GANTZ 1-13 by Hiroya Oku Works (Dark Horse)

Notoriously packed with nudity, sex, violence, and gore, Gantz lends itself a little too easily to the reductive view that it does no more than pound the most basic buttons in readers' psyches.  Ng Suat Tong argues as much in a rant that might as well be titled, "YOU DAMN ONANISTS GET OFF MY LAWN!!1!":

It would be easy to imagine this manga being put together by a bunch of sexually deprived nerds huddled around a computer screen but, no, I’m going to be kind here and just call them a group of over-sexed wankers. Gantz is clearly aimed at young males with a history of gaming, buying gravure idol magazines and indulging in H games.

In fairness to Ng, when I say Gantz lends itself a little too easily to that view, I mean the very first page:

. . . turns out to be a centerfold from a gravure idol magazine:

That's just for starters.  Very shortly afterward, less than halfway into the first volume, we get the scene that really colors--no, cements--most perceptions of the series.  It begins with the materialization of a naked girl with enormous breasts into Kei's arms.  The process is gruesome, because her insides are visible until it's complete.  When it's over, Kei thinks, "That's the grossest thing I've ever seen.  And yet I feel so horny right now."  A yakuza drags her away to rape her.  She's narrowly rescued by someone who tells her to cover up or he might just rape her himself.  And then . . . ah, er, well, there's this dog . . .

Yeah.

Keeping on like that, the chapter breaks are almost always fan service:

In a later arc, Kei fucks an Angelina-Jolie-as-Lara-Croft lookalike:

And then, in the back of volume 8, there's this:

When nudity and sex are so in-your-face, to such juvenile effect, it's hard to blame Ng for writing Gantz off as fanboy wank fare.

Gantz has defenders, though, who argue that it's more than that.  Deb Aoki tries to read some thematic depth into it with her claim that it "Raises thought-provoking questions about how little value life has in modern society," and her characterization of it as "a morality play about an amoral society."  Somewhat more convincingly, Noah Berlatsky points to facets of merit and quality in the opening scene, as indications that it isn't just hackwork.  In the midst of a rambling defense, Abhay Khosla comes closest to identifying what I'd consider the chief strength--an intriguing premise, compellingly developed. Jog also gets a lot right in this summation:

I’ve always felt the entire point of Gantz is that it’s a gross, oversexed, faintly tongue-in-cheek trashy manga take on The Matrix and other big money action spectaculars, powered mainly by Hiroya Oku’s firm command of loooongform serialization and his idiosyncratic take on sci-fi action particulars.

Well, let's start to unpack all this.  As high-concept, Gantz mashes up reality tv with first-person shooter video games, by arming mixed ensembles of ordinary people with futuristic gear and then sending them out to hunt aliens.  In execution, creator Oku builds in a lot of hooks and twists.  The characters are gathered at the moment of their death.  One by one, they materialize inside an apartment furnished only by a large black sphere named Gantz--but this portentious minimalism is offset by a window clearly overlooking Tokyo, a view of life going on as usual outside.  Is this a kind of afterlife, as some of them speculate, or something even stranger?  When Gantz begins communicating with them, it turns out to have a quirky personality and dissonant sense of humor:

If the sexy stuff is the icing, the alien hunts are the cake--the true substance of Gantz.  The bodysuits and weapons that Gantz issues to the characters are frightfully powerful but often counter-intuitive to operate and disturbingly unpredictable.  The alien quarries start out seeming silly, but for every hunt after the shell-shocking first one, I cringe along with the returning characters in expectation of nasty, horrendous surprises.  Oku always delivers, with a gleefully vicious inventiveness.

As extended fight scenes, the hunts aren't just choreographed; they're very well-plotted--propelled through strong, wild arcs with hinky, unconventional rhythms that kept me off-balance every time.  Each one is a bloodbath.  No matter how the protagonists prepare or strategize, they always get rocked back on their heels, and the question always grows desperate whether they can stop a clusterfuck from unraveling into a massacre.  In tone, the hunts see-saw between Matrix-y action and horror, and the suspense and catharsis of seeing which way they'll ultimately tip is the emotional payoff.  I've not felt cheated yet, but if I had to pick a favorite, the third hunt (vols. 6-8) is for Gantz what the "Made to Suffer" arc is for Walking Dead.  Everything leading up to it develops within certain bounds, but afterward the series opens up in a number of fresh directions (not all of them to my liking, but any shakeup of a proven formula is bound to get mixed reactions from fans).

As for the art, using computer 3d modeling to enhance traditional pencil and pen work lends the action a quality that is a little sterile, but impressively crisp and slick, like a high-production-value blockbuster movie or a top-shelf video game.  As Oku explains in an appendix, that's pretty much what he was going for, and he only wishes it was more pronounced.  It certainly suits the story.  I wouldn't want all comics to look like this, but here it works to terrific effect. 

If I haven't said much about the characters, well, this really is not a character-driven series.  Kei is the anti-heroic protagonist.  We might charitably say he's introduced with plenty of room to grow, both as a person and as a character; less charitably, he's a snotty young asshole depicted as flatly as the paper he's printed on.  He does seem to be growing and developing in later volumes, but it's not altogether convincing.  The narrative devices creak a little too noticeably.  We'll see how far Oku cares to explore that angle, and how much talent he can bring to it.  We get to know other characters about as much as we get to know reality show contestants who are eliminated within two or three episodes.  Some are more appealing than others, but it almost comes down to chance whether or not they survive the meat-grinder carnage of a hunt.

Overall, I found this a solid genre hybrid that looks great delivering cool, exciting sci-fi, action, and horror elements, with an exploitative sensibility that occasionally pushes it over the line into straight-up hentai. Definitely not for everyone, but if it is for you, highly recommended!