For those of you who haven't seen the previous volumes, Kei Kurono is a high school student who gets into some serious trouble on his way home from school one day.  He and an old friend , Kato, get killed.  Or do they?  They get hit by a train and their bodies are scattered over the station, but moments later they both wake up in an apartment with several other people and a large black sphere:  the 'Gantz".  The other people have recently 'died' too, and no one knows why they are there.  The sphere, communicating through poorly spelled messages that appear on its surface instructs them to kill an alien hiding in the city.  It opens up to reveal weapons and uniforms, and then the recently dead disappear one by one to confront their adversary.  It's a deadly game and most of the people who play it don't make it out alive.  While playing the game they discover that the suits they wear give them super-strength and offer them some protection from harm, but not enough.  Just who or what the Gantz is, why they have to play this game, or what the points that they are given at the end of every game mean are still a mystery.

Volume Ten:

(Warning: There are no spoilers for this volume, but this review does talk about events that occurred in the previous discs.  If you haven't seen those yet you should skip down to the technical review.)
 
Kurono is in a lot of trouble.  He's survived several of Gantz's 'games' but now the odds are really stacked against him.  A new game has started, and this time the prey is Kurono himself.  Two of the players are psychopathic killers, and they're really looking forward to killing someone.  It doesn't even have to be Kurono, anyone will do.  But then why should they settle for one when they can kill everybody?  It turns out that the most vile creatures that Gantz sends its victims up against aren't aliens, but human.

This is a very bloody show, but it also has a good story behind all of the gore.  The way Kurono 's character evolves over the course series really adds a lot of meat to the series.  The change from being a self absorbed teen to a mature adult who cares about others is both interesting and believable.

The show is also very intense, and the fact that it spends time a lot of time introducing new characters and presenting their background only to have them killed off makes the program unpredictable.  You are never sure who's going to die and who will live and that adds a lot of suspense.

Having said that, the ending of the show is anything but satisfying.  It's really easy to present a lot of mysteries and then leave them unresolved, and that's what this show does.  Just who or what the Gantz is, the significance of the old lady, or any of the other strange things that have happened through the series are just not explained.  It makes me wonder why they wasted the time setting up these strange events if they were never going to explore them.  As it is the vague "you can interpret this in any way you want" finale is really a cop-out and pulls the whole series down.

Gantz continues with the three episode per volume format for a retail price of nearly $30.00.  The disc come with an insert.

Audio:

Gantz comes with an English dub in 5.1 and the original Japanese soundtrack in stereo.  The original track sounded very good, but the English dub was a little easier to watch.  There are several scenes where people's thoughts are audible, and it was a little easier to understand who's thoughts you are hearing in the English dub.

I preferred the Japanese soundtrack overall.  Though the English dub was in 5.1, it wasn't as dynamic as I was expecting.  The explosions didn't have a lot of impact, and didn't sound much different from the stereo mix.  There were several scenes where the English voices were mixed too low and a little hard to hear.  Besides that, they did make good use of the surround channels, throwing some of the effects and occasionally the voices to the rears.  The Japanese track also did a good job with the front soundstage, using it to full advantage.

There were not any audio defects worth noting.

Video:

Generally the anamorphic widescreen image was very clean, though there was some aliasing.  This was minor though, mainly occurring in the backgrounds.  The colors were a little on the muted side, but that was probably the creator's intention.  A very nice transfer.

Extras:

In addition to a clean opening and closing, there is a 15 minute looks at how the visual effects in the series were created and an odd Gantz Special Features Collection.  This is a series of the excerpts from the interviews that were included on the earlier discs.  I'm not sure why anyone would want to have this when they have the full interviews also.

Final Thoughts:

I've been very vocal about my dislike for the way ADV has handled the release of this show, and you can read my reviews of the previous volumes to see where I stand on that.  In the end though, Gantz was a very intense series that had a lot going for it.  I usually don' t like the 'gallons of blood' school of anime, but the mysteries, situations, and characters in this show were very good.  I enjoyed watching every volume and really was engrossed in the show.  The fact that the show ends on an ambiguous note without answering a lot (or any really) of the questions that were brought up is very disappointing.  It get frustrating to invest hours into a show only to have it just end with no explanations.  As it is, this show ended on a low note making it a good rental.