Gantz #5:
Process of Elimination

50 minutes
English/Japanese
English Subtitles
Released: 06/07/2005
Reviewed: 08/23/2005

It's become sort of a habit for me. Whenever the situation necessitates a trip to Best Buy, buying a spindle of CDs for free promos for example, I meander over to the anime DVD section and peruse what's around. I'll finger a thing or two that catches my attention, bemoan the fact that they don't have the first volume of Fist of the Northstar, and eventually, at the behest of Joel or Greg, I'll settle on the next DVD of Gantz. Almost assuredly this DVD has been released two months prior to my purchase.

I'm starting to get a little mad at this show. It's way too good at drawing attention from someone like me, the kind of guy who's just too easy to sucker in with a slowly paced plot. Gantz doesn't really seem to care that I'm too lazy to watch it any quicker than two episodes at a time and, as such, it takes its time with every little bit of the plot. The characters spend another whole episode locked in the Gantz apartment before the fighting starts and even then... the fighting barely started!

Here's where the ball really starts to roll, I guess. There are brand new characters aching and ready to get slaughtered at the hands of otherwise benign-looking alien things. This time the target is a low-tech looking robot called the Suzuki alien, voiced rather deliciously by the bald headed fellow from Beat Takeshi's heartwarming comedy/drama, Kikujiro. The robot seems to prefer busying itself buying toys in little plastic capsules like the main character of Shenmue, Ryo. Unlike Ryo, its obsession is more closely linked to a set of bizarre alien birds than a trip abroad to China where capsule toys are worth more than all the Emperor's gold.

Joining us are a team of motorcycle villains led by Tetsu, the guy who you know is going to survive this time because he's been in more than two scenes so far. Also, he's trying to make a better life for himself. He'll probably die sometime down the road while looking at fading images of his wife and child and wondering if it was ever really worth it. That's just a guess, but I have a feeling that's pretty close to how it'll "go down".

The show's greatest skill, I guess, is its ability to make you wait. When I watched episodes 5 and 6 I figured it was just a brief hiatus from the action of "the game". Now we're deep in, four episodes later, and stuff is barely happening. It doesn't irritate me like slow-paced, irritating, faux-complex stuff like Noir and Madlax do, but it's no prized peach in the pacing department either. Its sole saving grace is the fact that, on occasion, an alien's head blows up in a most spectacular manner.

I guess that's pretty reasonable from where I'm standing. It's certainly better than watching the fourth iteration of The Bachelor on American TV, though only in the slightest measure. If The Bachelor had aliens whose heads exploded I'd be willing to call it pretty much even, or maybe even a loss for Gantz, reality shows seem more obsessed with backstabbing than they are with ultra gratuitous shots of a sixteen year old girl's enormous breasts. As such, I find it infinitely preferable. All things considered I think yes, I would prefer a reality dating show where the loser's heads blew up in a spectacular fashion. Also, it'd be cool if they got samurai swords or ray guns. But since such a thing doesn't exist yet, Gantz continues to be a mostly reasonable substitute.

I think I've just about given up on my whole "Gantz as social commentary" angle. If it's trying to tell us anything it's either way too loud or way too subtle, I'm not sure which. At one point, Tetsu tries to force our favorite sociopathic 8th grader to apologize for his crimes. Nishi, in mortal danger, is still reticent to do the one thing that might save his life. It comes off as a little touching, but more melodramatic. On the other end of the spectrum the dog in the apartment decides it's gotta bury its nose in Kishimoto's nastiest of nasties for the third time. That's a little lame and a lot disgusting. As it usually goes, my puritanical upbringing prevents me from really enjoying a scene of forced bestiality. I guess it's something I need to work on. But really guys, THREE TIMES? Once can be written off to you being creepy and Japanese. But when you start doing it every three episodes then people start to wonder if you're really into it.

I've probably come to the conclusion that Gantz isn't worth watching for much aside from the violence, but what it does is done pretty good. It's good enough that I find myself enraged at the end of each 50 minute segment. It's good enough that I actually waste my time watching the boring interviews with the actors in the extras just to get more Gantz. It's good enough that I watched five terrible Japanese commercials** in an attempt to continue my DVD experience. I guess I'm finally understanding what all those fans on the internet were complaining about, though with two more DVDs out that I could've picked up with barely five seconds of effort, I guess I'm in no real position to complain. I just have to be a big boy and hope it doesn't take another four episodes for something to happen.