A train platform. The screech of brakes that come too late. Kei Kurono, a selfish high school student who just reunited with his childhood friend Masaru Kato after years of contempt, lies bleeding on the tracks beside the one person he never planned to die next to. The drunk who stumbled onto the rails is already being pulled to safety. Kurono and Kato are dead before the ambulance sirens begin. Then — a rented apartment, cold Linoleum, a black sphere humming with the frequency of a held breath. Clothes are supplied. A dog is present. A woman answers the door smelling of onions and indifférence. They are not in heaven. They are in the room.

A group of freshly-deceased strangers — a politician, a schoolteacher, an eight-grader, a Yakuza — populate the edges of the same nightmare, while a bald man named Nishi explains the rules with the patience of someone who has survived longer than anyone expected. The black orb, Gantz, buzzes open to eject sleek firearms and skintight suits, then fills with a childlike image: an alien. Not an invasion fleet, just a target with a countdown timer and an eerie resemblance to a child's toy. Kurono and Kato step onto the night street of Tokyo, armed but uncomprehending, and the aliens that wait for them are not gray men in flying saucers. The "Onion Alien" bleeds. It stinks. It sobs before it kills. And the only reward for surviving the game is a handful of points and a summons to play again.

Also known as: ガンツ, GANTZ.