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YMMV / Gantz

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  • Arc Fatigue: The final arc is getting this for the repeated Say My Name between Kurono and Tae as well as the slow pacing.
  • Angst? What Angst?:
    • Cloned Kurono seems to get over the fact that he is not the "real" one rather quickly. Of course, living with an Idol Singer who falls head over heels for him obviously helps. This is averted later, during the alien invasion, since Clone Kurono develops anxiety over the fact that he isn't the real one when things get stressful.
    • Original Kurono is also quick to accept the fact that he has a clone and is not too shocked when faced with said clone. The two resolves their love problems within one page. Probably justified since the alien invasion is imminent, and both of them just want to live peacefully while they still can.
  • Awesome Music: The opening to the anime, Super Shooter by Rip Slyme. And it's full of Gratuitous English.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
  • Broken Base: How some people feel about Gantz: O. To some it improves on the manga because it heavily tones down the for-the-sake-of-it edginess, the main cast doesn't consist of homicidal Jerkasses, and Kato is the protagonist instead of Kurono. For others, this Lighter and Softer approach is exactly what makes it charmless and tame to the point of innocuousness, especially since in the part of the manga that the movie adapts Kurono is already dead and Kato is the protagonist but he's changed a bit too much for some.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • That entire scene in the Room of Truth. Some extremely powerful god-like aliens deliver soul-crushing Breaking Speeches to the heroes before sending them right back to the Giant Alien mothership to finish the series. Said god-like aliens are never seen or mentioned again, and even without the abrupt nature of the ending, they seem to exist solely to justify the Gantz technology, and pretty much explicitly say "So ... yeah ... you did what we wanted you to do, we're done with you now, your 21 grams of data can have a nice eternity being reincarnated, or not, we don't really care either way."
    • It specially comes off as random given the fact that the aliens' nihilistic speech seems to foreshadow some kind of Horrifying Ending, but since the ending of the series is a happy one they come off not only as random, but outright wrong on their assertions towards the Gantz team. This may be an Intended Audience Reaction, since Gantz becomes surprisingly optimistic towards the end and its main message is "the universe is a terrifying place, but the people within it can make life worth it".
    • Early on, a chapter involved Kikuchi (a journalist that interviewed Kurono previously, helping to trigger his erased memories) going to Germany to continue his investigation on Gantz, while being aided by a German otaku who speaks broken Japanese. At the end of the chapter, the German guy starts speaking fluent Japanese, causes mass destruction with his mind and finally teleports away pretty much like Gantz teleports the hunters. Some would think that it would tie with the story and get explained later on... but it never was.
  • Damsel Scrappy:
    • Tae gets under the skin of some readers because she needs to be rescued often. Another source of hatred has been the fact she's not as attractive (thus "good for Kurono") as Reika.
    • Then again, she's only this compared to the Gantz teams, by the standard of every other character she's nothing short of an Action Survivor.
  • Designated Hero: Kurono does some terrible things in the early parts of the story. He gets better.
  • Designated Villain: Some aliens only try to live normal lives, without bothering anybody. Although aliens that are really dangerous and want to cause mayhem on earth appear in the later parts, specially in the last story arc...
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Even being a Red Shirt, the sniper guy in the buddhist temple mission was quite liked by the fans, mostly due to him calmly killing several aliens for afar while counting the deaths and some other badassery. His fame was enough for him being playable in the Playstation 2 video game.
  • Fan Nickname: Clonerono. Also, "Muscle Rider" for Daizemon Kaze (which is his in-story nickname, but only Gantz and Takeshi call him that).
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Kurono/Reika... with the interesting twist of having two Kuronos now. Other fans see her as a scrappy.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • For the first 9 volumes, Gantz was a Guilty Pleasure consisting of naked women, Gorn, and a Jerkass Anti-Hero. Along came Tae and much needed Character Development for the protagonist, and the manga never looked back since.
    • The Bhuddist Temple Mission is usually the point where people say Gantz goes from nothing more than sex and violence to sex and violence with a point.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Hollywood Homely: Tae. Her face is a bit unusual compared to most other characters, and it's not entirely clear at first whether this is meant to suggest that she's ugly, that she's not pure Japanese (some mainland Asian peoples have that kind of facial structure), or that she's mentally challenged (it's also similar to the characteristic appearance of people with Down syndrome). That said, there are plenty of characters in the series that are actually ugly (most "thuggish" characters... the Yakuza, the school bullies, the bikers... tend to be hideous), and Tae isn't one of them.
  • Memetic Mutation: In Chapter 55, a bit character makes the original Y U NO? face (taken WAY out of context).
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Shion Izumi has done more than his fair share of dog kicking (just ask the 387 people he killed just to selfishly get himself back.) But all those 387 deaths were not as irredeemably heinous, nor tragic, as when he cold-heartedly killed Tae in Volume 16. And while it was Gantz who assigned the mission, it was clear that one could choose not to kill her, much less in such a sudden, vile way. Rest assured though, the vampires slay Izumi four volumes later and Tae gets revived by then.
    • For the most part, Nishi was a Jerkass Heel–Face Revolving Door. He finally crosses the line, however, in Chapter 364 during his final fight against Kei. While fighting him, Nishi sees Tae standing nearby. Knowing how important she is to Kei, he sports a Slasher Smile when he fires a cheap shot at her. While Tae barely hangs on, Nishi's morality points are moot judging from his laughter and shameless gloating about killing Kei's girl.
    • The Truth crosses this big time in chapter 371.
      The Truth: Now we shall prove that human beings are merely "things..."
  • Nausea Fuel: Being that the show is full of gorn and visceral imagery, this is to be expected.
  • Padding: There's a lot of meaningless pages of running, screaming, grunting and moaning. The series can be shortened a few volumes if you erased these parts.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Nishi started off as an asshole who, while experienced, was constantly seen disappearing from battle and leaving much of his colleagues to die. That all changed in chapter 341 where he kicks the viral monsters' asses and saves Takeshi from the explosion at the department.
  • Seasonal Rot: Although the first and second phases are liked by most fans, the third and final phase is panned by readers. Reasons include its Romantic Plot Tumor, Padding, several famous characters being ignored and focus on action over horror.
  • Signature Scene: Nishi's "Reason You Suck" Speech to his teammates. Gained a lot more traction after a Fire Emblem: Three Houses video was created with the audio coming from the scene as Linhardt was voiced by Chris Patton, who voiced Nishi in the first anime.
  • Squick:
    • During the Osaka arc, some Osaka team members are seen raping various female demon/aliens, which is bad enough. But then you see one stuffing his hand in the mouth on the back of one's head. That took it to new levels of gross-out. Not to mention how many times they have pointless ECUs of people's spit coming out of their mouths; not total gross-out, but it'd be nice if there was less of it.
      • The female demon/aliens being raped are a Futakuchi-onna and a Rokurokubi.
  • They Changed It, So It Sucks: When the dub of Gantz:0 was announced, the castlist revealed none of the original actors would reprise their roles. While it was inevitable for Kato’s voice actor Illich Guardiola, fans were still disappointed.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Host Samurai and Kill Bill from the Vampires magically disappeared from the series. They could have used Character Development to become Anti Heroes fighting the alien invasion but there is no sign of them.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Vampires subplot is casually forgotten, when their involvement in the alien invasion side-by-side with the Gantz players could've been interesting.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:
  • Values Dissonance: In an interview at the back of one of the volumes the interviewer asks the author if Kurono got stuck with Tae for being such an asshole in the previous chapters to which not only he answers yes but he mentions how awful of a girlfriend Tae is. Tae is nothing but sweet and loyal to Kurono and treats him better than anyone before save Kato probably, it's just that she isn't hot to be considered a good girlfriend and YMMV on that opinion.
  • Wangst:
    • Kato's actually strong, tolerably smart by the series' standards (which, granted, aren't all that high), and fairly effective whenever he manages to stop boo-hoo-hooing about ... well, pretty much everything ... and actually do something other than just whining about it. Which is to say, almost never, at least up through the Buddhist Temple arc.
    • Kurono also falls victim to this. It's so bad, he's currently the trope page image (though ironically, it's from the one scene where his over-the-top angst is justified).
  • The Woobie:
    • Takeshi, for officially having the worst childhood ever. The heartbreaking part? He's still a toddler.
    • Also Ayumu, Kato's little brother. Both their parents die and are taken in by their aunt, who constantly abuses them. Just when they finally gathered enough money for the two to live on their own, Masaru dies and he is abandoned for more than 10 months. When Kato finally is revived, he discovers Ayumu rumming through garbage cans, implying he was surviving on his own during the time Masaru was dead.
  • Writer Cop Out: This seems to be the common emotion among the fanbase toward the manga's finale.

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