characters run. Its more of a lazy trick than an actual attempt to do something worthwhile.

If you have morals or a weak stomach (both of which I lack) than steer clear of this train wreck regardless. It has everything from rape, to gory deaths, to very questionable ethics. If these things disturb you, don’t say I did not warn you. It doesn’t bother more so than infuriate me with the way they use these shock tools. An example is the main character. All he thinks about is getting laid. Its entertaining once or twice to throw that in there. Its funny! But the protagonist literally eats sleeps and breaths this obsession. Its sad to watch. No one, I mean no one acts like that. Nice try to spice it up team Gantz. I’m not buying it.

Speaking of which, neither should you. I give this the lowest rating I have ever given anything. At least the opening song is catchy…

As time goes by and I learn more and more about gantz I have to say that I don’t like too much about it. I’ll explain, most people know that gantz released the anime before the beginning stages of the manga was even done. So it’s like they release this anime to us that looks amazing with a very hard and unique story but the anime goes nowhere. After the first season so much has not been covered and so many of the players have not made it this far. As beautiful as gantz is it is too far advanced for itself. You could say that this series is way ahead of its time or you could say its creators had too much on their plate. In the second season some new players are added and some new weapons as well but other than that not much is new. Kei’s lust for Kishimoto gets more intense and Kato’s pain increases as well.

That’s basically all you really get from gantz and as my friend Antonio said the ending is too ambiguous and I know why, it’s because it’s done but it’s not done. The anime is done but the story is way far from done. Here is a good example, in the anime the characters just die but in the manga you find out that most of the characters that died can be revived. There are crazy weapons like the Gantz bike that are never introduced, and characters you never see, everything is hurried to just end the anime. They have almost ruined any chances of actually releasing a classic gantz anime because they didn’t write the manga and use it as the guide for the anime.

This isn’t like other anime where they used the manga to make the anime and left out some details, this is just some slop someone put together to keep people occupied until the manga came out. Even worse they’re not making the manga for Americans yet so who knows how long people will have to wait to know the truth about gantz. The manga has 20 volumes and is still ongoing but still none licensed for the U.S.. I really don’t know what to tell fans except to learn Japanese and try to get a Japanese copy of the manga but other than that you’ll have to wait out until it gets licensed in the U.S.. This is still an ok anime but it just is ahead of its time and really needs to be done over or at least continued the right way.

I really liked this anime.

As mentioned, there’s a huge difference between this short anime series and the manga.

I’ve read up to volume 22 of the manga and while they toss in a lot of cool new weapons and bad guys and details that aren’t in the anime… they direction is totally opposite after (SPOILER ALERT) everyone but kurono dies. In the manga he pretty much forgets about everyone until he get his hundred points 6 months later, at which point he ditches them immediately anyway… which I found pretty lame.

The manga is just too busy for the character development and attachments you make in the anime.

All in all, both an awesome series and an awesome manga.

Very disturbing, however, at points, I’d only rank it second to Berserk.