| Title: | Gantz |
| Episode: | 26: Live |
| Synopsis | |
| Ryuji has blown himself up, and Kei has only survived at the expense of the muscle amplifying ability of his power suit. He finds the tracker device and detects the signals from Mika and Hajime. Kei finds her badly injured and about to be finished off by Hajime. Using a remarkable capability of his suit which still functions, he disarms Hajime and deals him a handy beating. Hajime, however, isn't down for the count; he and Kei argue about the morality of what they've done. The clock is running down, and Kei proposes that instead of trying to kill each other, they both go back to Gantz together... | |
| Comments | |
| Well, this final episode definitely could've been better, but it could've been worse, too. Towards the end I was watching this show very sparingly, and wasn't all that curious about how it would end; or maybe I should say I doubted it would be worth enduring the usual sadistic violence just to see if anything interesting would be revealed. No, there is never any explanation of who or what Gantz is, or how it came to exist on earth, which is disappointing, except that I'd pretty much given up hope of that ever happening some time ago. This show has become so predictable that when Mika fought Hajime the thought popped into my head "okay, now she'll do something stupid and get killed" (which was semi-correct). For the most part I didn't feel much excitement during the fight between Kei and Hajime (though the moment when the table was turned was kind of neat); it was more of a "let's-get-this-over-before-all-the-airtime-is-wasted" (because I want to see how the show ends) attitude. There was one moment which seemed kind of heartwrenching, regarding Mika's fate. What exactly the meaning of the scene in the subway was is anybody's guess, but I think it made some sense, and wasn't particularly ugly. The one word which comes to mind when summing up Gantz as a whole is "cynical"--people are portrayed as almost invariably bad at heart (or, if they're not bad, as idiots). Given that, it was far too late to pull a genuinely cathartic ending out of a hat; but this episode could have been much worse.
[Devil Doll, 2006-02-24:] Yeah, same here. The ending could have been worse (the way Kurono dealt with his last opponent was decent - by why didn't he thing of this solution earlier, being the only one with profound knowledge about the weaponry?), but it could have been so much better. One of the unanswered questions is: Why did Nishi have the stealth device, and why didn't Kato or Kurono try to get it from him when he died? What was special about Nishi (and Kajumura) to be given extra equipment? I don't need an explanation about who Gantz is but I need an explanation of what his/her intentions were, and why the games apparently ended by such a stupid action from Kurono (declaring himself immortal, and that's it?!). | |
