Manga adaptation by Madhouse
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise: Ryota Sakamoto is a 22 year old NEET who lives with his mother. Despite his mundane life, he’s one of the best players in the world at the online game Btooom! One day, he wakes up on a tropical island with no recollection of how he got there. However, it turns out that a real life version of Btooom! is taking place on the island and Ryota will have to survive against the other contestants if he wants to find out how he got there and escape.

Gee’s verdict: Went in expecting something dumb and enjoyable, only got dumb

You would think a show called “Btooom!” would be the most ridiculously awesome thing airing this season, but alas, it has failed to impress me. I suppose it is partially my fault, as I went into the show, based on its description, expecting a combination of Black Lagoon, Future Diary, and Battle Royale. I almost don’t mind the lack of guns, but so far, I’ve yet to see anything from this show to really set it apart from the rest of the pack.

And as if to make matters worse, it is literally filled to the brim with anime clichés and wall banging moments. The main character, despite supposedly being the 10^th best player of this particular game in the world, finds himself completely incapable of figuring out what the mysterious cubes in his bag are, despite the fact that these cubes are identical the ones he sees in the game he spends all of his time playing. It takes a good 5-10 minutes before he even figures out what they are and how to properly use them without looking like an idiot. It’s as if the studio was trying to come up with ways to stretch out the show because there wasn’t enough content to fill up a whole episode.

Now, I usually don’t demand realism in my anime, but this dumbass ends up being within the blast radius of at least three or four explosions. Now these are pretty small bombs, but throughout the first episode, they’ve shown the capability of blowing up quite a lot of things. Main characters should probably be included in that list, but hey, plot armor.

And then as if to add to the sheer generic nature of it all, after this bout of mediocre action, he wakes up near a river, only to find a cute schoolgirl bathing in the very same river. Of course, stunned by her utter beauty (admittedly, she is pretty hot, loving the camouflage short skirt); they end up staring into each other’s eyes before the episode abruptly ends. At this point, I was almost expecting a high-pitched “Kyaaaaa!” from her.

Now granted, compared to the likes of Sword Art Online, I appreciated that the main character was not an instant killing machine simply because he happened to be good at video games. That makes sense, and if the show focuses on his struggle to actually survive and show how his video game skills are rendered useless in a real world environment, forcing him to reevaluate how he’s spend the last few years of his life, I think this anime could end up having a pretty good message. But honestly, I don’t expect a message that deep to show up in a story like this. I’ll probably watch a few more episodes, but right from the get go, this has been a disappointing beginning.

Lifesong’s Verdict: Failed To Explode

I enjoy a good survival game, just by being in a situation where life and death is on the line so many different personalities are drawn out of a cast. Btoom! failed to realize it’s potential. The majority of the first episode is spent with the MC being hunted down by a psycho out to finish him off quickly. This protagonist really has nothing going for him; the plot tells us that he is a badass strategist, but I find it hard to believe when he derps out so hard with his life on the line. Now the derping out isn’t even what I take issue with, but the whole series of events takes place in a slower than life fashion that should have killed our protagonist several times over.

I will often say that realism is overrated, and that exaggeration is part of the magic that makes anime work; however, there is a clear difference between exaggeration that plays well with the theme of a story, and exaggeration that does not; the explosions of Btooom! clearly fit in the later category. If you are going to tell a story that revolves around explosions you need more than a cursory understanding of how they work, and This first episode clearly lacked that. If Btooom! has one thing going for it that is this: The heroine is HOT. That said she is barely involved in this first episode at all. Despite my complaints for the first episode I do plan to keep watching, and not entirely for the sexy heroine. The setting has a lot of room for providing something fun, and Btooom’s failure to deliver in the first episode has not completely dashed my hopes.

Iro’s Verdict: It’s A Dud

This guy is in the top ten BTOOOOOOOOM players in the entire world, and he couldn’t figure out how to use his own bombs? Are you fucking kidding me? And then he manages to survive half a dozen explosions in close proximity, when every single one of those should have killed him. Other than that, the presentation and pacing is just plain bad. Give this one a pass.