| Title: | Gantz |
| Episode: | 19: What The Hell Is That?! |
| Synopsis | |
| At the Ratenin Temple, both the "Ferocious" and "Grumpy" aliens have been dispatched, but knowing Gantz it's a little early to declare "mission accomplished". The dog senses something, and two of the newcomers follow it and find themselves facing yet another statue come to life, this one about life-size. Numerous additional aliens appear, and three of the newbies get the idea that they can take them with their bare hands. The largest statue on the grounds comes to life and smashes it's way out of it's building. As luck would have it, a taxi drops off an arguing couple nearby. Facing the gigantic Buddha-shaped alien, Sakuraoka comments that this is really testing her faith. "You can have faith in one thing" Kei replies; "I'm gonna take him down!"... | |
| Comments | |
| Stretch: Pretty cool, all things considered. I was expecting the horde of life-sized aliens to slice and dice the first-timers wholesale--"are you guys f------ retarded?" I said to myself; "Don't you know you can't take out an alien with your bare hands?" But lo and behold, they actually do pretty well. The sniper guy kicks some serious ass, which I loved seeing. Also, back at the apartment, the man within Gantz starts to stir, which is intriguing. Kato implies that if they fail to complete the mission, everyone will die--does he mean the aliens will kill them all, or will Gantz pop their collars? Yet another person Kei knows wanders onto the battlefield, then dissapears. Are people like the homeless hunters (who seem to have vanished) and the teacher being developed so that they can serve in the next hunt (like Sakuraoka was)? In the end, crazy, what-the-f--- tactics pay off, which was unexpected, to say the least. I like it--anything's better than the unexciting action that has been typical in the past [Devil Doll, 2006-12-10]: I'll never understand how they can be so incompetent in battle. Almost always outnumbering the enemy and with superior movement skills, they should attack the enemy from all sides and retreat whenever necessary. Instead they're all attacking from the front simultaneously! What's more, when the enemy focusses on one of them, they would have a free hit when attacking; instead they're crying "Oh god, he's going to die" or similar stuff, waiting for a miracle to happen. The way they protected Kato's teacher looked exceptionally stupid as well. But other than that, it was actually a decent episode, with interesting battle scenes and quite a few characters doing reasonable things (such as the sniper and the karate man). The young girl suddenly joining forces with those protecting the teacher was a nice surprise as well. And Kei's bloodthirstiness and Sakuraoka's attempt to protect him is the best character interaction in this series so far, and keeps me watching this stuff. But somehow I want to see Kato die soon because Kishimoto's permanent praise for the most inconsequent fighter of the whole team is really getting on my nerves. German television M-TV adapted seamlessly to the stupidity of this series by sending a preview at the beginning of episode 19 named "what happened so far" that provided a summary of the complete episode 19 (not 18!), thus spoiling the whole story... arrrgh! | |
