Gantz

5Reduced, this title gives 5. It sits on The Turn with the rest of a turn.

What it is

Hiroya Oku's Gantz ran in Shueisha's Weekly Young Jump from 2000 to 2013 and was collected in 37 volumes. High-school student Kei Kurono and his childhood friend Masaru Katō are hit by a subway train while trying to rescue a homeless man. They wake up in an apartment with a large black sphere and a group of strangers who have also just died. The sphere, called Gantz, gives them suits and weapons and sends them out to kill aliens.

How it works

Each mission is a brutal fight against bizarre creatures, scored in points. Those who survive go home until the next summons; those who reach 100 points may be freed or bring someone back to life. The missions grow larger and deadlier, and the story eventually expands into an invasion of Earth.

The art

Oku was one of the first manga artists to build his pages with 3D computer models, especially for backgrounds and vehicles, combined with photographic detail. The result is a hyper-real, almost cinematic Tokyo, against which the violence is shocking.

Why it matters

It is one of the most influential death-game manga, and its mixture of extreme violence, sexuality and moral questions made it a cult hit. It was adapted as an anime, as two live-action films (2011) and as the CG film Gantz:O (2016).

The title by its numbers

Gantz23total23 → 5

volumes37 → 1years serialised14 → 5debut year2000 → 2

Set against the Pythagorean table, the title totals 23. Reduced, that is 5.

The 5 governs freedom, disruption, and restless movement. The reference files it as a turn. It is a lens rather than a verdict, but it is a consistent one: the 5's restlessness and hunger for change is the pressure under this entry.

Beneath the 5 sit two smaller figures: 1 in the vowels, 22 in the consonants. Initiative underneath, construction on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.

Counted another way the answer holds. Volumes is 37, a 1, years serialised is 14, a 5 and debut year is 2000, a 2, and years serialised reduces to the same 5. Two systems, one figure.

The Turn asks one thing of everything on it: ask what was abandoned, and whether it deserved to be. The 5 moves for the sake of moving. Not every break documented here led anywhere, and the reference says so where it did not. The other entries that reduce to 5 are collected on The Turn.