I read the original Gantz many years ago. Although I used to read only shonen and shojo manga growing up, Gantz was one of the first series I tackled to widen my manga knowledge, and although quite different from my usual genres, I remember enjoying it—I had to know whether the protagonists would come back alive and escape Gantz. As this happened a long time ago, my memory is a little bit blurry about the details other than the general idea of the story. So, when I got the chance to pick up up this series again thanks to Gantz:G, I was like ‘why not?’ I was hopeful it would jog my memory, or it would make me go back to the original series for a re-read. Well, thankfully, I didn’t need to re-read the main series, as Gantz:Ggave me all the necessary details I needed to enjoy this spin-off story.
High-school students on a school trip find themselves in a bus accident, only to wake up in a room with their classmates and two university students, Abiko and Fujimoto, who are dressed in some sort of sci-fi-looking suits. In fact, the two males are veteran ‘players’ who have been ‘playing’ Gantz’ games before and now introduce the new arrivals to these twisted games… at least until they can get their own freedom.
The giant ball in the room is Gantz, and it assigns to the newly-deceased mortals games in which they need to fight off alien creatures and earn points for their killing as it’s only when they reach 100 points that the players can be set free from these games, otherwise they will be called back to the mysterious rooms multiple times until the participants reach the points necessary or they die. However, none of the students believe Abiko and Fujimoto, so when they suddenly find themselves teleported to the first ‘game’ location, a zoo, they think they can easily escape and go home… if it weren’t for the bombs implanted in their heads, which makes escape impossible. Only a few students grabbed the necessary equipment before being teleported to this new location, and they soon realise how indispensable the suits and firearms are when their classmates who didn’t have them are killed by the aliens.
When I first started reading this, I thought that the students Kei and Naiki were the protagonists as the focus was based on them. However, it soon became clear that my understanding wasn’t completely correct. Kei is one of the protagonists and Naiki is the reason she pushes herself to become stronger. In fact, when someone dies, another player can bring that person back to life when reaching 100 points—that or freeing oneself from the game. There is no doubt what Kei will do, and together with a few other female classmates, fights battle after battle until they can reach the points necessary.
This series mixes horror and sci-fi and it’s quite similar to the original series—new characters are introduced and the story settings are explained so that readers not familiar with the main idea behind Gantz can enjoy this volume without having to read the original series. The author explains the settings of the story through veteran players Abiko and Fujimoto as they teach the new players and as the explanations are part of the story, it doesn’t seem like it’s said just for the sake of the readers, but it’s actually vital to the story narration.
The protagonists turn out to be a group of female students, all with different personalities and who don’t get along with each other. There is partial character growth for them as they realise that who they are on their daily lives doesn’t matter at night when Gantz calls for them. They need to put aside their differences (and envy) and learn how to fight together if they want to make it out alive and resuscitate the people close to them who died.
The art utilises a lot of shading techniques to keep to the horror theme and instil fear in the characters and readers. I also felt like the illustrators took more care of the details regarding the story backgrounds and aliens than the characters themselves, as the humans at times were depicted in more simplistic ways compared to the other creatures in the story. Gantz:G also keeps to the ecchi themes that the original Gantz series had: the female students are sexualised just for the readers’ sake as there is no reason to do so to benefit the story. The series is rated 18+ due to the themes it covers, including violence, death and rape.
The translation by Matthew Johnson for Dark Horse is on-point as I felt it flows quite smoothly. What I find disappointing is that some pages in the volumes have part of the text and illustration cut off as the images are too big for the actual size of the page. Although the volume has over 600 pages, which can make it seem daunting, I found that once I picked it up, the story proceeded quickly so it didn’t take as long as I originally thought to read it from start to finish.
Gantz:G Omnibus includes all three volumes in the Gantz:G series. The story is written by Gantz‘s original creator Hiroya Oku who collaborated with Tomohito Ohsaki for this spin-off, and with art by Keita Iizuka.
Our review copy from Dark Horse was supplied by Turnaround Publisher Services.
Noemi10
Number 1 fan of Solo Leveling who also happen to be a self-proclaimed bookworm with a special love for manga and YA, romance and fantasy books. I’m currently obsessed with Korean webtoons.
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