Gantz is the most overrated trash manga to grace human existence and anyone who considers it a literary masterpiece is a genuine incel that you need to watch out for. Here's why -
Right from the start of the manga its extremely obvious that the author is writing the manga as if its his own fetish journal. Sexualizing high schoolers isn't a new thing about Japanese mangaka but in the very first chapters there are so many unnecessary sexual scenes and fetishization that really kills the mood, especially when you realize that the sexual scenes are with a character still in her high school.
It
...
doesn't help that the author decided inputting his nsfw fanarts on the start of each chapter instead of DeviantArt or something in the most inappropriate of scenes really fucking ruins any tension and mood you'd have while going over multiple chapters. There were many times where something fucked up is going on in the manga with people getting killed left and right in the goriest ways imaginable, characters crying over the deaths of their precious ones in one chapter and when you head over to the next chapter there is a naked lady standing with her tits and her bush out posing like a front page Playboy model. The author seemed to have gained some sense by the end because the finishing chapters actually have proper sensible covers but for the most of the manga be prepared to see a lot of naked ladies even if you didn't consent for them.
But this only covers the tip of the iceberg as this rampant sexualization roots to a deeper issue about the manga itself - the female characters. I've never read a manga where the female characters are so incredibly irrelevant despite making up a huge chunk of the main cast. The women in this manga are fucking helpless, lack any sense of independency and are there just to fawn over the cooler male characters in the series. Like, literally, a female character is introduced in one chapter and you can skip 5 chapters down the line and you'll see the same character fall in love with one of the male characters without achieving anything of her own. I completed the manga last night and I don't remember any major accomplishment that the women in the manga have done except what Reika did in the end (and even that accomplishment felt like it was done just to wrap up her character). For a 387 chapters manga that really tells you a lot about the quality of the female characters written inside.
Now that we're done with the most insufferable part of the manga, let's talk about the bad parts. We talked about the female characters being bad but the male characters aren't that far off either. It's hard to relate or feel anything for most of them because they're just so goddamn bland. They just appear on screen, do cool shit, most of them die while doing cool shit and that's it. Kei Kurono, the MC, is insufferable as well for the first half of the manga as one of the most selfish and inconsiderate main characters that you'll encounter while reading but gets a really nice redemption arc by the end. The only characters I personally liked are Nishi, Suzuki and Sakurai. I honestly wouldn't have minded if we had Sakurai as the main character from the start, even if he is too cliched as a shounen protagonist.
Speaking of cliches, Gantz tries to look cool by breaking a lot of them but fails miserably in the process. Gantz is that emo kid in your school who wears black and smokes in hopes to look cool in front of everyone but just ends up looking up like an idiot in the end. There is a lot of unnecessary gore fuckfest, casual mentions of rape and SA that doesn't influence the character or is brought up again (Berzerk is an amazing example on how to show the lifelong aftermath of SA, for example) and just a lot of sexualization and fetishization where it isn't needed. Case in point, there are a few chapters by the end of the manga where the author really tries to make a pedophile look cool and heroic.
There's also a general feeling that you'll get as you go further in the series where it feels like the mangaka intentionally wants to torture you either through gore, suspense or climax. It's really apparent in the ending and I'm not personally a big fan of it. As a writer myself, I get the habit of torturing your readers a little bit but there is a limit to how far you can stretch it and Gantz definitely stretched it thin.
By the end, Gantz attempts to be a representation of the modern world with its dystopian perspective and for a lot of parts I'd say it pretty much nails down what would happen, even if it takes a very cynical way of showing it. If the rest of the manga wasn't so dogshit I'd give Gantz 6 or 7 for its worldbuilding alone.
Coming to the rare good things that Gantz has and one very clear area where it shines the most is art. The art is fantastic and to his credit the mangaka has given a lot of details to the small things. That includes boob physics as well which I didn't think I would see in a manga done so fluidly but decades of drawing naked high school girls must've paid off for the writer I guess. Some of the backgrounds look really fantastic and there are a few panels where I actually waited for a bit and scanned each minor detail because of amazingly detailed they were. I saw a clip of Connor talking about how the monsters in Gantz are one of its strongest suit in his trash taste podcast and I would agree as well.
I liked the ending even though it felt really, really cliched and a bit rushed, which seems to be an unpopular opinion for the series. Absolutely not a big fan of it but it could've gone worse. Plot was good but not good enough to be worth the shit that comes with it. Action scenes were great but it's not something I look for in a manga when choosing to read/rate it simply because anime is a better medium to judge that.
Gantz has got a few things going for it and if you're a proud edgelord/incel you'll absolutely love this manga. For anyone else with half a brain and common human sensibility, I'd recommend avoiding this manga like the plague especially because it's a dumpster fire that you won't be able to stop reading until you've finished it.
4/10 - It's bad. Read at your own peril. You've been warned.
May 5, 2024 Not Recommended Well-written 
Gantz is the most overrated trash manga to grace human existence and anyone who considers it a literary masterpiece is a genuine incel that you need to watch out for. Here's why -
Right from the start of the manga its extremely obvious that the author is writing the manga as if its his own fetish journal. Sexualizing high schoolers isn't a new thing about Japanese mangaka but in the very first chapters there are so many unnecessary sexual scenes and fetishization that really kills the mood, especially when you realize that the sexual scenes are with a character still in her high school. It ... |
