Darth Lavender wrote:Gantz - Ultra violent by televised anime standards, the series has a great set-up before moving into a somewhat cliche humans vs monsters storyline. But, even then, it continues to have some interesting meditations on compassion vs sociopathy...
Moving on to the general subject... Fan-service is a bit of a nuisance throughout anime, to varying degrees. Some series manage to avoid it almost entirely, or use it in an interesting way (perhaps because I had just injured my back when I started watching it, I was feeling genuinely sorry for the over-endowed female lead in 'Gantz,' and the attention she tended to attract (making her first appearance untintentionally nude, being spontaneously raped, etc.) Given the series' themes, I suspect these were deliberate choices designed to use the fan-service stereotypes in a new and more thought-provoking way.)
zedz in the Source Code thread wrote:I found
Source Code on the best of the recent round of life-as-a-video-game movies (
Inception et al.), but thought
Gantz was better. The first movies
Trailer) at least, which, even more than
Source Code, explores the emotional cost of the multiple-lives / multiple-deaths concept. The second is hamstrung by having to try and explain everything and ends up taking way too many liberties with the very slick world it had conjured up in the first film (but does have the saving grace of a really fantastic set-piece battle in the subway).
Following the above two recommendations I recently watched both the Gantz anime TV series from 2004 (produced while the manga was still being written, so its ending is apparently totally different) and the first live action film from 2010. I found them both highly entertaining, if flawed in certain aspects, but interestingly flawed and in a way the anime series and the film complement each other nicely (I'm at least curious to see the second live action film, Gantz: Perfect Answer, and see if I can get my hands on the original manga now). I thought that it might be interesting to run through a few things I noted while comparing the two:
Both the anime and the film run through the three first missions more or less entirely (there is some simplification in the film version, presumably for budget reasons - for example the robots in the second mission have birds inside them; and there are two giant statues, invasive pools of blood and lots of extra guards in the third mission on top of the Shiva statue being much more elaborate in itself), but the anime TV series also carries on into the fourth mission following the utter devastation of the makeshift team of heroes during the Shiva statue third mission. The fourth is the one in which Gantz pits the rest of the team against Kurono turning him from 'hero' into pariah and describing him (for his longevity, perhaps?) as now being the alien that they have to destroy to complete the mission. The latter part of the third and the fourth mission also have Kurono cycle through a number of female characters who feel as if they are acting as impossible substitutes for the lost Kishimoto in Kurono's affections (i.e. Kurono's teacher and the woman he had been caught by Kishimoto having sex (and losing his virginity) with before the third mission started in the hallway attached to the Gantz room. That scene already felt like a 'no turning back' moment in the sense that it underlined Kurono's pettiness and frustration at losing Kishimoto, turning it into a concrete moment of separation between them that foreshadows the tragic third mission all too well on a repeat viewing. It was also interesting that the small hallway area off of the main Gantz room in the anime often gets used as the spot to modestly attempt to change into the suits in preparation for the mission but also often turns into the spot where the characters perform illicit acts too - for example the two attempted assaults on Kishimoto herself take place there whilst she is vulnerable).
I'll particularly be curious to see Gantz: Perfect Answer to see if any of the fourth mission involving Kurono as the target himself is used there, or whether the action will follow what I hear to be the very different direction that the manga ended up taking instead.
Although as things stand at the moment I slightly prefer the anime series - Kurono is allow to be a much more unlikeable character than in the film, obsessed with Kishimoto long after she has shown literally no interest in him (the scenes between the two in his apartment are by far the most uncomfortable in the series!) with her instead being obsessed herself with Kurono's friend Kato. Kato is shown as heroic almost to a fault, often at least going to help but usually ending up powerless (and often missing a few limbs during the missions! Kato in the live action film by contrast is much more conventionally heroic. The 'real world' relationship with his younger brother also gets filled out more in the anime, with a Grave of the Fireflies-esque brutal treatment of them by uncaring relatives before they leave/get thrown out to start a new life by themselves - the brief flicker of hope being immediately extinguished by the Gantz calling Kato back).
Kishimoto is also a more complicated character in the anime - her character feels much more understandable with the inclusion of a subplot about her still surviving in the 'real world' due to Gantz having made a mistake in having cloned her at the point of death (which adds to the pathos after her death in the third mission, when Kurono folornly tries to make contact with the 'other' Kishimoto), something which upsets her at being a literal doppleganger but also eventually becomes seen as being a kind of liberation (as with Kato finally getting the nerve to take his brother and leave their abusive relatives after his heroic Gantz missions). Kishimoto begins are very needy and blank in many ways, and the anime series highlights this, as Darth Lavender noted above, through birthing her into the Gantz world naked (because she committed suicide in a bathtub) and then having her almost sexually assaulted in the Gantz room at the beginning of the first two missions by some of the more disreputable people who are brought there. The crush that she develops for Kato therefore feels much more understandable as he was the only one to prevent this as everyone (including the audience identification figure of Kurono) looks the other way, and it feels understandable that she would appreciate him as a protector (In comparison in the film Kishimoto, while also presented naked initially, immediately is given the powerful Gantz suit to wear before the first mission, while in the anime only Kurono has brought the suit with him for that first mission. Kishimoto in the film therefore becomes much more of an action heroine from the very start, rather than growing into the role as things progress. This also makes her crush on Kato in the film seem to come as more of a surprise and feel both more sudden and less motivated than in the anime)
Kishimoto seems to come to terms with her new circumstances over the course of the first two missions and eventually seems, while still having the crush on Kato, to be more excited about the possibilities for the future as an entirely new person starting out with a blank slate, something which had not existed for her in her old life, and which was the reason for her suicide attempt.
I was thinking that Kishimoto was very like Hari in Solaris at times because of this. And this feeling of hope which many of the characters have, at the possibility of a new beginning, is all the more tragic for eventually being wrongheaded - while the figure of Gantz (both the ball and the person hooked up to machinery inside it) is often impassive, letting the participants in the missions read into their predicament whatever they wish, it does seem to be telling the truth when it says that their lives were over from the moment they got transmitted into the room and that they now belong to Gantz to do with what it wishes - they had their chance in their lives and blew it, and are now just meant to do the missions until they inevitably die. The anime series has a much more pervasive and distressing sense of futility than the film, as the film offers the slight chance of the 'resurrection' of a companion (or the chance to leave the game) when someone reaches 100 points, something which even though it is presented as almost totally impossible is as least some kind of a goal to aim towards. The anime just leaves the scoring system and the possibility of there being an end to any of this (other than death) a blank. Much like life in a way - people make plans and goals that they want to achieve in the absence of any guiding force, with no guarantee that their actions will 'save' them; and often their hopes and plans get rudely interrupted by circumstance. So once everyone but Kurono is massacred during the third mission, the anime series gives absolutely no get out clause or indication that it may be possible to retrieve Kato or Kishimoto, something the film raises as a possibility, in some ways softening the impact of their loss.
There are also a couple of moments in the anime which I found improved the story a lot. For instance Kurono actually making the decision to jump onto the subway track himself in order to help Kato lift the drunk back onto the platform (in the film he helps Kato lift the drunk whilst standing on the platform himself and then ironically gets pulled in front of the train when trying to pull Kato up), which is a nice moment since Kurono agonises over whether to help or not, eventually does so more motivated by embarrassment of being recognised by Kato, and for this small helpful gesture ends up being killed and dragged into the Gantz room. This almost bipolar shifting between absolute reticence here and eventually a recklessness during the third mission is something Kurono has to deal with over the course of the series, before eventually becoming a true hero in the fourth mission when he is the only one left with experience of a Gantz mission.
This also contrasts with Kato's attempt at heroism by saving the tramp - while Kurono starts off reticent and grows, Kato starts off heroic and then realises the essential futility of existence. Through the first two Gantz missions he has been clinging onto the idea that at the very least they saved that tramp's life, despite in doing so dying themselves. But then during the third mission set in and around the Buddhist temple, as every previously held 'certainty' is collapsing around the team, they come across the body of the tramp they saved and see that he has been beaten to death by two thugs purely for fun (the thugs themselves die and become part of the newly Gantz-selected team attacking Kurono in the fourth mission).
This totally destroy's Kato, as he is confronted by the utter futility of having saved the tramp only to see him killed elsewhere (this is also another aspect where the anime differs from the film - while the film shows the areas in which the team are fighting aliens as eerily empty of life, the anime shows that both the aliens and the teammates are invisible to the 'real world' during the period of a Gantz mission, though the damage that can be caused by them is real. This leads to some interesting juxtapositions, such as the sequence of the team killing one of the giant statues which gets intercut with the tramp being beaten to death), and foreshadows the team's utter decimation by the Shiva statue later in the same mission. The anime is much more about these notions of sacrifice and whether such a thing still matters in a world in which such an action can be utterly, and almost immediately, negated.
The character of Gantz itself also has a few interestingly fantastical moments in the anime compared to the film - from the literal appearance out of thin air at the beginning of the series (a sequence of shots which is simply reversed at the very end of the series), to the satellite point of view shots of the area of the city that the team are to fight in, along with the ability to make the team invisible to the rest of the world during a mission, there is the sense of Gantz being a kind of alien intelligence, compared to say just being very advanced technology in the film version. (The anime also has a brief but amusing 'Exterminating Angel' shot of the characters trying and failing to open any of the doors from the Gantz room)
Plus (and I'll be interested to know whether this idea comes up more in the second live action Gantz film), Gantz itself seems to show more of a consciousness as events progress, setting increasingly hard tasks with devious secondary and tertiary elements to them along with the implication that it is more than prepared to bend the rules, such as stopping the mission countdown clock in order to ensure that a team member dies 'in game', or the way that after Kurono attacks the man hooked up inside the ball in anger after the end of the third mission, this causes Gantz to make him the 'alien' of the next one, as if in retribution!
It is a really fascinating series and at this point I do prefer it to the film, simply because it provided me with much more food for thought, while the film in many ways seemed desperate to definitively explain every element of the bizarre situation (one of the elements I found fascinating about the film though was the way it used Tomorowo Taguchi, playing a character who simply died in the first Gantz mission in the anime, but who here survives all the way through the film without taking much part in the action beyond providing words of encouragement for the rest of the team! I'll be interested to find out if the filmmakers have been saving his character for a larger role in Gantz: Perfect Answer, or if he will remain bizarrely under utilised).
I also wish that the wonderful (but utterly useless!) dog from the anime had been transferred to the film as well! The presence of the dog was something which really seemed to highlight that Gantz was just throwing combinations of every kind of team member into the mix and seeing how all the characters worked together as part of some kind of bizarre group dynamic test (hence why the indulgent grandmother and her young, mollycoddled grandson end up becoming part of the team in both the anime and film, even if they immediately and predictably get killed off!)
Though the idea that this Gantz room is some sort of purgatory or trial that everyone who dies has to go through, or whether specific people who have died are being specifically and consciously chosen for missions, is one of those aspects of the work that is left pleasingly wide open to interpretation!
(Oh, and the team mates eventually come to the conclusion in the anime that the goal appears to be to actually capture and beam the aliens away (exactly where is never revealed) rather than killing them (even if killing the aliens is still more often than not the first resort!), while in the live action film despite Nishi being shown to be carrying the capture gun in one wide shot during the first mission, the idea of capturing the aliens is not really considered and the capture gun is never used. So the film becomes much simpler for that omission, just becoming about the logistics of how to go about killing the opponents)
Having praised the anime TV series at length though, I should point out a few of its flaws as well. As already pointed out by Darth Lavender above the treatment of big breasted Kishimoto (or "Miss Melons" as Gantz calls her!) might be a comment on fan service cliches but it does go into quite extreme territory here, as when Kishimoto asks if she can live with Kurono because her original self is still in her old home, and says that Kurono should just treat her "like a pet". On hearing this we get a brief flash of Kurono's fantasy of Kishimoto, naked and on all fours with a dog collar around her neck! Although I suppose this scene, and later ones of Kurono being rather lecherous around Kishimoto, do help to characterise him as an extremely flawed audience identification figure and not exactly a conventional hero! I suppose it also shows the way that Kishimoto herself feels almost like a non-person too, and that she is going to build a new persona from this state of just being an object, moving away from being projected onto by admirers and pushy family members alike! And at least in the anime Kishimoto registers a lot more as an individual character with her own willfulness here, something which heightens the impact of her sacrifice and death much more than cutting all of the rough edges of the character to fit her into the 'generic action heroine' template does in the live action film.
Another problem with the anime is that it often underlines and drags out points to much, taking moments that should be tense and impactful and pushing them far beyond their peak into "just do something, already!!" semi-tedium. A tighter version of the show with some of the treading water scenes (as in some of the action sequences where characters stand angst-ridden about what to do while others are being beaten to death metres away!) removed would make the work much more successful, I think.
Finally, the series does eventually fall a little too obviously in Battle Royale territory, especially during the fourth mission of Kurono against a totally new team of barely introduced characters who arrive, get killed and get added onto Gantz's casuality list. This process of introducing new characters has been going on for all the previous missions, but in the final mission it is beginning to feel a lot more like a blackly comic "how is this person going to be killed?" situation than seeing how these characters will work together. That may be the point, as we are seeing things through Kurono's jaded, traumatised eyes by this point, but it still feels a little reductive after the way this material was handled during some of the earlier missions.
But this series is still well worth watching for the swerve into total futility towards the final run of episodes, along with one of the more
bizarre opening titles (one that changes in content for each of the missions, acting both as a portent of the monsters and action the characters will be about to face and, especially in the third, almost endless, mission as a reminder of when the action was simpler and less costly in terms of the lives of characters that we have come to care about), and especially for the
beautifully simple, yet utterly devastating, end credits animation. And for
the dog, of course!
(Gantz also reminded me a lot of Clamp Studios 1999 film X, in particular the way that production dealt with the fights between their characters, which also takes place in a 'different dimension' of a real location (one that the fighters cordon off from the real world using magic before they start battling), but with the destruction caused suddenly taking effect in the real location once one of the fighters loses their battle. There's also the cabal of good guys eventually getting totally decimated here as well. Though I think Gantz handles this similar material more effectively, as X was hampered by a regular problem in fantasy: the deadly combination of having quite confusing character relationships along with extremely repetitive and samey-feeling battles, leading to boredom more than building excitement)
