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Review
by Kozo: |
Gantz: Perfect Answer diverges greatly from its source material, but that shouldn't be a surprise. It's predecessor Gantz, released only earlier this year, started the trend with its sanitized scrubbing of the manga’s trademark violence and sex, not to mention the personality transplant given to lead character Kei Kurono. Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya played Kei as a disinterested youth who changes from disaffected dweeb to cocksure dude to willing hero. The manga Kei was, for lack of a better term, a total douchebag, and the film lacks his dark, selfish edge. Depending on your personal values and degree of manga/anime fandom, these changes can be seen as good or bad. So we'll just acknowledge them and move on.
The first Gantz movie was an entertaining if sometimes slow sci-fi puzzler with a cool concept, well-executed action scenes, decent visual effects and big unanswered questions. Who is the silent bald guy sitting in the omniscient black ball Gantz? How did he get in there? Who are the alien bad guys, where did they come from and what do they want? Why is Gantz fighting the aliens? Will Kei gain the necessary 100 points from Gantz so he can resurrect pal Kato (Kenichi Matsuyama), who was killed in the climactic battle in Gantz? And why is it that there's a doppelganger of Kato wandering around town anyway? Gantz: Perfect Answer tackles all this and more, though the answers are perhaps not as thorough or satisfying as one would like.
Perfect Answer opens with human popstar Eriko (Ayumi Ito) killing people at the behest of a mini black Gantz that she keeps in her pocket. Meanwhile, doppelganger Kato wanders around behaving coldly inhuman and not like the real, somewhat bewildered Kato. Kei continues his burgeoning relationship with adorable amateur mangaka Tae (Yuriko Yoshitaka) while continuing to slaughter aliens on Gantz's orders. Shadowing everyone is cop Shigeta (Takayuki "Train Man" Yamada), who's curious about Gantz and the random destruction caused by its nighttime games. He even contacts the aliens, who've now taken the form of humans in their quest to destroy Gantz. Will they find Gantz? Can Kei protect Gantz? Why does Eriko kill humans and carry a little Gantz? And why is the sequel adding even more questions when the first film still had so many to answer?
Unknown, but the filmmakers handle this influx of new questions by choosing to not answer some old ones. That’s a problem, because the answers may be crucial to making the film, if not the entire Gantz series satisfying. Gantz: Perfect Answer delivers some solid action sequences as well as a few nifty plot twists. But little here really makes much sense. The conflict between Gantz and the aliens is explored, but we never learn what the aliens are doing on Earth in the first place, or how their conflict with Gantz even started. And where does Gantz get its powers? How expansive are those powers? Are they ever going to tell us who's inside Gantz? Is he a power source? A slave? Is he Gantz? The filmmakers deliver hints, but not much else, and resolve things in a convenient and unexplained manner.
Perhaps the filmmakers were hesitant to provide too many answers when those same questions still exist in the ongoing Gantz manga. If that's the case, they should have avoided finishing the Gantz saga on film and adapted one or two of the manga's story arcs instead. But this film adaptation opts for a definitive end, and the filmmakers simply don't explain enough. In place of answers, we get protracted scenes dealing with friendship, destiny, love, honor, etc. – all common stuff seen in a trillion other films. Given what occurs here, there needs to be an answer or a concept of what all this means beyond its meta multiplayer gaming hook. Gantz should be able to use its concept to say and do more, but it doesn't.
The action is enjoyable, though, especially during the first set piece, a battle between Kei's group of Gantz fighters and a group of human-looking aliens on a subway train. Unlike previous battles, which took place in deserted locations, Kei and company must fight with civilians caught in the crossfire, leading to entertaining and bloody chaos. Unfortunately, the aliens remain in human form for the rest of the film, and never take on the entertaining robot, mutant or Buddhist statue forms they did in the previous film. Also, the final action scene is an anticlimactic point blank shootout, and not the exciting set pieces from before. By then, however, the film has already opened up so many plot holes that attempting to piece the whole thing together is fruitless. Gantz: Perfect Answer could satisfy undemanding fans of J-film idols, but it'll never satisfy manga/anime purists. With this incomplete end, it'll also lose those looking for something that makes sense. (Kozo, 2011)
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