Anime: Btooom!

Dominate on COD Modern Warfare or America's Army? Perfect, now we'll force you to join it for real! Btooom is a twist on the Battle Royale premise where ordinary people, who have been selected as "unwanted" by others, are dumped on an abandoned island and forced to play the video game Btooom in real life. What is Btooom? It's a game where people utilize bombs and "sonar" pulses to find and destroy each other. Luckily, our protagonist is one of the top Btooom players in the world. Will his "virtual" experience help him survive the real version of the game?

First and foremost, viewers beware, this series' ending is as compete as that in HSOTD. Imagine watching Battle Royale halfway and just stopping; that's pretty much the current conclusion for this series. Second, if you're tired of how mainstream video gaming has become in anime, avoid this as well. Third, if you don't like the protagonist "magically" surviving certain death repeatedly I'd pass on this as well. For all of you who this has not yet dissuaded, continue reading.

Animation:
The animation quality of the series is mixed. Overall lighting is above average and there is a good range of beautiful island scenery and darker, more tense moments. The drawing clarity and detail could be better at times but it doesn't necessarily stand out as a negative. One thing I did notice was how miraculous it was that the main characters still had clean clothes after days of fighting and blowing each other up. As for character styling, the main heroine has somewhat wide eyes that remind me of Key's old works. It was also convenient how her Btooom game avatar was close to how she looks in real life whereas Ryouta looks like a generic dude.

There's substantial sexual abuse, violence, and some gore in this show that make it inappropriate for those under 13. The camera does turn away at critical moments, and at one point utilizes an ugly black filter that covers half the screen- talk about laziness... Expect plenty of explosions, blood, and effects.

Sound:
Btooom utilizes a heavy rock jpop OP, which then strangely changes to a new OP by the same band in the last episode as if to signal a new arc. The ED is a cool down, mellow piece that has a distinctively unpleasant tune for me. The BGM fares better with an interesting mix of brass and some vocal work similar to the fight songs in Persona 4.

The cast is fairly average overall. I think it would have been a bit more realistic if every other person on the island didn't sound like they were already insane.

Story:
While it's true that there are now pro racing car drivers that were picked for their virtual driving skills, I don't think that carries over so well here. The idea is that the company that created Btooom is abducting "unwanted" people to do research for an unspecified purpose, perhaps some form of the battles between players in Zetman. Looking past the not-so-realistic premise, the show plays as a relatively entertaining thriller that's told from the perspective of multiple participants- each one trying to guess the intensions of everyone else.
The story often uses flashbacks and monologues to give background or explanation, some of which is overused.

Plotwise, expect a fair variety of plot twists and cliffhangers. After awhile, I stopped being thrilled by the survival aspect of the show and migrated more into a guessing pattern as to how the protagonist would miraculously escape the next impossible situation. There is a huge plot shield on important characters, and it really takes away from the overall experience. As mentioned before, the story does build in tension until the last episode where it just sort of stops. No one rides a roller coaster to the top of the hill and decides "OK that was a great ride let's move on". I'm assuming that there will be a follow up but, regardless, this was poor execution.

Character:
Our protagonist, while a god in the virtual world, is just an average NEET in the real world; he's afraid of dying but doesn't want to kill anyone. Sound like anyone? Indeed, also like Kira Yamato, Ryouta is able to summon what amounts to SEED mode when he's pushed to a corner, somehow magically gaining foresight and instant athletic reflexes. There is supposed to be development with the characters as they grow to trust and interact with each other. However, Ryouta is just your typical anti-social dude who (strangely enough) trusts everyone without second thoughts. The story does play a bit with romance as Ryouta and Himiko had previously met in the online world but it was downplayed and ultimately had very little impact on where the story goes.

As for supporting cast, most of them are all antagonists and vilified to the point that it makes Mirai Nikki look good, which is quite saddening. Due to the huge plot shield and minimal character exposure/weird character behavior I found it quite difficult to connect with the characters.

Value:
While a fairly entertaining thriller, Btooom implodes when it comes to plot progression and character interactions. It fails to sell it's premise and serves only to mock gamers. I may modify this if ever a second series appears but in the meantime, please skip this one.

Oh look, another series about an antisocial hero who is very good at videogames. Could it be that it is aiming at a specific type of viewers? Whatever the answer is, here comes yet another show about some waste of life who does nothing but playing videogames all day, and is all of a sudden thrown in a life or death situation, where we are supposed to cheer for him, despite being a total jerk. It’s about a videogame that is something between Counterstrike and Bomberman, getting real after the protagonist is sent to fight other players. Then it becomes Battle Royale in a Predators setting, meaning, a bunch of people that need to kill each other, sent via parachute to a remote tropical island. And yes it sounds interesting at first, until you see how silly it plays out.

You obviously need some suspension of disbelief when watching a fictional work, but this anime is constantly begging you to point your finger at it and yell THAT CAN’T HAPPEN. The laws of physics make absolutely no sense. When a bomb explodes right next to you, you will be hurt from the noise, the shrapnel, and the shock wave no matter how many times you flip in the air. Also, an explosion has a radius of several meters and is definitely way more than just a few square centimetres around it. So imagine how silly it looks when a dozen bombs explode all around the protagonist and he remains perfectly fine, even when he is a sitting duck. Of course this weird phenomenon occurs only for the protagonist, while everybody else dies in one hit.

It is impossible to be immersed in the series, and it’s not because lots of improbable things keep happening. One of my favourite anime is Hokuto no Ken where people explode like balloons and the script is full of nonsense. The thing that makes all the difference between that and BTOOOM is that it never tries to make a distinction between reality and fiction. They never say “That is a videogame and is fake, while this is a death game and is real. When you make separations like these, it’s like you are demanding from the viewer to think about it, thus making it far easier to spot the improbabilities and realize the so called "real" death games, are as fake as playing a videogame.
- When someone gets blown up to pieces, you can take his remaining bombs that miraculously don’t blow up along with him. Sweet, extra ammo from enemy drops, this videogame is nice... Oh wait, this is not a videogame but a realistic death game… Supposed.
- When you throw a videogame controller at a wall, it is the plastic controller that breaks and not the brick wall.
- Each player has a sonar device on his hand that allows him to know where the others are. The sonar is cancelled if someone else is using it at the exact same time. The chances of that happening are one in a thousand since the margin of error is less than a second and yet the protagonist pulls it off ten times in a row, while running.
- His opponent doesn’t need the sonar in order to find the protagonist, since he is running around him while making noise as he passes through thick foliage. He may not see him but he can clearly hear him. The show wants you to believe he is deaf.
- Most of the bombs are using fringe science and thus costs a fortune. Adding to the expenses the costs of sending messages to those that want people abducted and transferred to the island, while keeping the whole thing completely secret from public, means that they waste the annual budgets of a dozen major countries, just for the entertainment of a few rich people.
- Continuity errors such as people disappearing for no given reason, or teleporting instantly to impossible places.
- Giant man eating lizards appear out of nowhere. Because WHY NOT?
- Constant flashbacks from just a few episodes ago, to waste time and further remind us of all the stupid things in this show.
- And add to all that, the story is left incomplete, so nothing is really resolved.

Since the script is so bad, the characters suffer from it as well. It would be interesting to see how each of them would react in a life or death situation, but because of the videogame logic the show uses, it makes them act stupid and the drama surrounding them doesn’t work one bit. The protagonist for example is being rewritten every 5 minutes. It’s impossible to tell what his personality is, since he acts completely different in every scene. And no, it’s not because he adjusts to the situation he is in; he LITERALLY becomes a different person depending on how the plot wants him to behave.
- Throwing bombs at defenseless players who don’t even try to fight back does not prove how great of a player the protagonist is.
- In one scene he knows how to use bombs, in another he doesn’t. He realized how a timer bomb works only five times after he tried it, even though he was playing the game for years.
- In one scene he is anti-social and angry, in the other he is very social and polite.
- In one scene he acts as a leader figure, in the other like a dork who can’t even walk without tripping.
- In one scene he is cunning and sets traps to his opponents, in the other he gets surprised when he witnesses the exact same trap being used on someone else.
- A NEET like him can’t possibly be so athletic. He was doing nothing but sitting in his house for years and yet can outrun or counterattack instantly people with far greater stamina and skills than him. It may have worked in a videogame by pressing buttons really fast, but in reality he wouldn’t be able to run for 5 seconds without getting exhausted.

In a similar way, every other character has two lines of a personality, and even those are presented in an extreme way. They are all way too evil, or way too stupid, to the point they are indeed like videogame caricatures and not real people taking part in a real death game.
- The deuteragonist for example is a sexy blonde school girl, which makes all people around her to wanna rape her on first sight. She is also accidentally the one the protagonist is married to in the game, something which is so easy to happen in REAL life. She is the main source of fan service and the animators never miss the chance to zoom on her privates. As for her personality, it is also rewritten based on the demands on the script. She is supposed to be afraid of men, unless the plot says she needs to trust them right away, so they can betray her. Then she will not trust men thereafter, until the plot needs her to trust them immediately once more.
- The protagonist’s mother was the one who wanted her son to be sent to the death game because he was mean to her. Because that is what parents do when their kids are impolite; they send them to be killed in some sadistic game instead of seeking help from any one of the thousands of humanitarian organizations out there.
- The blond chick on the other hand was chosen by her best friends. There was an incident where they got raped, but she escaped, called the police, caught the rapists, and saved their lives. As thanks, they believed she should have stayed and gotten the same treatment like the best friend she was supposed to be, instead of the UNFORGIVABLE act of not letting them die by doing nothing. That makes sense.

I almost feel sorry of all the money studio Madhouse wasted on making this thing. I can place it next to Death Note in terms of atmosphere and cinematics. Many secondary characters have some really ridiculous pitches to their voice, that made them sound very retarded, but other than that it looks great and makes you wish that was the only thing which was bad in this show. It is just another stupid anime ala Deadman Wonderland or Future Diary. Just nonsense and edgy violence for low tier pop corn entertainment. And it fails even at that because it keeps telling you it is not a videogame but a REAL death game.