Animated GANTZ

Gantz is a very nice manga. Then it went Anime before turning into a live movie.

The story starts with Kei who was forced to help his childhood friend Katou in rescuing a drunk who fell into the subway tracks. Needless to say, both of them perished. Or so we/they/everyone thought. Both of them reappear in a room with other strangers only to face a black sphere called GANTZ. The sphere supplies each person with their own power suits and choice of weapons plus information on which alien to kill and point awarded after each mission. Slowly, both of them finds out the other rules of the game;

1. The suits gives you strength and also give a certain level of protection.

2. The weapons either traps the target or makes them explode after a time delay.

3. If you do not kill the alien within a specific time, you die.

4. If you walk or leave the zone, you die.

5. If you die inside the mission and the mission is not complete, you die.

6. After each mission, you are free to leave the room but if you happen to die, you die

7. Etc, etc.

The first few episodes are quite entertaining as the story tries to answer a lot of questions. But after a while, it gets frustrating because its so long winded and also the inability of new players familiarise themselves with the mission. After awhile, it gets kind of boring. But towards the end, there are some really shocking scenes and also the ending was a big WTF for me.

I have not completely read the full manga but a few downloaded chapters years ago was quite interesting. Also, there is the live movie (Part 1) which follows loosely on the (manga?) and is very different from the anime.

Do I like it? OK, but a bit long winded as I expected non-stop action. And I was very disappointed with the ending. I have not seen part 2 of the live movie yet but I hope to do it soon. This year. Yeah, this year.

Five days of TV and it was really a WTF... session in the end.