Dark Horse Comics has won the right to publish the US edition of Gantz. According to Dark Horse, Grantz is “inarguably the most highly demanded manga in the last half-decade.”
Hiroya Oku, creator of Gantz, has put together a cast of characters that are both sympathetic and strong to which anyone can relate. Gantz “tells the story of a team of dead people who are forced to take part in a ‘game’ that has them hunting aliens and other creatures who live among the populace of Japan. The story focuses on Kei Kurono, a teenage boy who died saving a homeless man from a train. He, along with a band of others who are recently deceased, is forced to complete a series of dangerous and complicated missions by a strange device called Gantz. On these missions characters can even die again, only to be quickly replaced by others like them. As the plot progresses, so does the intricacy of relationships between characters.”
Dark Horse President/Publisher/Founder Mike Richardson has been pursuing the book since it was released. He compares it to Ghost in the Shell and Akira as “one of the greatest seinen manga ever created.”
Gantz is tentatively scheduled for a summer 2008 release.