Thread: 284 Discussion/ 285 prediction

Originally Posted by BOBO THE SPACEMONKEY

The end justifies the means. Don't forget, that team tokyo would still be tanaka-alien-mission-material without the massacre. Imo, Gantz rather has a decent team, that can pull smth of when the catastrophe strikes down and not some newcomers. Who knows...The people killed in the massacre would've died in the catastrophe anyway. So what does it matter...let them live a bit longer and have a weak team, that must be carried by other teams or have a decent team in exchange for a few people, that would've died either way. In fact, this team allready saved a few thousand people, just remember the lightning oni, yokais or other aliens who were hostile towards normal people, fair trade imo.

I agree, but my point about the goodness or not in Gantz is that, even though it could be for a greater good, it disregards equality between people, which by default, is enough to paint our dear black ball as not so much of a savior.

Maybe the catastrophe is only about Aliens of every kind (even onion alien like aliens) to become hostile towards human. Afterall earth seems to be invaded for years allready.

Maybe it's about an all-out war between several alien races taking place on Earth. The aliens don't always agree with each other, we've seen that in the Canibalism chapter, also with Akira's betrayal and HS and Chigusa's performance on the Nurarihyon mission (as well as the youkai's attitudes).

Originally Posted by LotW89

Maybe Gantz make humans appear like aliens...
You know, Gantz even places bombs in their head, so he probably can have influence on the visions of the Gantzers to see humans like aliens.
Think about it^^

Not really, you know. Make a human look like an alien that look like a human is... too "duh".
We know the aliens even have different languages of their own, I don't really think they are human experiments too.

HUGE POST GAAH!

To understand the post: I'm talking about the idea "Gantz want to conquer the earth at Katasthrophe day".

Originally Posted by Cali

^We do know something about Gantz origin, it's man-made, as stated in the initial narration of chapter 285.
I suggested Gantz might have its own agenda in another post, which wasn't really related to this discussion, but that isn't necessarily opposite to what's being debated here.

It was a metaphor. You have to agree that "it's human made" isn't the kind of "origin" I wanted to say. And also, just because it's in a factory, it doesn't means "humans" make Gantz! What if an alien race in specific just "stole" (or "borrowed", or even built it from the ground using humans) the factory to help their struggle against the rest of the alien races? To understand what I just said, think the human factory as well the "humans that work that" (we never saw any) as a tool.

Originally Posted by Cali

Ideology is a set of conditioned thoughts to which one chooses to bow to, even if the person is not aware it's something imposed to a degree and that's something that it's chosen by people themselves; it's not really a common tendency to have "self-awareness", though I'm pretty sure I could've used better wording here.
Anyway, re-stating again what I theorized: people behind Gantz might have an ideology, Gantz himself is picky; weak people go down. That on itself can be treated as part of an ideology. I didn't really say Gantz has one, I was just considering the possibility. Personally, I'd be happy if Gantz had no real purpose at all and were doing it just for fun, but I think it's unlikely after recent chapters.

Ideology is a set of ideas and institutions that someone follows without knowing nor criticizing it's roots and ends. BUT the person must know the idea and institution "itself" (even if he doesn't "understand" it), example (about the "must know" stuff):

* Drinking water is good? > Yes. (You know what is "drinking water")
* Drinking ***** is good? > ???. (You don't know what is *****)

An "ideology" must be externalized, otherwise it's just your thinking, not the "general thinking".

An Army must not only kill, but also "enforce law" over a region and a people, "control them". You won't enforce law if you don't believe in it (understanding what it does implies isn't necessary). The most well-known example (and boring actually) is Germany at WWII: the German people (not everyone, I don't want to generalise) defended and believed in some level the war and the Nazism: they believed without knowing what the Nazism really was and what it really was doing.

Gantz doesn't say that what they are doing is right.

Originally Posted by Cali

What I defended is the existence of an army without ideology is valid, contrary to what you said, and in case we assume the existence of armies to depend on ideology, we can't really affirm Gantz doesn't have one simply because we don't know nearly enough.

I assume it's needed, and if we don't know if Gantz "have one"... Imagine what the Gantzers know? Even less!

Originally Posted by Cali

Also, even if Gantz has an ideology, as stated, it doesn't really need to try and convince its hunters of so; they are merely tools. You don't try and convince your machine gun that you're killing this or that race because of this and that.

As for your last point, you're confusing things there. Katou and Kurono are ignorant to Gantz intentions, they've always been, and they'll likely still be for a while. What I meant is that every newbie gantzer, in general, is lead on by either the promise of power, freedom or salvation of loved ones. Even someone who doesn't like killing, such as Katou, had to kill in order to save his friend, and will have to kill in order to go free, which is still his priority, as he himself told Kurono after the revival.

Assassination is one thing, all-out conquest is completely different. That's what I'm criticizing. You can crumble the organization through assassination, but to conquest, it's needed an army, an organized force to destroy the defences and to keep the conquered region under control. You can force people to kill, not to be an organized army, that's what I'm saying.

Originally Posted by Cali

And if by any chance Gantz throws a mission with the humans as targets, it'll likely turn out just like the Tae mission, or the Nurarihyon mission - where the vampires killed their "kin". It'd be kill or be killed, they'd have no choice but to do so or die themselves, and if they chose to die themselves, that'd make no difference to Gantz; that ball is powerful enough; having the ability to destroy and recreate matter to me is pretty much as much godlike as one can be.

Saying "hey, that girl is a alien! Kill it"" to desperate people is something, try to do the same with the whole japanese defense force. Or, like, the Brazilian army (as we are both Brazilians).

---

BUT I see valid points in what you said. I think that, if Gantz wanted to conquer the world, he:
1* Could use Gantzers to kill major leaders. Weakening the defenses for the arrival of an alien army.
2* Could use Gantzers to annihilate all humans (eh... nuclear bombs? Repeating the "tae" mission indefinitely with different Gantzers if it's needed? xD) and then the aliens can settle earth.

Originally Posted by sirromandragon

HUGE POST GAAH!

To understand the post: I'm talking about the idea "Gantz want to conquer the earth at Katasthrophe day".

It was a metaphor. You have to agree that "it's human made" isn't the kind of "origin" I wanted to say. And also, just because it's in a factory, it doesn't means "humans" make Gantz!

You're pissing me off ¬¬
It's man-made because the friggin author said so by using the narration, my friend, just read chapter 285 and you'll know.

As for the ideology issue, well, I don't think you got my point right.
I mentioned it over and over, and will do so again: I'm saying exactly that the gantzers know no shit, and so Gantz, and the people who made it, because it was made by HUMANS, as stated by the NARRATOR, might have an ideology, which the gantzer don't friggin need to follow because they are but TOOLS.
God damn it.

Here, check the definition for ideology. You're using it related to military ideas only, apparently, which is incorrect.
http://thefreedictionary.com/ideology
Or just look for "ideologia" on priberam:
http://priberam.pt/dlpo/dlpo.aspx

I'm sorry if I pissed you off, my bad. I didn't want to do it.

Oh! And that line was supposed to have something like "to anyone who is reading this without the rest". It wasn't directed to you, Cali! I respect you as any other.

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My bad if I can't remember the line that the author says "it's human-made". But what I tried to say's still up: just because are humans that are building the balls inside a factory (and we can restrict the meaning of what the author said to something like "it's built on earth, with human labor"), it doesn't mean that the blueprint (or the technology) is earth-born, nor that the "Boss" is a human.

---
I thought "Ideology is a set of ideas and institutions that someone follows without knowing nor criticizing it's roots and ends" was broad enough.

---
To put it simply, i'm trying to say that if you want to conquer, you need to destroy the defences and to enforce your law ("your will"). Tools can't do it, they can only help > But Gantzers (Gzers) are humans with free will (even if a small degree of), they can deny the orders they are ruled on (like kurono with his girlfriend). So Gzers can be problematic tools.

Like I stated in the last three lines, I understood what you said, but I don't agree with it fully: If Gantz (G) wanted to conquer with Gzers *alone*, it would need the Gzers to be an army, so it would need to earn the Gzers loyalty, otherwise they would never enforce G's law.

Also, I can't imagine the Gzers fighting against the police and the regular army without too much stress that would ruin all the team (they could even kill each other or suicide after the mission). And there are those that would never do something like this, like Katou (I repeat, the Tae mission was Gzers x small-girl-they-don't-know, not Gzers x hundreds of people)

So... To "G conquers the world", I can see those possibilities:
1 Gzers assassinate major leaders (maybe repeating "tae mission" to do that). Alien army finishes the job.

2 Gzers do huge destruction (like melting every nuclear facilities). Alien army finishes the job.

3 G "train" the Gzers so that they are desperate, greedy enough that they will do anything he says to live... and then it "downloads" their minds.
G puts them against the X army (from any country). While they die during the counter-attack, or suicide, or flee, G re-load them from his HD and "print" at the fight again without the memories from the on-going fight.
Repeat the process, kill the Gzers if they aren't following the "orders".
Aliens show up and finish the job

¬¬"
"G"?
I still think there is no need to convince the gantzers of any belief, and that they can "enforce the law", for instance: "no aliens allowed"; they are loyal enough by beyonog loyal to their own needs, they must survive, they are pitied against potencially hostile aliens, so they must fight and they must win. I think the same logic would apply, though with much more intense inner conflict if they were to fight other humans, and of course, there are several kinds of personalities. Izumi, for instance, was the most "loyal" one to Gantz, becuse he commited acts that are contrary the "law of men" in favor of a direct order from Gantz, and that order, of course, also attended to his own personal greed, which was to have the sort of emotion one can't get with a normal life.

As for your possibilities, I would be down if 1 were to happen, I think it should be something grander than usual "leaders mean something and killing them, as icons of society, gets people crazy and leaves it to our mercy".

2. I don't think the gantzers will play a part in the destruction of Earth's powers, I do think Gantz is the catastrophe, but I think there will be some sort of "camouflage", and that either aliens or humans themselves might take the focus of the war, while the true catastrophe spreads behind the scenes. Of course, the "behind the scenes" would mean the organizers/creators of Gantz, since the team itself is now visible and the missions aren't concealed anymore.

3. That possibility gives off the impression you're stating the aliens and Gantz are working alongside each other, well, it suffice to say I personally disagree.

As for the production of Gantz, I also do get your point that the humans might've been only the manufacturers whilst the technology and the initial idea could be alien, but I think the narrator line which I mentioned implies it's entirely human-developed, the concept and all, the technology could be alien, but I also discard the idea: "the ultimate achievement of human intelligence" is one of the ways that lines was translated. Of course, we'd have to know the original line in Japanese, but with this translation in mind, to me there is no doubt Gantz is entirely man-made.

@SIr: Lol, epic. I've stayed out of this so far, because it seemed like you people were having heaps of fun, but just something i'd like to say, is that if you managed to tick off the ever cool-headed Cali, you are most probably doing something wrong...
Well, the most obvious thing is that you are arguing over what you "think" could happen. There's nothing but wishful thinking to back your arguments, and just shotgunning possibilities against the off-chance that one of them will come true doesn't cut it, either.
So far, everything we've seen in Gantz seems to indicate that Oku is going to go somewhere massive with this. However, something i'd like to point out is that everyone seems to be reading some massive cataclysmic event into Katastrophe, but there is very little we know for sure at this point...
Ok, let me try to sum up what we really know about gantz (if i get my facts wrong, feel free to put me down people... i kind of deserve it for the patronising tone i'm adopting XD... "ahum")

Facts
Oku decided to divide gantz into "sections". I don't know the name of the first part, but for whatever reasons of his own, he's found fit to call the second part "katastrophe", which is also the name given by gantz to an "event" it has a countdown timer for.
The mission prior to the beginning of the Katastrophe featured the Gantz cloaking system being abandonned.
Missions have had an increasingly significant impact on society... i.e. more witnesses, civilian casualties and structural damage. Of course, that's only what we can tell from Kurono's missions. Izumi's Mission (we get only one pic of it) seems to have been a pretty large scale operation.
The government is doing some pretty major cover up on these events.
Gantz is man-made, seems to have been mass produced and shipped all over the world. By man-made, i mean produced by humans, in human run factories. The technology may not come from earth.
Gantz technology is easily ~100-200 years ahead of present human technology (if not far more).
The aliens are sentient, not just here intent on chaos and mayhem (Nuri, for example, was willing to talk to a human)
Vampires are former humans "turned" viz nanotechnology, operate in the shadow of human society, hunt down gantzers and can use something called the "common language" to communicate with aliens. However, they stayed on the sidelines during the oni mission, and aliens turned on HS in Osaka (as far as i can tell, it was unprovoked).
Tokyo Gantz is sentient, and wanted strong people to die so he could recruit them, 4 missions or so before katastrophe happened.
The Gantz of different areas can work together e.g. Osaka mission, where two teams managed by two different black balls were put together for the same mission.

Less Reliable, i.e. character's opinion
We have Kurono's Monologue, from way back, where a kurono who's looking back at himself from a distant future (presumably post katastrophe, or it could just be after Nishi announced the meaning of katastrophe), says "I had no idea that these events and the end of the world katastrophe could be related" . Important failing: Because Kurono refers to an event termed "the end of the world" doesn't mean the world will end. It could just mean an event so big it could have "potentially" ended the world.
Nishi said it could be a Nuclear war, he told the gantzers to enjoy whatever time they had left until the apocalypse begun, but that's just what he thinks. Nothing else.

Conjecture
Some people computer the maximum amount of time on the gantz timer and found that "if" the timer was set on max digits, it would have started around the time of the moon landing, and the cold war. But that's "if" the timer started on max digits. Nothing else.

Something to think about on the nature of Katastrophe, i can't remember where i read this, "The world went out, not with a bang, but with a whimper".

^ I recall that line too... where is it from? It's not from Chrono Trigger, is it? Some manga? ¬¬'

Anyway, about the "end of the world" issue, Shani had clarified some time ago that it was mistranslation by the translator of that volume. The mention on Nishi's site was actually "catastrophe" indeed.
wheew. thanks for the back up, Shin

^woops, that's what i get for not staying on top of every page of post... too much exams and video games, i guess... lol. K fixed, thx for the update Cali. A little bit of topicness while we're at it, that line comes from T S Eliot's poem, The Hollow Men. It's fairly old, 1925, and written in opaque english. However, it has been taken up time and again by various movies and games. It's quoted in MGS 2, and apparently influenced japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. At any rate, it's a powerful line, and I wouldn't be all that surprised to find that the timer expires only for us to find nothing cataclysmic happening. Instead, human society slowly begins degenerating by relatively small scale (not an all out war) but persistent alien attacks that pulls down the normal flow of human life, brick by brick. You see, if it's a single event that ends everything, you can bring out all you have and try to stop it, but if it's recurrent but persistent attacks all over the place... well wars of attrition are that much harder to win. At any rate, since i mentioned it, it's probably not happening. It's going to be simple, yet completely unexpected, Oku style... damn the man for making me rack my brains so hard...

We really dont know yet what the Katastrophe is or will be.

Going to the vampires again, though it can be seen as my personal conjecture Im not someone to make stuff up or talk rubbish.

Seeing as HS mentions a "common language" (though that line is not used in the translation I read), this shows that the aliens are all linked through language at least, much as a "common language" is used in RPGs for the PCs of different races to be able to communicate.

Also there is a hint that the vampires may be alien in origin themselves and from what we have been told, the Gantzers attacked them first, so maybe they survived a hunt like the Chibi alien.

Also, from what was shown on-screen and through dialogue, HS struck the aliens first as he could not communicate with the tiny knight on the lizard and he carried a Gantz brain implant giving out a hunter signal.

The hunter signal is new as going back to the Onion hunt, the Onion dad when chasing the two Keis, goes after Kurono only as Kishimoto falls behind, Kurono was the only one wearing a Gantz suit. We can see here the Onion dad recognised Kurono as a Gantzer, but not Kishimoto so he could not know of her signal from her implant, rather the sight of the suit.

Also the Osaka Noh dualists talk of the signal showing, and I quote, who is their "prey". It seems they are doing a hunt of their own of the Gantzers as they attack. Perhaps attacking innocent humans was their method to smog out the Gantzers.

Finally, if the aliens know of the Gantzers and hunt them down, why do they sometimes get so upset when one of their own is taken down (and like the Chibi alien, question why the Gantzers attacked them, and like the vampires, the Gantzers apparently attacked first) when they are apparently in full knowledge of the situation at hand. It seems like someone or sonething is playing both sides.

^No, the aliens attacked HS first, at least it's implied, since that strange knight appeared in a menacing pose. HS only killed its "horse" and the guy fled. Later the aliens, the samurai duo, attacked first.

The aliens aren't in full knowledge of the situation, that's clear. The statue aliens didn't know what was going on. We can't know if the Onion aliens and the Tanaka knew. They seemed simpler aliens. The chibi aliens didn't know, they were attacked first. Nuri seemed to know, as well as the samurai duo. The Oni aliens knew.

Not all aliens are in league with each other, not all aliens are nocive. The Tanaka themselves lived alongside humans, heck, they even had their cartoons made on the street presumably draw by children.

As for the Onion dad hunting Kurono, at first it seemed the suit made the difference, maybe in that case, the signal was an idea Oku had later on, just like the drawing style improves, sometimes the ideas develop as the story progresses. I think the current signal identification is directly related to the brain implant, seeing as HS and Chiaki had no suits but were still emitting the enemy signal.