Anime Club: Gantz:0

GANTZ: O

DIRECTED BY: Yasushi Kawamura

STARRING: Daisuke Ono, M·A·O, Tomohiro Kaku, Saori Hayami, Shūichi Ikeda, Masane Tsukayama, Yūki Kaji

GENRE: Science Fiction, Action

YEAR: 2016

COUNTRY: Japan

While fighting invading monsters, Kei Kurono rescues his friend, Reika. Though she protests, he faces off against the monsters’ leader, dying just after killing it. Reika and her surviving teammates are teleported back to their base. Elsewhere, Masaru Kato dies after attempting to save someone from a knife-wielding maniac in a subway (who seems to be indiscriminately killing innocent bystanders). He wakes up in a small room with Reika and her teammates: Yoshikazu Suzuki, an old man; Joichiro Nishi, a surly teenager; and an angry, unidentified man. Suzuki explains that, in the past, they have each died and woken in the room. They are subsequently forced to fight against waves of monsters. Before Suzuki can explain further, a black orb identified as “Gantz” announces that their next mission is about to begin. The angry man defiantly refuses to participate and is killed by Nishi, who reasons that the rebelling man will be nothing but a liability.

Alright Gantz:0, what do have in store for me? While I am not too familiar with the Gantz franchise, as it has been almost a decade since I have seen the original series, but I felt Gantz:0 actually found itself a place in this gory/bloody franchise. By far the best part of Gantz:0 was the design of the enemies. They were weird, surreal, and equally terrifying to the point of pure amazement. For example, when the boss arrives in his final form, he intrigues me at the same time of horrifying me beyond belief. Now that I think of it though, it seems loosely influenced by the Summoned Skull monster from the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, just 10 times more bad ass.

However, beyond the monster design, nothing really stood out to me at least in a positive light. The CGI animation, while showcasing the advances we have made in the following years, it made the human characters seem bland and unimportant. While this does provide the illusion that they are just soldiers, not unique in any way, but that also takes away what little character development there is. Continuing with character faults, the voice acting is also rather poor, this story should have just been left subtitled.

PROS:

• Character design.
• Score.

CONS:

• Poor cast performance.
• Awkward CGI animation.
• Bland character design.
• Pacing.

SCORE: 4.5 / 10

 

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