Genres: action, drama, horror, psychological, science fiction, supernatural Themes: aliens, death, life after death, survival Objectionable content: Intense Plot Summary: Kei Kurono is a typical high school student in a selfish world, not caring about anyone other than himself. However when, by chance, he was forced to help out his childhood friend, Katou Masaru, rescue a drunkard who fell into subway tracks, both he and Katou were killed… Or not. After being run over by the train, they were suddenly teleported to an enclosed apartment with others who recently died. And now their lives are controlled by a mysterious black ball inside the apartment called GANTZ, and they are forced to participate in a “game” of unprecedented danger and horror. Number of episodes: 26 Vintage: 2004-04-12 to 2004-08-26
Plot Summary: Somewhere in Tokyo, there is a room. In that room is a black sphere. Periodically, people who should otherwise have died are transferred to the room. There, the sphere gives them special suits and weapons, and sends them out on a mission to kill aliens here on Earth. While these missions take place, the rest of the world is largely oblivious to them. These missions are lethal - few participants survive them. The sphere calls the shots, and it’s not the slightest bit nice. Its name… Gantz. Running time: 130 minutes Vintage: 2011-01-29
Plot Summary: Somewhere in Tokyo, there is a room. In that room is a black sphere. Periodically, people who should otherwise have died are transferred to the room. There, the sphere gives them special suits and weapons, and sends them out on a mission to kill aliens here on Earth. While these missions take place, the rest of the world is largely oblivious to them. These missions are lethal - few participants survive them. The sphere calls the shots, and it’s not the slightest bit nice. Its name… Gantz. Vintage: 2016-10-14
There is a problem grammatically with this sentence
" And now their lives are controlled by a mysterious black ball inside the apartment called GANTZ, and they are forced to participate in a “game” of unprecedented danger and horror. "
The way it’s written is like the apartment is called GANTZ, lol!
Anyway I really enjoyed the anime. Great dub by the way, Chris Ayres really owned! I have some problems with the paceing and the ending personaly. But I still liked it a lot. Not a masterpeice, but a solid 8/10.
I thought that the Gantz Sphere “boxset” was pretty cool, and almost bought it for cheap with a Crunchyroll deal a while back, but then one of my con crew pointed out the difficulties in getting autographs on it, so I had to abstain. I just don’t want to have to buy the Funimation rerelease, but all I see from ADV when I casually look are the sphere and partial collections.
This thread has jogged my memory on Gantz, and remembering scenes like the whole creepy “pet” thing and the scenes in the apartment, I really do need to see how Matt Greenfield dubbed them one of these days.
Right before ADV’s license expired, they were selling both season thin packs in a bundle at Best Buy for $30. Right Stuf later got the bundle as well. It was available for quite a while even after Funi’s release was put out.
That’s tempting, but I’m still not really a fan of the half-season sets. The thin-packs are easily autographed, but the Funimation one takes up less space. Since Gantz had no English cast extras (at least, none that I know of), my normal issue with thin packs isn’t one here. I’ll consider getting that set from RS though, as it seems that I’ve overlooked it previously. Thanks.
Now that Chris Ayres is playing more roles and becoming a prolific director I shouldn’t have a problem with stuff for him to sign, but if that issue should come up, that thin pak offers a bazillion autograph opportunities if need be…where “bazillion” is 10
Replace “season” with “series” in my post then and it still works. That’s what I meant, but oh well. Old, pre-Crunchyroll/simulcast, anime habits die hard.
If these thin packs are about the size of the original (red) Gilgamesh thin-pack then I might have room for them without having to move my collection around, which is a plus.
The first part is 1 more than Gilgamesh (6 thinpaks) the second is 1 less (4 thinpaks).
So in total, because it has 2 cases, it’s the width size 2 5 thinpaks.
ADV released the series 5 ways original 10 singles , two thin-pak parts that had the 10 singles , the Ball where they re-authored the disc to a more normal 5 disc count but kept all the extra’s , A set that was the five disc from the “Ball” in thinpak packaging , and the Best Buy Shrinkwrapped bundle that was just the two 10 disc total thinpaks.
The 2008 5 Disc set is the one to really find if your looking to save space and get all the extras to. Though finding it for a cheap price would be a problem maybe. The Funimation set is missing some of the extras by the way.
The issue with all of the Gantz sets and getting autographs would probably be needing a light or silver color ink or whatever. All of them have very dark cover arts.
Yikes, Red Garden really sold that bad ? Even before the “6th volume” mess happened? I remember buying the whole RG set with all 6 volumes after I saw the series (minus the last episodes) as a freeloader on AN VOD. I thought the series was pretty good and really liked the different art style.
Regarding Gantz, I bought the two half-sets with season 1 (6 DVD) and season 2 (4 DVD) in the bargain bundle section at TRSI. I’ve seen the two live-action movies and decided to jump at the opportunity since I’ve read that the anime is better than the movies…I guess I’ll see when I’ll finally watch the show (it’s caught in the Backlog of Doom :laugh: )
Ouch, you suffered though those movies? I feel for you. My con group conned me into joining them at a showing in a local theater to “support the industry”. I rue that day still.
I liked the reactions that the characters had in Gantz towards their situation more than I am liking the way the characters are responding in Red Garden. Gantz introduced the setup to the revived characters differently, but I don’t recall any of the Gantz characters being as emotional about, well, everything as the Red Garden crew is. It’s understandable, but IMO its really, really tedious.
I’m also surprised how “tame” Red Garden is compared to Gantz. Red Garden has violence and some profanity, but it’s nothing compared to Gantz. The lewdness of Gantz is also absent.
I feel the opposite. I didn’t really like either the series or the live action movies, but if I had to pick the better of the two it would have to be the films, because they were shorter, I didn’t want to wring the characters necks every five minutes, and most importantly because skin tight leather looks better on real Asian women. B)
Red Garden on the other hand, I really liked a lot.
I’m still powering through Red Garden, but the characters are really starting to annoy me, similarly to how the Gantz crew annoyed you. In Gantz, most of the “undead” either thought it was “cool” or were pretty “meh” about it. Those who were all emotional over it got over it much faster than the Red Garden girls. Some of the drama makes sense, the drama about them realizing that their past lives are insignificant now that they have a “higher calling” makes sense, but most doesn’t.
By the same episode count I’m at in Red Garden, the main characters in Gantz had figured out how to use their “superpowers”. In Red Garden, they first used their powers in Episode 2 and it has been episodes and they still haven’t even tried to learn how to harness them.
In Gantz, the “superpowers” and the weird guns were required to kill their enemies. In Red Garden, the once-fearsome and dramatic enemy, who was even shown to be bulletproof, was killed by a baseball bat. That took a lot of the suspense away.
I just didn’t care for the movies as they completely dropped the ball on the plot, which added insult to injury as the Gantz anime also dropped the ball. 2 wrongs didn’t make a right. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a law in Japan that dictated that all Japanese live action movies and shows had to be laughably bad in all regards as it would explain a lot.
I can’t say that the women of the live-action movie were particularly appealing to me, so the movies didn’t have that going for 'em in my “critique”.
It seems like people are almost incapable of making a decent movie based off of an anime/manga/game or anything except a book. I think a lot of it is because marketing doesn’t want to spend a lot of money on it, they have always been so bad it’s considered a studio risk and therefore under budgeted, and the mediums allow you to do different things. I’d like it if a studio would put everything they can behind at least one project in terms of talent and marketing. Just to see how it goes. Kinda like the new resurrection of superhero movies.
I’ve always been preferential to Gantz. It doesn’t get bogged down in the drama but still explores the natural human responses to an over-the-top situation.
This started with the potential to outdo Gantz, but unless it stops focusing almost exclusively the Oxygen/Lifetime Network girl-drama and gets back to the purported plot soon I don’t see that happening, which is a shame.
I’m trusting all of you who said that this show was worthwhile here
I noticed, but as you might have noticed my post references others in this thread. Wouldn’t make a whole heck of a lot of sense over in the other thread.
