Gantz vol. 28

I’ve never seen any of Michael Bay’s “Transformers” films, yet based on their reputation I can’t help but wonder if this volume provides a very similar experience.  Nearly every page in this volume is dedicated to wholesale destruction as Tokyo is decimated by the alien crafts that crash into the city and proceed to lay waste to its buildings and inhabitants.  It’s impressively rendered and the scale of the event is conveyed quite well — Dark Horse also gets kudos for keeping the four-page color fold-out of the “gigastructure descending” intact from the the Japanese release.  The problem is that its hard to feel anything beyond an appreciation of the technical craft that went into producing this.  Mangaka Hiroya Oku’s Tokyo has always been populated by gawking onlookers, or people all too willing to turn a blind eye to the injustices they see before them, or those who take the mass slaughter in the Gantz events in stride without blinking an eye no matter how big these things get.  When a city full of these people starts getting taken out, it’s really hard to feel concerned at all for their fate.

As for our protagonists, they prove to be the only ones capable of dealing with the chaos thanks to their suits and weapons.  Kei gets the most face time here as he goes toe-to-toe with one of the giant aliens, and becomes a kind of “high value target” in the process.  The rest of the cast also make token appearances as Oku moves them into place for what one can only hope will be more important roles as the story goes on.  Things do end on an intriguing note as the cavalry arrives — let’s hope that they’ll be more useful than the Osaka Gantz team was — and I do have to admire how the story’s progression has been drastically changed here.  It’s no longer defeating the “alien of the week,” it’s the end of the goddamn world now!  However, it’s a world that I care little about as whatever soul and character this series had gets traded for sound and fury.  

Oku’s efforts to try and outdo Bay at his own game is a fool’s errand particularly when the director’s best movie was “The Rock.”  Sure, that had lots of stuff blowing up, but it also had memorable performances from Sean Connery, Nicholas Cage and Ed Harris as well.  There’s nothing like that here in the way the cast is written to elevate the material beyond the carnage for carnage’s sake it’s currently wallowing in.  It’s the end of the world as we know it in “Gantz” and at this point it’s really hard to care.