Gantz - Vol. 8: Deathwatch (2004)

Director Ichiro Itano presents a hellish vision of the afterlife in the brutal horror anime series GANTZ. High school student Kei and his childhood friend Kato are helping a hobo who has fallen onto the subway tracks when they are run over and violently decapitated by an oncoming train in a spectacularly grisly fashion. Transported to a strange post-death limbo, the pair find themselves in a barren room overlooking Tokyo with a motley group of strangers--including two hotheaded gangsters and a naked young girl, whom they immediately try to rape--as well as a mysterious black sphere known as Gantz. Kei and Kato soon discover that they and the room's occupants are all dead and have been brought there by Gantz as part of a secret government plot to kill criminal aliens that roam the earth--and that if they refuse their deadly missions, they face a fate even worse than death. Moody, stylish, and animated with veritable buckets of crimson blood, GANTZ plays like a twisted hybrid of YU YU HAKUSHO and LA FEMME NIKITA, with graphic violence and nudity deemed too graphic to be aired on Japanese television without major edits and re-cropping. Produced by the team behind CHRONO CRUSADE and PEACEMAKER, this collection continues the series with three more uncut and unedited episodes.