English Dub Movie Review: Gantz:O

A ragtag band of dead folk play in a real life video game. Scream a lot.

Spoilers Below 

Courtesy: Netflix

Gantz: O movie is one of the best pure-CG animes I’ve seen in a while. It is a continuation of the Gantz anime, the story of people who have died, and are reanimated to duke it out with monsters in the city by the eponymous black sphere, Gantz. The characters really emote well, and they don’t move stiffly or soullessly. They haven’t quite gotten past the uncanny valley, though, so the characters look like wax figures from Madame Tussaud’s. That isn’t a complaint. They are very realistic, even if you can tell they are CG, and you don’t really disconnect from them at all. The animators at Digital Frontier really put their blood, sweat, and tears into this project. The final boss was loaded with complex animations and transitions. They went as far as to put in jiggle physics for the two girls. Normally, I would say that this was a shameless sex-grab, but when Reika is supposed to be a sexy movie star, it makes sense for her to bounce some. The cinematography took advantage of the fact that there wasn’t any camera to get in the way of shots. They got really creative for how it was moving around to get dynamic angles.

The realism of the characters did not work in the dub’s favor. Because the animators really wanted this to look real, the characters aren’t just opening and closing their mouths. This means that they are very obviously speaking Japanese, and the dub can’t sync up well enough to make them look as if they were speaking English. The localization team really tried, though, and I don’t fault them for not quite making it. It does take me out of the moment on occasion, but it isn’t much unlike watching a live-action movie with an English dub. The one thing that did bug me was Anzu. She was terribly written, and her voice actress made her annoyingly shrill and childish. Anzu goes from being a self-concerned to interested to being his romantic interest rather fast, and with little motivation. It feels more like she was just written in to give him a significant other, and her every move was forced by the writers. To be honest, the plot was a little thin, but with the detail in the animation and gripping action, I really didn’t mind

Something that I really enjoyed was how this movie played with Japanese Mythology. Each of these monsters was a traditional Yokai from their folklore, and the attack by these monsters heavily resembles the Hyakki Yagyo, or Ghost Parade. None of these monsters deviates one bit from the traditional depictions. The final boss is based on Nurarihyon, the leader of the Hyakki Yagyo. Seeing the Tengu and Nurarihyon would have deep significance for Japanese audiences, and would be a scary treat to see them as such a threatening force. Altogether, I felt this was a good movie, and I give it nine giant black spheres of indeterminate origins out of ten.