Gantz 2: Perfect Answer

February 7th, 2012

For people who haven’t seen the original Gantz, it is probably best to start here. As a review of the sequel, spoilers will be inevitable, so please hold off reading this if you haven’t seen the first film.

Picking up directly where Gantz left off, Perfect Answer sees Kei Kurono seeking to revive his best friend Masaru Kato, who died at the end of the first film. A woman is murdering several  people who had previously played and earned their lives back through the Gantz “experience”. These veterans find their way to Kurono’s side, proving to be valuable allies.

At the same time, a dangerous adversary of Gantz and its minions, arises. These aliens take on human form, including a doppelganger of Kato, and aim to destroy Gantz. Not only powerful, they also claim to take the moral high ground, in exacting revenge for the back orb’s orders to kill their race.

With the concept of the series firmly established in the first film, Perfect Answer is told more purposefully, through a series of well-orchestrated conflicts. Fight scenes are a typically flashy combination of swords, bullets and alien technology, but are well handled by the film’s action director Yuji Shimomure’s, with some excellent moments. One fight scene, aboard a train, perfectly illustrates Shimomure’s intention to give the aliens a snarling, whipping style of combat, as they obliterate furniture and any innocent civilians in their way, recalling the chaos of a John Woo movie from Nineties Hong Kong. Adding to the tension of the fights is the sheer unpredictability of Gantz, where the death of a main character is always a possibility.

The second film also handles the emotional development of the characters more sensitively, although time constraints and a tendency to fall back on tired tropes – the shy and lonely artist girl, the bitchy and ruthless starlet, the coward with a steely resolve – prevents all the characters from being developed. The quieter moments in Perfect Answer, in particular, give Japanese pop star Kazunari Ninomiya (Kei) the chance to show a broader range of emotions than simply anger and incredulity. Switching the perception of aliens as victims of genocide – rather than just “monsters of the week” – is also a neat turn that lends the main antagonist a nobility, similar to Deckard’s android “prey” in Bladerunner.

Perfect Answer veers miles away from the original plot of the Hiroya Oku manga, but this is almost certainly for the best. The meaning of the so-called “perfect answer” in Gantz 2 can symbolise both the over-arching quest to end the feud between the humans and aliens, and answering the needs of the individuals caught up in Gantz. Seemingly able to cover a lot of ground in its two-and-a-bit hours, it succeeds in concluding these threads, and, with the exception of the pointless “Clouseau” detective played by Takayuki Yamada, the film rarely veers from its course of action and exposition.

Sadly, most of the computer effects that helped give the Gantz a unique, colourful, look is gone. In place of the moving golden Buddha statues, there are smart looking aliens wearing dark suits, armed with black pistols and black swords, which feels generic by comparison.

Despite shooting the two films back to back, director Shinsuke Sato has achieved a surprising shift in tone and pace that makes Perfect Answer much better than its predecessor. It comes highly recommended to fans of the film, manga or anime series.

Words>Adam Gaudry

Tags: Gantz, Kazunari Ninomiya, Kenichi Matsuyama, Manga Entertainment, Perfect Answer, Shinsuke Sato