Gigant (Volume 1) – Is This a Dream?
Rei Yokoyamada dreams of being a film-maker. He was making a short movie until his star said she couldn’t do it. Then, he learns that an adult actress is living in his neighbourhood, but there’s no chance they could meet… is there?
Gigant (Volume 1) – Is This a Dream?
What happened?
While walking around his neighbourhood searching for a potential new star for his movie, Rei sees a wall of posters plastered across everything. They say that Papico, the famous pornstar is living in the area and if you approach her she will sleep with you. That’s obviously not true. Rei looks on the local online bulletin board and discovers that some people have seen her. Realising that she probably hates those posters, he takes it upon himself to remove them all. While doing that, she found him and asked if he was the one who put them up. He tells her that it wasn’t him and he was just getting rid of them.
She was surprised to find out that he knew who she was, and even more surprised to discover that he had all her videos. To thank him for looking out for her, she took him for a drink and offered to buy him some dinner. Afterwards, they exchanged Line numbers and said goodbye. Rei couldn’t believe his luck. Chiho (Papico’s real name) even followed him back on Twitter. However, her boyfriend saw that she was talking with someone on her phone and got jealous. He left to cool off and blow some money on pachinko.
One evening, Chiho came across an accident in which an old guy who had been seen wandering the neighbourhood had been knocked down. She ran to see if he was all right, but when she tried to phone an ambulance he stopped her and then attached something to her wrist. It wouldn’t come off and before she could ask him about it, he simply said, “It’s all up to you know,” and then turned into a doll… Unable to get the strange device off, Chiho gave Rei the DVD that the man had given her too which had more than one hundred and eighty hours of hi-res video. At first, Rei thought it was an amateur movie, but then Chiho revealed that the device stuck to her wrist could make her change size! What was going on?
What did you think?
This series is completely and utterly insane, and I love it. It’s from the author who created Gantz and Inuyashiki, which both get casual name-drops in the book, so you already know it’s going to be a little out there. It’s a fairly dark story so far and I think that’s going to continue. We’ve already seen domestic violence from Chiho’s boyfriend, Ryuji who’s also stealing from her to fund his gambling habits. Then, her family seem to take advantage of her by making her pay for everything and then have the audacity to criticise what she does for a living. Chiho seems to be a far nicer person than any of the people around her, however, it’s nice to see that she has Rei to turn to now. Their friendship is interesting, although I’m sure his parents wouldn’t be too thrilled if they found out.
Of course, then there’s all the crazy stuff. The device that makes Chiho grow and shrink, exploding out of her clothes is obviously key to the story since it’s called Gigant. The video will have clues as to what is going on so now that Rei understands that it’s real and not a movie, I think he’ll learn a lot from it. We saw some of it with the old man wandering around and talking about a superstructure that no one seems to be concerned about and other things. Finally, there’s the strange website – Enjoy the End which appears to be creating strange events based on the user polls such as it raining shit or celebrities streaking. I think things are about to get even crazier, and I can’t wait!
Volume highlights
Other posts in the series
Series Information
| English Title | Gigant |
| Japanese Title | Gigant |
| Genres | Action, Drama, Ecchi, Romance, Science Fiction |
| Demographic | Seinen |
