Gantz Volume 1

When high school students Kei and Masaru save a homeless guy from certain death, they end up getting killed instead. But have they really? The two are transported to a room with other recently-deceased people who have also been enlisted by a black orb called Gantz. Their mission: to hunt and kill aliens. But is that it, or are there darker secrets left to discover?

Graphic and often gratuitously violent, Gantz is a mind-blowing sci-fi suspense story that reads like a first-person shooter video game. But this amoral morality tale has something to say about the value of life, even as it blows it to bloody bits.

Three students, two gangsters, a politician, a teacher, and a suicidal girl are snatched from their imminent deaths and stuck in a room with a mysterious black orb. Now removed from their 'normal' lives, this mismatched group is armed with big guns and a mission: kill aliens that are hiding in Tokyo.

Gantz was originally published in 2000. Oku's eye-popping digital art and Gantz' mix of sci-fi, hard-boiled action and suspense have made it a hit in several countries, but it took eight years to hit U.S. bookshops, for a simple reason: Gantz is very graphic and violent, even by seinen manga standards. Flip through it and you'll see gruesome death scenes, gratuitous female nudity and big guns that blow people to bits. This one ain't shrink-wrapped for nothing, folks.

But Gantz isn't all shock and no substance. In Gantz, the characters show us what normal people can do in abnormal, pressure-cooker situations. Should we be disgusted by Kei's refusal to help a man in need, or should we cringe because he's thinking like so many of us would? Should we be shocked that the group would blow an alien to bits just because 'he's not human,' or are they just living out a video game fantasy?

Gantz is a morality play about an amoral society. At one point, school teacher Yamada wonders if they're subjects in an "Eichmann test," a reference to a psychology experiment inspired by the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. The test asked a simple question: How much pain would a subject inflict upon another human if ordered to by an authority figure? In Gantz' case, the answer is quite a lot. It's chilling to see the group blow their terrified alien target to bits, with only Masaru crying out in vain for mercy.

It remains to be seen how this story evolves, but this first encounter with Gantz left me both shocked and impressed, which is not that easy to do anymore.