from destroying Earth. The series ends with Kurono and Kato returning safely to Earth and being greeted as heroes. Production Hiroya Oku first thought of Gantzs story when he was in high school. He was inspired by the jidaigeki program Hissatsu, and the Robert Sheckley novel Time Killer. However, he did not decide to make Gantz until after writing the manga Zero One; Zero One had a similar setting, but Oku ended the series, noting it was not very entertaining and that it was too expensive to develop. When creating the chapters for the manga, Oku starts with a thumbnail of the pages. He then creates 3D models of the characters and backgrounds on his computer. Once done, Oku prints the characters and backgrounds he made in 3D, adds tone and color to the pages, and finishes with sound effects and dialogue. He had already used this style in Zero One, but for that title, there was little work in hand drawing; Oku decided to add more hand drawing to give Gantz a more realistic tone as well as reduce the budget. However, he still notes that such a method is time-consuming and that he has to work quickly in order to finish the chapters on time. Oku tries to incorporate realism into Gantz and adds that some of the events occurring in the story are based on his opinions regarding the world. During violent or erotic scenes, Oku makes sure to not make them very long to avoid reducing the series' realism. However, he has mentioned that he does not autocensor and that all the drawings he has ever illustrated have been published in the manga. Some plot twists are meant to go against common events that happen in several manga such as the deaths of the major characters like Kei Kishimoto and Masaru Kato. Before the series started serialization, Oku told his assistants that with Kurono's exception, all the major characters from the series would die. Media Manga Gantz, written and illustrated by Hiroya Oku, debuted in Shueisha's seinen manga magazine Weekly Young Jump on June 29, 2000. Gantz is divided into three main story arcs, referred to as "phases". After the completion of phase one (first 237 chapters) on July 20, 2006, the author put the series on hiatus for a short time to work on phase two (chapters 238–303), which was serialized from November 22, 2006,