I’ve had a movie called Gantz:O in my Netflix queue for a little over a month now, and last night I finally decided to load it up and give it a watch. It’s an animated CGI movie, which is rare coming out of Japan considering they still do tend to animate their shit like it’s 1989, and I gotta say it’s pretty damn slick.
Even though the Japanese continue to prove that they can’t construct a story to save their lives, the premise is (as far as I’ve gathered) that a mysterious organization is “abducting” people that have recently died and using them as soldiers in a fight against creatures that are ravaging modern day Tokyo and Osaka. Who are they? How do they do this? Nobody knows, apparently not even the writers, because no explanation is ever given.
For the majority of the movie, the viewer is left as clueless as the protagonists. Which is fine, except that for half of the movie I was expecting to see some kind of virtual world, or alternate reality. It wasn’t until the sudden appearance of civilians that I realized it is actually happening, currently, in the real world. A little bit more exposition would’ve helped, although it was in Japanese with English subtitles, so maybe they did explain something while I wasn’t looking. That’s why I prefer dubbed, even if it is awful.
Anyways, nonsensical story aside, the animation and character models are pretty damn amazing. It gets fairly photo-realistic in some places, and it was really cool and creepy to see mythical Japanese creatures rendered realistically. Oni and Tengu and other goblin-like creatures from their folklore, with their exaggerated noses and giant ears, don’t really look like they should work in a realistic setting, but they do, and I really enjoyed that. For us Westerners, it would be like watching Jim Henson Creature Shop characters going psycho and murdering their way through New York.
The human protagonists also look pretty good, and even though they fall into their respective Japanese roles, I at least appreciated that they avoided giving anyone some shitty spikey hairdo. In fact, they avoided a lot of the anime tropes that have been getting shoveled down our throats for the past 30 years or so.
The females still have exaggerated boob physics, and there was one monster in particular that pretty much keeps anyone from watching this with youngsters, but hey, we wouldn’t be the website that we are if we were offended by lady parts. Just keep in mind that this movie isn’t for kids, period.
As someone who swore off anime long ago, I thoroughly enjoyed the fresh take on the Japanese style, a more grounded, “realistic” approach to the shit we’ve been fed most of our lives. I can only hope that this is the start of a trend and an evolution in Japanese animation, because God knows they need one.
Note: After having proof-read this blog post, I realize how poorly it’s written. But whatever, it’s a blog, and I’m rolling with it.
