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When looking at the different genres Ghost Hunt takes on I could only think it was doomed on arrival, taking on the supernatural horror mystery genre as well as the Shoujo Romance genre? How can it possibly present both of those properly and simultaneously? The answer is it couldn't.


Story (3): The premise revolves around a group of paranormal investigators who investigate reports of spiritual activity and as such the series is divided into 7 cases as opposed to having one overarching story. Sounds like it could be interesting however what lets the plot-lines down for pretty much all of these cases are the poorly written ... mysteries. If you like mystery stories that leave clues for you to pick up and try and piece them together to work out the conclusion then this one is not for you, all the focus goes towards telling you the back story of the ghost which is hardly exciting when you know it's all going to be disregarded as soon as the next mystery rolls along and isn't all that memorable anyway. On top of that every case resolves by the main detective revealing information that was never there for the audience or the other characters for that matter to be able to solve the case before. This essentially gives the rest of the characters no real purpose to the story unless the ghost goes berserk and they need to get blasted by one of the other characters... magic powers.

Yes there are magic powers in this show and it pretty much ruins everything good the show DID have going for it in the first place. In the first case there was a very nice balance of scientific and computer based ghost catching methods in harmony with increments of supernatural abilities coming into play which made it feel like a show such as Most Haunted if there actually were any ghosts to catch. However as the cases go on the scientific methods of catching ghosts gets less and less and the magic powers become more and more relevant until it gets downright ridiculous. By the last case the cast are basically DBZ fighting zombies and there's no sense of mystery and using logic which is what the show set up it would be about originally so it just becomes a train-wreck of shark jumps.

Fans of long running shows will probably not enjoy the structure of the series. The fact each arc is 3-5 episodes long and have no effect on any future events pretty much means your watching an episodic show where the episodes are dragged out ridiculously, so essentially to all non-episodic fans, you will probably find the pacing to be tortuously slow.

The romance between the two main characters is awful, it's all done in this dream sequence where the female protagonist Mai sees her love interest Naru in a different light to what he's like in real life and she starts to fall in love with him through that? Are we're expected to believe that this is enough to build a romance from? No, just no, you need to show characters getting closer through common ground, mutual respect and care for one another, not through contrived dream sequences.

On top of that the series ends openly with no catharsis to the characters or any conclusion to this retarded excuse for a romance, probably to leave the romantic mystery open for a second season which thank god never happened. It would have been much better for it to have been self contained and offering some sort of conclusion but given how little there was building up to anything I guess there's no reason to be terribly disappointed.


Characters (2): The characters don't seem too bad at first but there are major problems. First of all the main character Mai is handled very badly, too idealistic all the time which gets very annoying and essentially sounds like she's preaching morals to the audience. She is also completely insignificant to every mystery except for maybe the last two and the only reason she's involved with the Shibuya Psychic Research Center in the first place is because of an accident that caused her to owe the main detective guy money, so she has no motivation at all besides paying off her debt, it's on the same level as Haruhi from Ouran High School Host Club where she broke the vase except that was satirical, this is meant to be taken seriously! Also what's this, a backdrop attempt where we find out Mai has no parents, oh wait, only mentioned once and never referred to again, doesn't do her character any justice, not important to any event. One of the worst main characters EVER!

The main detective in the show Naru is way too calm no matter how threatening the supernatural situation is, all decision making is too easy for him and there's never any conflict. It doesn't help that Mai's insignificance makes you think he should be the main character since he's the man solving the mysteries, an indication of bad writing but it doesn't matter anyway because his attitude towards everything just leaves him as a one dimensional and boring character except for when that lame dream sequence bullshit happens.

Every other character has their moments of being enjoyable and sometimes funny which is the only reason the character score isn't at rock bottom but they still suffer through having no character development throughout the show. By its conclusion there's no change to them as people as to what you see in episode 1. The only thing that changes is that they get along better with each other as the series goes on but that doesn't make them any more interesting as individuals.

They did attempt to develop the cold harsh guy Lin but it was ridiculous. He explains to Mai the reason he hates her is because of a deep seeded hatred he has towards the Japanese because of the conflict they've had with China and then he gets one friendship speech from Mai and he immediately 180 degrees mood swings to being alight with her, that's not character development, that's forced bullshit writing.

The funny monk character gets revealed to be a rock star on the side at the beginning of one of the episodes (because monk and rock star go hand in hand right?) but then IT'S NEVER REFERRED TO AGAIN! What was the point in revealing that information if it doesn't serve his character any purpose in the story?


Art and Animation (6): Despite being technically better than the story and the characters this is where the mix of horror mystery and shoujo falling flat on its face shows best. You take one look at the way these characters are drawn and try and imagine how you can get any scary looking ghosts or other creatures out of this style? It's impossible, even with a ton of blood over their faces that still doesn't make their Shoujo eyes and generic faces any more threatening on screen. I will admit though that the background art can be very unsettling at times due to the great use of lighting and colour, the case involving the bloody labyrinth in particular was the only case that had me on edge just because of how unpleasant it was to be in that room so kudos to that much at least.

The animation is hit and miss, some scenes had good animation like the shattering glass from the second one and the action scenes were actually very fluid for the most part despite being shark jumping but then there's others where the characters move in key frames and is very choppy. The use of transitions was also very cheap and there's too many scenes where boxes pop up with the characters faces talking as if the animators didn't want to have to draw another angle from whatever the first shot was and keep to the scene. Also what was up with the animation for the opening for the first half of the show? A bunch of balls flying around fading out to a fog effect after a while? Was that the best you could do? Apparently not! In the second half of the show they actually came up with something more creative, nothing special but more interesting than orbs flying around which basically proves that they knew they'd fucked up the previous animation for the opening, which leads us nicely into-


Sound (8): Probably the best aspect of the show, the opening and ending themes are fantastic, had the animation been better to accompany it I would call it one of my favourites. The BGM is also very good albeit not to memorable, there's only a handful of tracks that stand out and the music that is supposed to be scary is just too overblown as if it was trying to compensate for the Shoujo looking ghosts. As you can probably guess, it didn't work.

I have nothing to say about the sound effects, they were fine and did their job well, nothing memorable but far from the worst aspect of the show.

I mostly watch dubbed anime so I can only critique the performances of the English dub and I have to say it was actually very good. The actors and actresses actually represented their characters well and could display emotional range, also during normal talking parts they don't ever sound monotonous. The voice acting unfortunately is not enough to save the terrible writing for these characters but they did their best for the material that was given to them so to dub fans like me, here's another good one! To non-dub fans, here's one that doesn't suck!


Enjoyment (2): This is one of the most boring shows I've watched in my entire life. The plot failed to engage me because of the little focus on what makes a good mystery, the romance was corny, the animation didn't suit what was meant to be the scary moments for the most part and the characters were either annoying or lacked any reason for me to care about them. I enjoyed the music here and there and sometimes it was interesting to look at which again prevents me from putting the score at rock bottom but in terms of script and cast it failed to interest me at all and those are far more important elements.

Overall (3): I know some people like it but honestly Ghost Hunt is a failed experiment, the Shoujo style takes away any potential for the show to be scary and the fact that it has to be a mystery show and a horror show as well as a Shoujo means it can't even take the time to develop a good romance for people who came for that, it fails in both ways. Do yourself a favour and stay away from this shitty anime. Only recommended for people who aren't at all demanding in story and characters, like their romances to be as loose as possible and have no stomach for scary stuff.

Have you ever seen a show called Berserk? Did you think it was awesome? However did you think the ending sucked shit through a straw? Have you wanted to watch a series that probably isn't as great but is still good in its own right and hopefully has a better ending? If the answer to all those questions is yes then Gungrave is the series for you! If the answer is no then Gungrave is still the series for you because you'll think it's extremely original and kicks so much ass. So basically the series can be for anyone so all I've done here is ... completely waste everyone's time. My bad.

Okay so the series is very similar to Berserk and don't get me wrong I'm not going to spend the entire review comparing the two. I just think it's important to point out the similarities. The story in Gungrave involving the roller-coaster relationship of main characters Brandon Heat and Harry McDowell is similar to the story of Guts and Griffith. The story is also told in a similar fashion where the first episode shows you the present time where everything's all fucked up and then you get a sequence of episodes that explain what happened etc. The main difference here is that unlike Berserk which finishes its flashback sequence on the final episode and says "fuck you, go read the manga!", Gungrave ends it's flashback sequence just over its half way point and proceeds to finish its story within the anime itself, so Gungrave wins at least that point!

I haven't played the Gungrave video game so obviously I can't compare the two. Now that I've gotten that out of the way let's get onto the actual review where I'll stop pointing out that Gungrave obviously got its inspiration from Berserk.

Story (8) - At first Gungrave doesn't seem anything too special. In fact it's mediocre at best. The series begins with our main character Brandon Heat on a path for revenge (cliche) after being killed by his best friend Harry McDowell (spoiler). The reason he's still alive is because thanks to a necrolisation process (bullshit) he's been brought back to life under the new name "Beyond the Grave" (stupid name). Brandon gets followed around all the time by this useless cutesy little girl (horrible archetype) and thanks to this necrolisation technology I mentioned earlier a whole bunch of monsters (obvious fodder) have been created and Brandon has to kick their ass. Want to find out what happens next? Well you can't, because first you have to watch 15 episodes of flashback (TROLOLOLOLOLOLOL)!!

But take my word for it, this 15 episode flashback ends up being one of the best stories ever in an anime.

Basically best friends and punks Brandon and Harry go through a bad experience in their home town together. One thing leads to another and they get themselves enrolled in a Mafioso organisation called Millenion who sees a lot of potential in these two fellows. Both characters end up in different departments and go through different experiences which shape them up to the people the organisation hoped they would be. Brandon shapes up to being like a noble knight of the company where he won't allow any compromise of breaking rules within the organisation and deals efficiently with problems and threats etc. Harry on the other hand wants to get as high up the rankings as possible and manipulate the system where he can making many friends that can be of use to him.

As the series plays out we see the friendship between Brandon and Harry remains very tight. They even work together on several missions and everything's cushty but as their value systems get wider and wider apart you know it's only a matter of time before something kicks off. Of course the first episode tells us that Brandon is going to get killed by Harry at some point in this flashback period but because the story is taken care of really well, it'll get you fully invested in what's happening with the plot and character motives etc, and you'll want to know HOW it happens and you'll never be able to work out the moment that it occurs. However when it does happen you're caught completely off guard and it blows your balls and/or tits off.

This part of the story is overall very well crafted with all the different characters developing very well and driving it forwards with their actions. It keeps you guessing what's going to happen next and it's practically flawless. The necrolisation stuff is a load of crap that mildly sucks the seriousness out of the story, but hey, it's anime, and it does at least make for some good action scenes. The plot for this flashback period is exciting and well written meaning once you get up to the present timeline you'll have no choice but to finish it to find out what the ultimate outcome of everything is!

Sadly that's where some points get dropped. I would give a 9.5 to the story of the flashback but only a 6.5 for the present time story. The useless little girl who follows Brandon around is never developed as anything but, the story stops being engaging and instead is all about Brandon killing monsters (it's only when he has to fight the people he used to know that it actually becomes tense) and the motives of the characters stop being realistic after a while. Maybe the flashback period is just too good for the shows own good. This series is based off a game after all and games are all about killing stuff and depth isn't necessarily required. It's just a bit too jarring that the flashback told this great story about how events in life can drive a friendship apart and has many themes in it including loyalty, betrayal, love and finding your place in the world with little nonsense elements here and there and then the present time story became a fantasy shoot'em up with only revenge and finishing what you started being the story's only focuses. Still though there was a lot of build up to the climax of the show and it very much delivers, I ended this series feeling satisfied with the conclusion.

Characters (9) - Brandon Heat and Harry McDowell are by far the best characters in the series, no shit right, I've gone on about them enough. Brandon is extremely quiet but very kind hearted. He only gets angry when the people close to him are harmed by the enemy or if he witnesses betrayal by people he thought were friends. For such a quiet man you get a lot of emotion out of him and he's a very deep character considering. Most anime characters never shut the fuck up about getting the One Piece or becoming Hokage or whatever, so it's great to see an enjoyable character who only speaks when it's important to do so.

Harry is your smartly dressed businessman persona who knows how to talk to people in the right way to gain their trust. In the story section I may have made him sound like a guy who simply gets more and more evil as the show goes along but it's actually more complicated than that. What's interesting about Harry is that no matter how corrupt you know he's getting he still always values Brandon and the new friends he's made the same as he started out, which again makes you want to find out HOW he ends up killing his best friend.

All the support characters are done really well too. Bob Poundmax (one of Harry's top men in Millenion) is really fun to watch, I often hate characters that are used for comic relief ESPECIALLY if it's the eat lots of food character. What makes Bob funny is you actually see him get fatter and fatter as the series goes along and it eventually ends up endangering his life which I thought was a hilarious take on this cliche as you never see these types of characters suffer consequences. Balladbird Lee (same as Bob) proves to be another really interesting character who works with Harry on manipulating the system. Big Daddy (the leader of Millenion) is different to what you'd first expect and you grow to love him and what the organisation stands for which in turn will have you loving Brandon more as the two of them also have a great relationship. Blood War is the shows obvious villain character but for an obvious villain he's at least bad ass and has a good backdrop aiding in an understandable motivation. There are a few characters like Maria, Bear Walken and the scientist guy who brings Brandon back to life who don't get as much development as the series leads you on to think they will and the little girl who follows Brandon around is insufferable but apart from that I can't really fault the cast. That's why characters get a 9.

Art/Animation (7) - All the character designs are done really well. When Brandon becomes "Beyond the Grave" and he's holding his guns he looks cool as hell. All the other characters look good too, there's nothing more I can say as far as the human characters go. However....

The monsters look fucking awful. If there existed some sort of spiritual plain that contained the dullness of all imagination you'd find these "orc-men" as the series calls them. They look about as generic as you could expect and if that wasn't bad enough none of them are coloured! Could it be any worse than that? Actually it could, how about instead of them melting when they're destroyed like the Wicked Witch of the West or exploding into a fiery chasm like in Castlevania's Symphony of the Night we'll make them just come apart into a bunch of white cubes. I swear I could have done something more exiting on Sony Vegas.

Well at least the fight scenes are handled really well. Fluid and rarely ever cuts a corner which is a rarity for anime shows. In places it reminds me of Cowboy Bebop when it comes to the fist fights because of the angles they use and thanks to the talents of the director and their staff, so that's all good! Also because this anime has gun fights, something that doesn't really require a great deal of animation, the limited animation scenes are chosen wisely, so Gungrave's really not one of those series that can have you constantly pointing out animation problems.

Sound (7) - I watched this anime dubbed so I can only judge the acting based on the English version. And just to put it out there I think Gungrave has one of the best English Dubs I've heard. Kirk Thornton does a great job of Brandon Heat, always getting the phrasing right for those rare times where he does open his mouth! Steven Blum also graces this series as Balladbird Lee and does his job brilliantly. My only complaint with the dub would be why did Harry have to have two voice actors for when he's 28 and 42? Not that both didn't do well but it seemed pointless. Anyway moving on...

It's an anime with guns in it, and the guns sound awesome so there's nothing to complain about as far as sound effects go. The soundtrack was decent enough, I don't remember any specific themes now that it's been so long since I saw it so I'll mark it down a tad for memorability but I remember that the music fit the show. Decent compositions that captured the mood of whatever scene they're in. The opening is okay. Not one of my favourites but it's quite unique with it's style. The ending song is quite entertaining but again not one of my favourites.

Overall and Enjoyment (8) - A very good anime series despite a few things to complain about. Gungrave has a blend of well developed characters, a really interesting story with exciting plot twists (for a while), good action scenes, good pacing and really great voice acting which is more than enough to entertain most. Was the series better when it was called Beserk? Except for the conclusion damn right it was! However Gungrave is still a must watch.

Considering this anime is only 5 episodes long I can't really complain too much about wasting my time with this appalling series when there's much bigger and longer fish to fry. However there aren't many anime titles that I can say I actually hate as typically I'm indifferent to anime shows that I don't like. However in this case just about everything in this series is just a mess and I'm surprised it did well enough to get a movie adaptation of itself and a movie sequel (which is equally shit but I'm not here to talk about that). Anyway we're here to constructively criticise, ... not ramble like a moron.


STORY (2) - A 2? Are you serious? Surely the story can't be that bad right? Believe me it is. No originality in any way shape or form, no plausibility in both the overall plot or the chapters it has to get there, the pacing is far too fast for you to care about anything as there are too few episodes and a god awful ending that comes out of nowhere. But I will go into great lengths to explain just how shitty this story is.

The start of the first episode sets up the premise, Afro Samurai (yeah that's his real name apparently) is a man with a revenge motive because back when he was a child some bloke with a hat called Justice killed his father whom until that point was the strongest man in the world because his headband that says "# 1" on it says so. After Justice kills Afro's dad Justice gives Afro his old headband that says "#2" on it but he later loses it to some punks. From then on we realise we're following two stories. One revolving around Afro as a child trying to get the #2 headband back by tracking down whoever might have it because for some reason he needs it in order to challenge Justice to a duel to get his revenge and another when we see the present day Afro with the #2 headband travelling to where Justice is and get challenged by people from his past and a church who are essentially villains for the sake of having villains.

Is it just me or does this set up not make much sense? Afro, a small child with no fighting experience lost the #2 headband to a bunch of random guys he met and then they lost the headband to someone else who lost it to someone else. How does this prove who the second strongest fighter is? All that just happened is weaklings lost to stronger weaklings. Even if I was to accept that after so many years a #2 would be established by every named fighter in the world losing to them, the guy who turns out to be #2 kept it a big secret so such an argument can't be made!

For that matter why would people be so concerned about going after the #2 headband to begin with? especially Afro. Everybody knows where Justice lives anyway so why would they dilly dally around challenging the second best instead of just challenging the best straight away? It's a fight to the death after all so what's Justice going to do about it if you show up without the headband? Try and kill you for breaking the rules? There's no change in the circumstances whatsoever.

In the present time storyline at some point or another per episode Afro gets attacked by the church of mecha (I call them that because they somehow have the technology to build extremely talented fighting robots in a time where everybody else uses swords) The action scenes are quite entertaining at the time you see them but you'll very quickly forget everything about them. Such as who the bad guy was, what their weapon was, what kind of techniques they used and even how Afro defeated them. For the most part its very mindless too. The biggest example I can think of is when Afro had to beat the villain by doing something "spontaneous and unexpected" but he doesn't do anything creative and just does an epic slash that's really confusing what actually went on. Aside from this nothing very interesting happens except for one part that involved Afro having sex which was the only enjoyable part that wasn't a fight scene. The only thing that prevents the story from getting a 1 is a plot twist with the guy who follows Afro around everywhere. It's one of those cool twists where you don't see it coming but when you think about everything leading up to it, you could have figured it out and you kick yourself a bit for not being able to, so that much is appreciated.

As far as the past time story goes we are simply waiting for the inevitable moment where Afro will kill the guy who you could figure out is going to turn out to be the #2 headband guy straight away. This leads to another character called Jinno who was sort of like family to both Afro and the #2 guy wanting revenge on Afro which is really irritating because he should have understood what the fight actually meant to both people fighting but instead he becomes yet another villain who's just there for the sake of being a villain.

It couldn't even succeed in having at least an atmosphere to this story. It could have been a really dark, edgy, bloody, cool, serious samurai era world, but sadly it fails to deliver on that too as there's far too much comic relief (unfunny comic relief) given to us by Afro's obnoxious tag along buddy and the church who never say anything interesting and technological inconsistencies that remind you that you're just watching a cartoon. We live in a fudel era where people fight with swords, a future setting with robots and lasers and also we are in a dragon ball world where people can fall from ridiculous heights and land without breaking so much as a single bone.

The ending was a let down and it comes completely out of nowhere. It involves a plot to bring all the headbands in the world together because it will grant the #1 headband guy godlike powers and let him transform into a monster that looks like it would fit well into a hentai. This whole idea just comes across as a plot convenience because they couldn't come up with a reasonable explanation for why there needed to be both a #1 and #2 headband in the first place.


CHARACTERS (3) - There isn't a single character in this series that stands out as memorable, at least in a positive way. The fact it's 5 episodes long is no excuse. Anime Movies have overall less runtime and many have excellent levels of character development by comparison to this garbage.

Afro is a tiny little bit bad ass since he wins loads of fights and can cut bullets in half for some reason but he's extremely boring too. He rarely ever says anything and when he does it's always to tell the guy following him around to shut up. Silent or near silent characters have been done well. Brandon Heat from Gungrave didn't talk very much but you still understood his personality and his conflicting emotions, Afro on the other hand has no depth at all and it's next to impossible to describe his character without saying "he was kind of cool and was good at fighting with a sword."

The guy following Afro around is intolerable, just a typical comic relief character to lighten the mood. I hate that shit in anime. D-Gray Man could have benefited greatly from taking itself more seriously instead of throwing in a bunch of lame jokes and this series suffers for the same reason. The plot twist with him is the only thing that makes him kind of interesting but aside from that he's thoroughly unlike-able in personality.

Then there's the two characters from Afro's past who he kind of became family with who end up wanting him dead for no good reason. As I mentioned earlier they should have understood what the fight between Afro and the #2 headband guy meant and why it was important to Afro but instead they decide that they want revenge on him. The girl nearly kills Afro while having sex with him but fails when Afro's massive cock gives her the orgasm of her life and decides she wants to help him all of a sudden and the guy (Jinno) ends up becoming one of the most laughable side villains in anime history. Not to mention Afro spends more time fighting Jinno than he does fighting Justice, the guy who he's supposed to take revenge on. To be fair the fight with Jinno and Afro is one of the best animated fights I've ever seen but because I hated both Jinno and Afro so much, I just didn't care about any of it. That's really bad. Then in the rematch between Justice and Afro we pretty much get a one hit KO situation. Well that sucks!

The church villains are all stock. Just bad guys for the sake of bad guys. The church never say or do anything that makes them interesting, they just have a bunch of numbered fighters challenge Afro because...someone has to I guess. They are all conveniently numbered in order from strongest to weakest in the same vein as the Espada from Bleach to make them seem like they have more character and personality than they actually do but sadly you'll forget the personalities of every single one of these guys. At least Bleach had Ulquiorra, Nnoitra and Grimmjow.


ART AND ANIMATION (8) - As much as I hate to admit it the artwork and animation was very good. The character designs are pretty unique, the attention to detail is great, the weapons look awesome and the backgrounds are beautiful. However a lot of the time I kept thinking I was watching Sin City. It was black and white almost all the time and like in Sin City you'd only catch certain colours here and there like green eyes, red because of the blood splashes and the occasional piss yellow when Afro had a lemonade on the go (one of the "running gags"). There are a few daytime scenes which is when the colour comes out and during such times the colour work is great too.
Overall, not much to complain about in art design.

As far as the animation goes you'd be disappointed if it was anything less than exceptional when the show is only 5 episodes long and as such Afro Samurai demonstrates some great animation. Of course like with any anime you get the slow framed parts every now and again and sometimes you get obviously repeated clips but when Afro Samurai tries to be well animated it fully succeeds. As you might expect, the action scenes are best at demonstrating this. Although there are even little things like when Afro smokes a cigarette, it burns away so fluidly it's like the real deal! Looks way better than the cigarettes in Trigun. Oh and Afro's afro moves too. Badass!


SOUND (6) - I watched this anime dubbed and to be honest it was dubbed very well. Samuel L Jackson despite hardly having any lines with Afro still put in a good performance and his voice acting for the guy tagging along with Afro (yeah he plays him too) was good too but sadly the writing was so bad for both these characters that he couldn't save them. The rest of the cast was voiced well enough for dub haters not to be able to complain too much about but I wouldn't be ranking this up there with Baccano or Black Lagoon either.

As far as music and sound effects go, to be honest I have nothing to say. It was just fine. The soundtrack fitted okay enough for me not to be able to complain but it didn't really stand out either like say Rurouni Kenshin or Samurai Champloo's which tackle this kind of fudel era (much better I should add).

For the enjoyment section I'm going to tie it in with the overall since I have pretty much the same things to say about both.


OVERALL/ENJOYMENT (4) - You know what? Since when was decent worse than mediocre? That's what this scoring system seems to think. I always thought decent fell between average and good. To me 4 means BAD!

If you worked out the mean average score of the 4 categories you'd notice it actually averages out to 5. However the characters and the story are the most important aspects to a show so if both characters and story are both lower than art and sound I deduct an extra point since it would more accurately represent my feelings. This is a bad series, not an average one. However if the characters and story were higher than art and sound I would have given an extra point overall, so it's not like I'm being unfair in that regard. Anyway now for the conclusion.

It's kind of fun to look and the action scenes are fairly entertaining because of the really good animation but the story and characters are really what screw this anime up. The revenge story was boring and the concepts were just ridiculous with no good characters to prop it up even a little bit. They just written to be used for action scenes or to attempt to give shock value. If you want a really good show that deals with people from this kind of era I'd recommend Rurouni Kenshin as it has a plausible set up, the characters are much better and the story is highly enjoyable. Sure the action scenes aren't as well animated but you'll like them a lot more for the simple reason you actually care about the people fighting and why. Afro Samurai however is a massive crock of shit and I do not advise watching it at all unless the only thing you care about is mindless action and nothing else. If you want a good revenge story then I would recommend either reading Berserk or watching Hunter X Hunter for Kurapika's storyline (plus it's a great anime all around anyway).

It’s a wonderful thing when a scene doesn’t have to rely on constant dialogue and allows other elements such as music or maybe even silence to combine with what’s happening on screen be it atmospheric or action based to deliver more powerful story telling than what words alone can do. If you have no idea what I was just talking about then you will probably like Gantz First Stage because all it is, is characters talking, shouting, talking or shouting across each other, screaming, crying, complaining, whining, you get the picture. To sum up the experience of watching this anime in one word it would ... be "headache", because that’s mostly what I got out of this noise fest. The only reason I give it a 6 instead of a 4 or a 3 is because the parts outside of the terrible action scenes were done so well in my opinion that it brought the whole thing up somewhat. Let me break it down.

Story – Just like with Afro Samurai (the first Anime I reviewed, this is the second) the plot makes no sense. From what I understand when a person dies in a specific area of Japan they are transported into a room with whoever else died that night or survived their last mission and they have to work together with the people in the room and destroy the aliens they are told to by this big black sphere called Gantz. They are given a powerful futuristic weapon and protection suit each and if the “subjects” let’s call these dead people that are brought back refuse to cooperate and make a run for it the government sends down a satellite beam that blows their heads off. Why the government need random people that happen to die to kill these aliens instead of handling it themselves with skilled men goes beyond me, especially considering all the aliens in this series are complete jokes.

Of course it’s supposed to be a story about human nature, perhaps even an experiment. What happens when there become no rules, when a human is put in a situation where their animalistic nature can get the better of them and allow themselves to go nuts in their alien hunt mission? It’s a good idea but just not executed too well. Let me sum up how one of these alien encounters goes. Character points a gun at an alien. Character hesitates to pull the trigger but looks like they might be able to do it if they absolutely had to and feels they have to tell everybody about it. Another character tells them not too because it’s not right. Another character tells them to blow its head off. Those two characters get into an argument. The character holding the gun shouts that he doesn’t know what to do. Oh too bad the alien just killed 3 people. It gets old fast and if it wasn't bad enough they did this all the way through the first of the two Gantz missions this series making me think the lessons they'd learnt would make them do better next time, they do the exact same thing again the second mission! It's extremely tiring, especially when the aliens are just about as loud and obnoxious as the characters, which we will get onto now.

Characters – This is where some points can be redeemed. Kei Kurono is one of my favourite Anime characters (not in my top 10 but I still like him a lot). While he can be just as annoying as anybody else in the Gantz missions outside of the Gantz missions his progression is great. We really get to see inside his head and although many people wouldn’t want to admit it a lot of the time the things we see him contemplating are very realistic and things that we as real people might think about in these sorts of situations. Is he pathetic? Absolutely. But he's a pathetic kid who now has bragging rights. As he gets used to his suit and weapon he gets more cocky just as any human being would now that he has the technology to go beyond human limits. This and his personality in “other” situations make for some great moments that are really interesting, kick ass and also hilarious to watch. I don’t really want to spoil exactly what happens here. But if I sound like I know what I’m talking about so far then you can take my word for it.

As for the other characters… well they’re all pretty darn annoying and never shut the hell up ever. Seriously I know I’m going on about that a lot but it really is a repeating problem. Masaru Kato. Good god! These aliens are trying to kill you and everyone around you. Stop trying to see the morality in EVERYTHING! Kei Kishimoto is your standard hot big boobed character, likable but not that interesting. Many people may not have liked Nishi for the simple reason he’s a massive dick but I liked him, he’s the only character who got anything done and could have got more done if he had the back up from his pathetic squad! Everyone else is an annoying forgettable side character.

Art – Gantz has definitely jumped on the CG bandwagon which makes for some great shaping but not so good details in the art. Aside from that it doesn’t really jump out at you as a unique art style particularly with character designs unlike something like Code Geass or Monster for example. One thing I can say is that the Gantz manga is one of the most detailed I have ever seen. It might be worth checking it out.

Animation – Terrible. Absolutely terrible. And it’s all because of the CG it tries to implement in order to try and create 3D environments and proximity between characters. It looks laughable to say the least and it is constantly distracting. Occasionally you might get a cool looking scene in an epic action shot but for the most part everything looks so dodgy, especially when the camera is moving, it’s like a load of 3D models put on the gamer grid.

Action – Like I’ve already said, if there was less chit chat and dilly dallying around and more shooting some freaking aliens it could have redeemed some points here. Especially considering most of the aliens in this series could have been killed really easily. The animation does make the action look stupid and what the characters end up doing in order to win (see Masaru vs chicken robot) doesn’t help in its favour either. But if you like to watch characters shooting guns maybe you might get something out of this.

Sound - Some of the sound effects are pretty cool being that they are using futuristic weapons but I can't say the soundtrack was particularly memorable but that probably means it can't have been that bad either. The opening is pretty catchy, after watching both First Stage and Second Stage it managed to stay in my head for weeks on end. In my case that was good as I liked it, but hopefully it doesn't get stuck in your head in a negative way. The English Dub I should point out is done very well. And that's not just because they use the mother of all swearwords (c**t) but the voice actors do great jobs too. Especially Chris Ayers as Kei Kurono.

Enjoyment – As far as I’m concerned the Gantz missions were horrendously painful to watch and the parts outside the Gantz missions were absolutely fantastic. They are easily the more interesting parts as you see the characters lives unfold now that they’re doomed to do these missions and nothing else really matters anymore, especially to big boobs. I already mentioned Kei Kurono is awesome here but even Masaru who I hated was likable in his everyday life and I did manage to get invested in the side plot with his kid brother.

Overall – I don’t recommend Gantz First Stage. But I recommend you watch Gantz First Stage so that you can watch Gantz Second Stage the better series. It might not stick to the manga in its ending but the missions were vastly superior and the everyday life was just as enjoyable as before. But I guess I have to say it's a decent series overall, if you've seen much more anime than I have and missed this one out I'd probably say check it out to add to your collection but if you're kind of starting out on the Anime road there are much better series out there I'd say you should watch before getting onto this one.