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Overview/ Review (with Spoilers)
For a little more than a year, between the new versions of Sailor Moon and Digimon, featuring the 1st season’s Digi-Destined, it seemed cashing in on nostalgia was a good thing. But then came Gantz:O.
Characters & Storyline
After stupidly trying to play the hero, Kato ends up being stabbed to death and ending up being a player of Gantz. A game in which human beings, with the assistance of bionic suits and weapons, take on monsters and what can be considered gods. Their reward? Anything from stronger weapons, reviving peers who died or, the best option of all, getting to be revived. However, gaining points is not an easy thing to do and even killing the big boss may not lead to leaps and bounds toward that magical 100 points. You get only 2 just for surviving a game and but a handful for killing the monsters. But with survival being difficult against monsters whose appendages stretch, who can shoot laser beams from their eyes, and can be as huge as Godzilla, you can’t run, it maybe of no use to hide, so you better fight for your life.
Highlights
It’s Pretty To Look At
CGI isn’t really my taste when it comes to animation, but it doesn’t take away from the beauty of it. Seeing well done facial animations and then watching the different character designs. It was interesting to see these various monsters in detailed glory and when it came to the final boss, in each of its forms, it made me wish I was playing this as a video game. That is, rather than watching this as a movie.
Criticism
It Cheaply Tries To Make You Connect To The Characters
One of the things that Gantz:O lacks in comparison to the anime from more than a decade ago, is that the connection between characters, alongside the characters themselves, you are given only the cheapest or reasons to feel anything for. Kato you are supposed to feel for since his parents died and he is taking care of his 10-year-old brother. Another character, Yamasaki, we are supposed to care about since she is a 23-year-old with a 3-year-old child. However, being that this movie features just one sole mission, of which we spend most of it watching the majority of the cast cower with a select few going wild on the low-level monsters, it is hard to get into any of the people involved.
Hell, even this one cool dude, this bad ass who is something of legend. This guy who goes from a transformers looking suit to this almost Big Daddy-esque, from Bioshock, suit, then just in the generic suit everyone else has. Well, as cool as his actions scenes were, I never felt any reason to be scared for him, to root for him, or anything. Everything about this anime was about appearances and not at all about depth.
On The Fence
The Fight Scenes
The one thing that always got me about CGI is that while it can be detailed, when it comes to battle scenes, moments when it no longer is being shiny or pretty, it quickly loses its luster. Once things became gory, then there is a dullness. So when monsters heads are blown off, after a hard fought battle, while there is blood, guts, and tons of gore, that same detail we get with facial expressions aren’t seen. Which is a shame since the build to the last big fight was epic. However, the Square Enix styled quality we often saw on the characters’ faces didn’t translate to truly disgusting details after any of the monsters deaths. Thus leaving you without that satisfaction after a fight’s climax.
Overall: Negative (Skip It)
Honestly, while the visuals were at times beautiful, they aren’t detailed when it counts. You see, for me, Gantz was perhaps one of the first truly violent anime I ever watched and while its violence is almost tame to me now, I was expecting this movie to attempt to reclaim the throne. However, with characters so generic that they are mentally as dispensable as plastic toy soldiers, the gory details lacking when it mattered, and the story being so thin that this seemed like it was more about money than quality, I have to negatively rate this. For I honestly feel like I wasted an hour and a half of my life span for nothing.
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