Btooom!

Ryouta Sakamoto is unemployed and lives with his mother, his only real achievement being that he is Japan's top player of the popular online video game Btooom! However, his peaceful life is about to change when he finds himself stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere, with a small green crystal embedded in his left hand and no memory of how he got there. To his shock, someone has decided to recreate the game he is so fond of in real life, with the stakes being life or death.

Armed with a bag full of unique bombs known as "BIM," the players are tasked with killing seven of their fellow participants and taking their green crystals in order to return home. Initially condemning any form of violence, Ryouta is forced to fight when he realizes that many of the other players are not as welcoming as they may seem. Teaming up with Himiko, a fellow Btooom! player, they attempt to get off of the island together, coming closer and closer to the truth behind this contest of death.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sakamoto, Ryouta Main

Hongo, Kanata Japanese

Himiko Main

Mimori, Suzuko Japanese

Kira, Kousuke Supporting

Sawashiro, Miyuki Japanese

Taira, Kiyoshi Supporting

Ookawa, Tooru Japanese

Oda, Nobutaka Supporting

Nakamura, Yuuichi Japanese

Date, Masahito Supporting

Narita, Ken Japanese

Miyamoto, Masashi Supporting

Kuroda, Takaya Japanese

Natsume, Souichi Supporting

Futamata, Issei Japanese

Akechi, Mitsuo Supporting

Mamiya, Yasuhiro Japanese

Kinoshita, Hidemi Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Yoshida, Yuuki Producer

Fukuda, Jun Producer

Nakamoto, Kenji Producer

Kawamura, Hiroshi Producer

Reviews

May 17, 2025

SDK1903

Recommended

Btooom! – 7/10

Btooom! offers an intense survival game story that combines action, suspense, and psychological drama in a compelling way. The anime’s premise—a deadly real-life version of a popular video game—grabs attention immediately and keeps the tension high throughout much of the series. The battle strategies and explosive confrontations are exciting and well-paced, making it a thrilling watch.

One of the show’s strengths is its main characters, especially Ryota and Himiko, whose evolving relationship adds emotional depth amid the chaos. Their struggles to trust each other and survive provide more than just action, touching on themes of humanity and desperation. The animation quality supports the atmosphere, ... with well-executed action scenes and dynamic visuals.

However, the series isn’t without flaws. Some pacing issues occur, with certain episodes dragging or feeling repetitive. The character development outside the leads can be lacking, leaving some side characters underutilized. The story’s conclusion might feel rushed or less satisfying to some viewers, with unresolved questions and plot points that could have been handled better.

Overall, Btooom! is a solid thriller with strong moments of tension and character interaction, but it could benefit from tighter storytelling and more balanced pacing. It’s worth watching for fans of survival games and action-packed drama, even if it doesn’t reach the heights of a perfect score.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Dec 2, 2024

Joe_Devaney

Mixed Feelings

Overview:
"Btooom!" falls into the somewhat lesser-known genre of survival anime, where various people compete in an every-man-for-himself game where the only goal is to, well, survive, namely by killing all of the other contestants. Unfortunately, as far as examples of this anime I've watched go, this one ranks among the bottom of the list, with there being very little here to make it stand out from other anime of its kind, even if it's still not terrible by any means.

Story (6/10):
"Btooom!" revolves around a death game based on the titular fictional combat video game, where contestants have to kill each other using various bombs supplied ... to them, and take chips embedded in the bodies of the ones they kill. Why would anybody do this? Well, because they've all been forced onto a remote island, and it's only by collecting 8 such chips that they will be allowed to leave and return home. The protagonist of the series is Ryota Sakamoto, a 22-year-old NEET and one of the top players of the "Btooom!" video game, who suddenly finds himself on the island with no memory of how he got there. Soon after, he discovers that he's been nominated for the real-life version of his favourite game, and the person who sent him to the island was none other than his mother, who was tired of his unwillingness to do anything with his life and wanted to teach him responsibility. What's more is that pretty much every contestant was sent to the island because someone had a grudge against them, and this is apparently not the first time something like this has happened! Anyway, shortly after arriving on the island, Ryota bumps into a teenage girl called Himiko, who unbeknownst to him, is his fellow "Btooom!" player and in-game wife. While Himiko starts off distrusting Ryota (for reasons outlined in the Characters section below), the two ultimately decide to team up and find some way to get off the island while also killing as few people as possible.

Exactly how the death game works is explained well enough. Each contestant is given various supplies, with their main weapons being special bombs called BIMs (hence the name "Btooom!"). Each contestant is given one type of BIM each, though nothing is stopping them from collecting other people's BIMs after they kill them, meaning that overtime Ryota and Himiko are given access to more types of bombs in addition to the ones they start off with. What's more is that the chips embedded in their hands, in addition to serving as the very thing they need to collect in order to win, act as sonars which they can use to locate other players, either to stay clear from them or to set up ambushes. The pacing is also quite decent, with the first two episodes detailing Ryota and Himiko's home lives and them ending up on the island, as well as telling us the basics of what kind of characters we're dealing with. From there, the series generally doesn't stay in the same place for too long, with most opponents being defeated in no more than an episode or two.

If there's a serious problem with the story, it's that there's ultimately so little to it. Everything I highlighted in the first paragraph of this section pretty much sums up the entire plot, as there are very few twists and turns or things you don't see coming. In a way, it feels very much like the games of old, where excuse plots were the norm and the only goal was to kill everything in your path. All in all, even with the various backstories of the characters, the story never feels like it's anything more than a way to pit various people against each other and have them kill each other with bombs. It doesn't help that the various questions you'll almost certainly be asking yourself are still left unanswered even towards the end, like who the sponsor of the death game is, what he could possibly gain from doing all of this, and exactly how he and Ryota know each other.

Art & Animation (8.5/10):
"Btoom"'s visuals are definitely the best thing about it. The characters and environments are all very well-drawn, the animations are consistently smooth and the fanservice is basically non-existent give or take a few moments, of which include the rather infamous "Bim-Booby Bounce" scene. It's not amazing-looking, especially when you compare it to the likes of "Hunter x Hunter" or "Parasyte", but it nevertheless meets the standards that I've come to expect from Madhouse.

Sound & Dialogue (8/10):
"Btoom's" soundtrack is barely even there a lot of the time, and it's not uncommon for there to be long periods without any music at all. What's worse is that the music that is there isn't all that notable, and even the opening is passable at best, though the ending theme is a fair bit better. The only truly memorable track I can think of is the song that plays at the start of the final episode, "Exist", which just made me wonder why that wasn't the opening for all episodes. Similarly, the voice acting is good, but not fantastic. Tyler Galindo does a respectable job as Ryota, as does Brittney Karbowski as Himiko, and the dub has a decent cast all around, though nobody I would rank among my favourites. In short, everything about the sound design does the job it's supposed to do and little else.

Characters (6.5/10):
When we’re first introduced to Ryota, he comes off as pretty unlikable, being a selfish loser who spends all of his time cooped up in his room playing an online game and acting cold and indifferent towards his mother. Nevertheless, it’s clear as early as the first episode that he does have some morals, as when he first comes to the island, he’s horrified by the idea that he has to kill people in order to survive, as while killing people in a game is one thing, actually doing it in real life is quite another. As such, Ryota tries his hardest to avoid killing his opponents, generally resorting to disarming them or putting them in a state where they can’t harm him. Overtime, he grows to realise that the way he lived before coming to the island was just his way of running away from reality, and he makes steps to sort out his life, becoming a lot more selfless and mature as a result, as well as more pragmatic when it comes to fighting enemies. Ultimately, however, while I did like him (more so than any other character in the series), there isn’t really anything that stands out about his character, since many things about him have been done both before and better.

Then there’s Himiko, who can easily be described as Ryota’s opposite. At home, she is shown to be a friendly, if somewhat shy and reserved, girl. However, unlike Ryota, Himiko has no qualms with killing in order to survive, even saying at one point that everyone on the island is her enemy, especially men. This is due to the fact that shortly before meeting Ryota, she had to put up with men forcing themselves on her TWICE, once right before coming to the island and once after arriving. As such, she is understandably wary of Ryota at first, which certainly isn’t helped by the pretty bad first impression he made, though she does warm up to him overtime. That said, I often found myself very frustrated with her character, as her competence seems to zig-zag all over the place, with her being a badass one episode and a helpless damsel the next. And hey, if the idea of a romance between a 22-year-old man and 15-year-old girl sounds off-putting, I don’t blame you, because I personally found their romance to be kind of forced, especially considering how people act online is often nothing like how they act in real life.

Other than the main duo, there isn’t an awful lot I can say about the cast of characters without giving away spoilers, other than the fact that it consists mainly of a whole lot of villains, some sympathetic, others total psychos. And while these villains are given decently developed backstories, it means that you’re given hardly anybody to root for besides Ryota and Himiko, who as I already mentioned can be quite unlikable themselves. All in all, even with a fair amount of character development and good drama, the cast of characters never managed to get any higher than “average” for me.

Enjoyment (6.5/10):
“Btooom” can be quite thrilling and entertaining, especially with the variety of bombs making for a number of creative fights. Still, it’s obvious from the very beginning that the series is not for the faint of heart, what with Himiko being forced on twice over the course of a few days and a number of characters having really dark and depressing backstories. And while it doesn’t take away too much from the series, one must wonder what the characters hope to gain from escaping the island, since it’s shown that there’s nothing stopping them from getting sent back there if they piss off someone else.

Overall:
“Btooom” is definitely not one of the better examples of the survival genre. While the animation quality is great and the fights can be quite entertaining, the actual story is thin and underdeveloped, the characters are often hard to like and the sound design is nothing remarkable. Ultimately, I’d say it’s worth a look if the premise sounds like something you’d enjoy, but if you go in expecting any real depth, then you’d best be prepared to be disappointed.

Score:
6+8.5+8+6.5+6.5=35.5/50=7.1/10

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Sep 14, 2023

ThatAnimeSnobRE

Not Recommended

Funny

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.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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