Btooom!

(This has been adapted from my reddit thread)

Sometimes the decisions we make aren't always the right ones. During the process, though, we often think that there is zero chance that we are doing could be wrong. But as we all know, "hindsight is 20/20." Most of the time, our choices not only cause a radical affect on ourselves but also on the people around us. Taking this in stride, BTOOOM! is an anime about bombs, psychology, and a host of problems that make the entire experience less than favorable.

STORY

BTOOOM! is a tale involving Sakamoto, one of the best players to play the game the anime ... is titled after. After a small series of events, he finds himself trapped on an island with other people, having to play the game outside of the virtual world.

The pivotal aspect of the show that it explores is the way in which characters interact with one another after being placed into such a situation. Many ideas are brought to light and are put into play: how to trust, and not trust, certain people, learning to cope with hope and despair, and choosing the morally sound decision in a particular situation. A lot of the characters represent these varying sides to a degree, and for the most part, it works. But it's a difficult sell because for most of us it is completely unrelatable. Not just having to fight for our lives; predicaments such as dealing with terrible parents or lying to make events happen in our favor are not things that we've all dealt with. I'm not saying that there aren't people like this, as they certainly do exist, it's just attempting to cover so many bases at once is beyond the show's capabilities.

One major issue that the show has is in the game itself. The issue is that it is too simple. Essentially, it involves two key components: bombs and radar. The show incorporates a sizable amount of different bomb types and some tricks involving the radar. But beyond that, there isn't much to go off of. To combat this, the show tries too hard to make the fights seem too dire. What is presented, then, are a lot of overly dramatic scenarios without much weight behind them. It becomes way too predictable what is going to happen the more the show progresses. And while it tries to be "cool," the lameness of the game and the overly-simplistic battles come off as boring and silly instead.

When it comes to fan-service, I'm not one to complain. I often don't mind if it's there or not. However, BTOOOM!'s use of it is rather strange. On the one hand, certain aspects make sense such as Himiko's sexual assault. On the other hand, certain aspects don't make sense, such as the river scene or later on when she is passed out. These are blatant attempts at showing off her body that were sorely out of place.

At it's core, the premise of the show is quite inane. Basically, any single person can be chosen to be selected for this game for potentially any reason. In other words, it's required of the audience to suspend some belief throughout the show; how the government would allow this, how a gaming company could possibly undertake such an event, etc. The argument here is that for a lot of shows we need to do exactly this. But BTOOOM!'s problem is that it takes itself so seriously that it is quite hard to do. In other words, the show has a huge issue when it comes to being "super edgy." Many instances happen "at the last second" or characters escape "by the skin of their teeth." This happens a lot throughout the show, so at some point you become desensitized to it. At that point, you mostly start to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

ANIMATION

Surprisingly, the art and animation for the show is quite lackluster.

In regards to the art-style, it mostly sticks to foliage and ruined buildings. It all seems appropriate given the setting and the island the cast is placed in. The characters, however, are pretty much cardboard cutouts. In other words, they are not very imaginative; Sakamoto is skinny with brown hair, Himiko is blonde with big boobs, Date is an older gentleman with glasses, etc. These design choices were most likely chosen to coincide with the "mature" vibe the show was attempting to give off, but instead it just makes everyone rather boring to watch.

Animation-wise, the explosions from the bombs, such as the "timers" and the "poisons" are nicely animated, given the subject matter. However, both during and outside of the battles, the animation is rather poor. The show loves to do zoom-ins, single face shots, and jittery camera work. Even when the show gives the close-ups nice detail for the teeth, facial contours, and shading, it usually just sticks to mouth movements instead of eye or facial movements.

CHARACTERS

The psychological aspect to BTOOOM! is at least above average, but the same cannot be said for its characters.

One of the worst characters in the show is Sakamoto. A NEET by day, he is the "10th best BTOOOM! player" in the world. Yet, even after learning what he was thrown into, he acts as one of the dumbest. Even from the get-go, he doesn't understand or even recognize the bombs and the radar that he discovered he had. Alongside being stupid, he generally contradicts himself; he doesn't want to kill people because it isn't the right thing to do, but sometimes he tries to and other times he doesn't. Essentially, it just depends on the situation at hand.

Himiko is a young woman, who is both beautiful and troubled. Early on, she had the potential to be a rather strong character. Her early background and initial time on the island set her up to be someone who could have overcome her trust issues and have her see some actual character development. Instead, the show chooses to place her in this quasi-state of trust and doubt that doesn't make much sense. She starts off hating men, not wanting to believe anything they have to offer. But by the end, rather than having her become independent or strong enough to deal with issues on her own, she relies solely on Sakamoto, the type of person she previously deplored.

The rest of the supporting cast are mainly used to highlight the different psychological aspects detailed earlier: Taira with worry, Date with doubt, Miyamoto with disregarding morality. For the most part, the supporting cast are better than Sakamoto and Himiko (the mains). However, these characters are simply used to showcase their psychological aspects and nothing more. Among all of them, I would consider Taira the best member of the entire cast, but he is quickly cast aside and only taken back into account at the show's conclusion, which is a massive blunder.

SOUND

BTOOOM! suffers a "Mirai Nikki" with its OP, in that the OP somehow outclasses the entire anime. The guitar, roughness of the lyrics, and range of the vocals make it great to listen to.

The ED is supposed to contrast what BTOOOM! offers. Instead of being dark and tense, it is quite light and soft. It does its job well, even if I don't particularly like the song.

The soundtrack for the show is rather forgetful. Nothing notable stands out. The same can be said for the voice-acting. No one in particular does an outstanding job, despite the crazy situations the cast find themselves in.

ENJOYMENT

I didn't know what to expect when going into this one. Honestly, I just thought that the title was kind of hilarious. I didn't expect one bit that the show would look so heavily at the psychology behind such a situation. While perhaps not executed as nicely as something like NGE, I think anything trying to go at least a bit more mature is a good step in the right direction.

Yet, I often found myself cringing during every episode; Sakamoto "marrying" Himiko in the game, Sakamoto jumping sideways during his fight with the young kid, and especially the introduction of the "giant lizards." These parts made me laugh and shake my head all at the same time, because I couldn't believe that the show was making these parts seem "awesome" when in fact they were quite ludicrous.

The show also suffers from a terrible case of continuity issues. A large selection of the scenes depict many near-death-experiences. But the next shots, or at least the explanations behind them, show that they had a lot more time than what is initially perceived. In other words, the anime is trying to make us unfairly feel tension in these moments. I never felt this way during these moments, perhaps because the same trick was used over and over.

I think BTOOOM! had a lot of potential in every department. I'm not sure what happened along the way, but something clearly wasn't done right. Whether this be the world itself being too simplistic or the characters being wholly uninteresting, something better could have been done. Instead, the show activated a "cracker" and forgot to throw it, blowing itself up in the process.

SUMMARY

Story: Bad, the psychology works but everything else doesn't

Animation: Fine, art style fits the show's tone yet the actual animation is lackluster

Characters: Terrible, lame, boring, one-dimensional, or a combination of the three

Sound: Fine, good OP, fitting ED, average soundtrack and VAs

Enjoyment: Fine, has its moments but mired in silliness

Final Score: 3/10

From the summary, I immediately thought that Btooom would be a crossbreed of Sword Art Online (which I watched first) and Battle Royale (live action movie, never read the mangas). As I liked BR a lot and thought SAO was decent, I had some expectations for Btooom, which it spectacularly failed to meet.

And the main reason is that both the protagonists are weak minded fools who become dumber and more useless as the show goes on.

Ryota, the main male protagonist, is a mixture of so many conflicting character traits he is like 3 different people. He is rude and violent towards his parents ... punching his stepdad and driving his mom to suicide with his attitude, yet he is kind and tries to talk to everyone throwing a bomb at him. He is a hypocrite spouting his pacifist routine crap - he wants to leave the game peacefully by collecting 7 chips from people that are dead - conveniently ignoring the dead people that he himself killed part. He is the "best" Btooom player in Japan, yet every fight is a "oh so this IS a bomb, I thought it was another toy" discovery for him. He is a shut-in who forsook the real world for the virtual world, yet the only person who is seeking companionship and acceptance, in of all things, a murder game. Yet the most unbelievable trait he has is that he becomes more and more trusting of people in this game of deceit the more he gets betrayed.

The main female protagonist Himiko on the other hand, is at least consistent - she wants to die instead of being raped, and she retains her fear of men until the last episode. However, she spends the first half of the show wanting to die, and the last half of the show wondering why she hasn't killed herself yet. As for her positive traits - resourcefulness, an experienced Btooom player, an agile and athletic person, possessing an ability to read and distrust the other players Ryota doesn't have, yet she doesn't actually use any of them, and is content with being the background eye candy and letting the party almost die over and over because of her unwillingness to actually do anything. She actually stands willingly without fighting back several times in the story because it is far more tiring to try to live than accepting torture and a slow death.

Both Btooom main characters started and ended the 12 episodes in a gray area of undecisiveness, naivete, hypocrisy, retardedness, an inability to learn anything new, and a severe lack of conviction and willingness to act bordering on suicidal fatalism.

As a warning, I'm just going to start out with saying anime was pretty bad, and it really didn't even have an ending at all.

Story: 4
The overall concept of Btooom!'s story sounded really cool, and was the sole reason I decided to give it a try. It was a great show idea, and had so much potential, but that's really the only thing keeping the story's rating from dropping below a 4. There were no surprises in the plot, and any questions you may have had were given away within the first few episodes. From then on, it was more or less bland battles where ... characters tried to "outwit" each other with bombs, a lot of drama, and a lot of complaining.

But despite the predictability and slow scenes, the worst part of the entire plot had to be the underlying messages that were practically stuffed down your throat the entire time. This show is dripping with misandry. Every chance it got, it highlighted the wrongdoing of men, and portrayed them all as disgusting pigs without self control. Even the main hero, who clearly had high morals, was "tested" and almost lost control when he came in contact with panties. It felt very out of place, was uncomfortable to watch, and got to the point where it was out of control sexist.

Art: 6
To be fair, the art wasn't too bad. It's an interesting style, and better than a lot of anime out there. It also used a lot of diversity between the characters, which was nice. However, there were a lot of panels where the character's faces were really out of whack. And for an action anime, the animation was really plain.

Sound: 5
Complimenting the bland art, was the bland music. There wasn't anything special about it. The opening and ending soundtracks were okay. The background music was a little less okay.

And the voice acting was even worse. I only watched the dubbed version, but I can almost guarantee you'd be better off watching the original Japanese. I'm a fan of loose translation when it comes to dubs, because the lines just never sound natural when the translation is too direct. But Btooom! falls really short of this, and most of the character's would say awkward sounding things. Certain words they used just didn't fit into their sentences. It was pretty bad.

Character: 2
But this was by far the worst part of the entire anime. Not only did the characters have absolutely no growth, but they were all absolutely awful to begin with. Just the two main characters alone made me cringe.

I don't generally have a problem with the 'damsel in distress' role, but they went a little overboard with it in Himiko's case. There was almost never a moment when she decided to take action, except for the several times she decided suicide was probably her best option. Other than constantly needing assistance, her only other purpose in the show was to be stuffed into the stereotypical tsundere trope. I usually like those kinds of characters, but again, they took it a little too far. She never, ever stopped yelling, crying, slapping Ryouta for being a "pervert", and generally just saying obnoxious things. It was really out of place in an anime with such serious underlying tones.

Ryouta was no better. I was very confused with his character. On one hand, in all his flashback's he was portrayed as this angsty teenage boy who was rude to his mom and pretty much an asshole altogether. But on the other, while on the island he did nothing but try to help the other players. His thoughts were always super moral, and kind. There was no amount of time between being at home and being on the island where this change in personalities would have made any sense.

Enjoyment: 4
This anime was riddled with dramatic irony, and at times it was incredibly frustrating to watch because you knew something the characters did not and it should have been SO OBVIOUS, but it literally took them an entire episode or more to figure it out. And of course, when they finally had the moment of realization, they were painstakingly slow to react.

However, some of the fight scenes had pretty cool angles, which was definitely entertaining. And I can't write off that it was a little fun to see who would die next.

Overall: 4
Overall, this was a less than mediocre anime, and I do not recommend it. Honestly I don't even know why I finished it, and I will not be re-watching.

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.

Here we go again with yet another survival game anime and a Battle Royale wannabe. Notice that these types of shows instantly become popular, no matter how badly put together they are. And I'd say this one is definitely bottom of the barrel material.

This is a spoiler free review.

*Story* 3/10

It's about an unemployed shut in, in his twenties who does nothing but play a video game called "Btooom" all day long and we're told he's one of the best players in the world. One day he suddenly wakes up on a deserted island with a bunch of other people who were kidnapped and forced to ... fight for their lives in a battle royale that's based on the same video game he was playing. This game is like a 3rd person shooter, but without any guns.. Just bombs.

So as you can imagine, what follows is a bunch of people with different types of bombs trying to survive and blow each other up. There's a bunch of gore, mayhem and whatnot.

The first question that comes to mind is - what kind of society do these people live in that allows for something like this to happen in the first place? Well, for all we know they live in modern day Japan.. You know, that first world democracy.. In Battle Royale for example this was accounted for since it was a reality show in a Dystopian setting. Here, dozens of people get kidnapped in broad daylight (without being too secret about it either) and there don't seem to be any repercussions.


Secondly, this whole idea of having different types of bombs that are shared randomly amongst the players is just there to give you the illusion of strategy. Since some are clearly more useful than others. For example, you have a timer bomb that only explodes 10 seconds after you press it or a bomb that explodes upon impact or one that simply implodes when you press a button. Heck you even have a homing bomb. If you think that all of these bombs are somehow equally strong just because their radius is different then you should have your head examined. They try to fool you in to thinking that a bomb with a weaker explosion has some sort of disadvantage, when in fact even the bomb with the weakest explosion in this show has more than enough power to instantly kill a man or at the very least disable him and allow you to easily finish him off barehanded. Not to mention that a shorter radius is also effective if you don't wanna hurt yourself of course. Not that it matters anyway, since the bombs' radius is also fairly inconsistent - when they explode next to a main character, nothing happens and they always miraculously survive whether it's because their opponents can't aim or because they dodge it somehow (sometimes in very absurd ways) while the secondary ones are cannon fodder that almost always die instantly. So much for fair game.

Another thing that's dumb about it is how the show tries to make a distinction in functionality between the online game and the real life one and falls flat on its face in that regard. If it were the slightest bit realistic, all of the characters would be deaf from so many explosions blowing up next to their faces by the half way point or having debris of some kind injure them, which never happens of course. Normally I wouldn't nitpick that if it hadn't hammered in how "THIS IS REAL LIFE! NOT A GAME!". But the truth is, I've seen videogames from over a decade ago that are more realistic than this.

On top of all that, it's paced chaotically and it ends in the middle of nowhere while most of everything is left unresolved. Will it get a 2nd season? I don't know, but for now there isn't one so what we have here is 12 episodes that mostly consist of build up with no actual payoff.


*Characters* 2/10

You have the blandest of main characters that can only be described as a self insert protagonist. The evidence is clear that this guy is there just for self insertion and that's the only way to define him. Nothing about his character adds up. When he's first introduced he's just a sensitive and naive shut in that doesn't want to hurt anybody, but then we're shown flashbacks where he's actually a violent thug and an abusive son who hates his parents. One moment he's being polite to an elder he meets on the spot and in the next we see how badly he treated his parents. We're also told that he's one of the best Btooom players in the world and yet when he plays the real life version he seems completely clueless. Which is a poor attempt to let the (just as clueless) audience insert themselves, even at the price of having character inconsistencies.

The rest of the cast aren't much better either. Some of them have random mood swings that come out of thin air that aren't convincing in the slightest. For example, you have this jackass lawyer who's horrified by witnessing a psychotic kid butchering frogs in one episode and in another he becomes a sadistic lunatic himself who's okay with torturing teenage girls.

Speaking of which, the main female is a dumb blonde with a certain traumatic past who (of course) eventually sees the light thanks to the none personality of our male lead. And yes, it plays out in the most cliched way imaginable so it's not much of a spoiler. You'll see it coming from a mile away.

They also try to make you sympathize with a kid rapist and murderer because he has an abusive dad who's slightly less crazy than he is. And much like everything else, also comes off as ridiculous (not to mention downright wrong).

The only decent character in this show is the father figure Kiyoshi Taira. I won't give anything away, but let's just say that there's a fairly good amount of focus on him, he's not a 1dimenseniol lunatic and his actions actually made him appear relatively complex and interesting. Heck, I even found him kinda sympathizable and his character arc felt complete.

But unfortunately, one supporting character that was done right can't save an entire cast of bland plot devices and lunatics who kill people without batting an eye. Most of which get no closure or development anyway since the show is incomplete for now. All most of them get is an introduction and some very brief coverage.

*Art* 6/10

The artwork certainly looks quite polished and similar to Death Note's for some reason. The colors are bright and the characters blend very well with the beautiful (albeit repetitive) backgrounds. The character designs themselves are certainly nothing special though, and the animation is far from being lively or fluid. Even the action is rather choppy and the directing seems to be quite amateurish (and I wasn't surprised to later discover that this is indeed this director's first work). Also for a show that's named after an explosion, the explosions in this show are not all that impressive either.
Overall it looks ok I guess and the production values in general are fairly decent, but there's certainly nothing impressive about it for the time it came out, nor does it stand out artistically in any way.

*Sound* 7/10

The opening is a pretty good rock song with a nice range that sets the show's tone quite well and the ending song is much softer and although I wouldn't call it great, it also fits in fairly well. I can't really remember much of the soundtrack, but I guess it got the job done. What I find a little problematic though are the sound effects that are repetitive to the point of becoming a little distracting (albeit sounding quite realistic) and the voice acting is a little over the top and silly at many points.

*Enjoyment* 4/10

Meh.

*Overall* 3/10

Pretty skippable if you ask me.

It’s like Future Diary, only with all the good stuff ripped out.

Using characters as plot device is hard. Do it once or twice and it’s okay. When everyone becomes a plot device, your story becomes hard to believe. A world where everyone is a plot device is less believable than a notebook that kills people.

It doesn’t seem so bad at first. It’s dark and cruel, but this is a game where people are forced to kill each other. The first to die is boring as hell, but Future Diary‘s Third didn’t have a personality. He at least had an idea behind him. He was supposed ... to be a simple Unknown Danger. He has given a design that looks scary to make that convincing. His role was small and was the only plot device character.

No such things happen in BTOOOM!. Everyone exists for two reasons. Their purpose is first to be terrible human beings, and the second is to die. It’s hilarious how everyone is terrible, but no one has a personality flaw. One guy is a rapist. Another is a cold-hearted killer. Another one is a con artist. They’re unpleasant, but not interesting.vlcsnap-2015-11-27-17h25m51s139

Such a dull edge

The cruelty is so monochrome. These are not the crazies of Future Diary. No one in that anime was sadistic for sadism’s sake. When they had a cruel streak, they had reasons for it. It was also specific. Third just wanted to kill everyone. Reisuke cared about having a mother figure. Yomotsu had a retarded sense of justice.

There was almost something comic about it. None of that exists in BTOOOM!. No one has an alternative moral system. No one’s sadism is understandable. A fat guy attempts rape and we get to see it graphically, yet we don’t know what’s behind him. The creators try to shock us with Himiko’s pain, but it’s only unpleasant to watch. More shocking would be if they made understand the rapist and his point of view. This way the viewer might find he shares some thoughts with him, which is both horrifying and meaningful.

Some get a half-assed explanation, like abusive parents or a military past. These are just placeholders. The characters aren’t very different besides one being more sadistic. Both Tsubaki and Reisuke have a sad past, but it’s a different kind that transformed them differently.

The creators miss the best part of the Death Game scenarios. The Death Game throws a bunch of characters in a situation that forces them to confront each other. It needs different personalities. The clash between them is what creates tension. Some explosions will never be as exciting as a blind crazy, a yandere and a misanthrope meeting in the same place.

These personalities make us view these characters as human. We’ll care about them, understand them and have empathy for them. The deaths will be sadder because we’ll see a human who is like us fail, perhaps of his own undoing. That’s how tragedy works. Tragedy isn’t just making characters suffer but have them (and us) understand it. Characters just explode here.

vlcsnap-2015-11-27-17h26m38s74

Random unimportant asshole

If BTOOOM! chose the way of Saw it would’ve been better. It’s not a show of aestheticized violence. Such violence is overblown and disconnected from reality. It can be fun to see limbs being torn and people explode, but there’s no sense of fun here. The action scenes are tedious, consisting mainly of pointless inner monologues. The fact characters suffer is emphasized more than how fun it is to throw a bomb.

Any momentum that a scene generates is immidiately smashed. There are a lot of inner monologues. It’s a wonder the series didn’t pull an Evangelion. They had enough for 3 episodes. Action scenes are about movement and set-pieces. Some dialogue can also help if the interaction is meaningful enough. Thoughts are static. No one has room for introspection during such scenes. You don’t have them running in your head in a video game, so in real life?

It’s the stereotypical edgy anime that thinks violence, gore and suffering makes for something profound. It tries to something about how humans are cruel, but when everyone is cruel for no reason we it’s hard to believe that message. How can be believe humans are as cruel as the players when the strings behind them are so obvious?

The symbol for caring and companionship is your typical harem protagonist, without the harem. Sakamoto has no personality whatsoever. He kind of cares about others, but why? He’s the main character because it’s easier to sympathize with him, rather than the rest of the meanies. More correctly, it’s safer to make him the main character. Following one of the bad guys would mean they’d have to to do more than be cruel for a while than die.

Himiko isn’t much better. She’s an insutling portrait of the Clinging Woman. Everything Yuno satirized is in her. The parallels are so obvious, you have to wonder whether it’s a response. Both girls rely on their men, but differently. Yuno relies for psychological stability. She acts less to please the guy than to fulfill her own desire for love. Himiko exists for Sakamoto and no other reason. Her love isn’t related to personality. She’s a reward Sakamoto wins twice, first for being a great player and second because he’s saving her.vlcsnap-2015-11-27-17h28m47s108

For the glory of Satan

She’s also an object of sexual gartification, both for characters and the viewer. She gets near-raped a few times, and these scenes are filled with nice shots that give you a clear picture of Himiko’s body. These are not the expressive flashbacks of Tsubaki. You might be able to catch a nice shot there, but they’re too expressive and short. The don’t emphasize just the sexual part of it but the pain.

It made Tsubaki hateful of the world and everyone in it. It was her undoing, but she was portrayed as a tragic character. Himiko is turned into a silly tsundere who slowly learns to ‘trust men’, as if she should just get over it.

The ending is also insutling. It’s the definition of ‘inconclusive’. This criticism has been brought up a lot, but many short shows have some arc that concludes. The grand story of Freezing isn’t over, but there is an arc that concludes which defines the two seasons. BTOOOM! just ends. It makes it all feel like an advertisement for the source material.

There are tiny worldbuilding things that come off as moronic. There’s no sensible explanation why the game exists. Hints point toward the good old cliche of human experiments or evil corporations. The bombs also somehow can tell whether their owner is dead or not. Then again, I keep praising a show about diaries that predict the future. If the world doesn’t make too much sense but serves the purpose, it’s okay. If your story is full of holes, it’s a magnifying glass to how stupid your world is.

At least the art style is nice. Since this is supposed to be deep, we get a realistic art style with no crazy ideas. The designers still managed to give everyone a distinct look. At least in that department, BTOOOM! has something to teach others. Even characters that appear for a few minutes get their own unique look. It’s too bad these designs weren’t used in a different, better anime.

The OP ends with all the characters standing and looking towards the horizon. It reminded me of the first shot of Future Diary‘s ED. It summed up what made that one so good – a cast of crazies, which with flawed personalities that make them understandable even at their worst. BTOOOM! has no such empathy. It treats its characters like they’re from a video game. They exist to kill and die. The protagonist has as much character as a silent protagnsit. It’s amazing how bad it is. has almost everything I want in an anime, and wrecks it.

1.5 bombs out of 5

SOME spoilers

BTOOOM! in a nut shell is about a weak protagonist knob who plays online RPG games such as, you guessed the obvious, BTOOOM!.


Now for the story, BTOOOM! is an online game where.. wait.. what? Oh yea they never told us what that game was about. So he plays vidjuh gamez. Then one day his mom finally got tired of his lazy slob lifestyle and some grey area level nonsense happened. I think the kid got kidnapped and taken to an island where he fights to death to save himself for the enjoyment of some loan loon. I believe they also broadcast this live ... in Japan with the audience thinking it is some simulation survival reality show. The kid quickly & CONVENIENTLY meets up with this big chesty female character. She, like everyone else on this island, was kidnapped to fight on the island TO DEATH. For the most part she despises all male including the protagonist,(I''ll get to why later); and instead of helping she spends most of the show being a nuisance for her own self entitlement. Oh yea, instead of being a badass and killing all the other "players" the kid chickens out when it comes to the female lead because BOOBS. So for the majority of their time on the island they try to kill and collect these gems inserted into other players wrist. They are to collect a certain amount to advance and eventually get off the island. These gems also have abilities to track other players who are using them to do the same thing, kind of like a radar. Some silly thing about how they can cancel each other out, like a typical shounen plot devise "our powers are equal!" yada yada. Any shounen fan should know what I mean. The plot had a boring theme of survival of the fittest and abandoned on an island to survive for a reality show. It was suppose to teach the "victims" who were kidnapped to become better people. Because, well the show hinted at it, were selected by people who knew them. In other words, their "close mates" were tired of their crap and decided to teach them a lesson. But instead, much like this review, the plot got off topic and became more of a wow factor series instead of focusing on character development and overall themes.

Story 3/10

The art was actually, for a MADHOUSE anime, very bland. Very simple. Nothing like their previous works in Metropolis, RedLine, Kaiba, Paprika or Akira. And many more. It is 1 of the very few simple stylistic titles MH has adapted. Even the explosions and the background scenery felt uninteresting to the point where I didn't even pay much attention to it. Just reading the subtitles, where in others like Kaiba, I would take my time to appreciate the atmosphere. It is sad to see MadHouse adapt such a terrible show and new fans will be deterred from their former, better titles. I really hope that's not the case and this review helps those reading learn of their previous works. OFF TOPIC.

Art 6/10


Oh ho, here is arguably the worst part of the show. The characterization. I'll come out bold and say way too many conveniences. The characters are typical average nobodies with nothing going and down on their luck. "Oh, fans will relate it is a dark time in the world yada yada." Nope. Didn't feel any sympathy for any of the characters. Except the fat man. He has a family back home. Family first people. The protagonist, like I said earlier is a low life loser NEET "fans will relate" SHUT UP. I'm a neet and this guy makes me feel like a God. Low life loser who does nothing but play online rpg games where he meets the female lead who plays the same game as him. They are apparently the king and queen of the game or some nonsense and have a wedding. Online RPG life is really quite sad when you think about it. Anyway, the male lead quit school and did nothing but sit around and threaten his mother. The female lead actually had a traumatic experience with the highschool rape crew, is what I'll call them. I won't spoil, but it is nasty and pretty sad. This is actually a growing issue not just in Japan, but all over the world. So real world references aside, the rest of the characters were in the same boat or just ex cons of some fashion. Though they may have relatable backstories for the audience, those didn't make up for the sloppy present tense whilst on the island. Their characterization derives souly on wow factor for the entire show.

Characters 5/10


Overall I never once felt connected with the series. The themes were rehashed survival island and drove off of shock factor. Much like The Walking Dead there is no substance presented in present tense. Just hyped shock appeal for the masses to go "oh my gurd I feel so bad for X and X. Oh no, look out!" It is like an old horror flick that pops up and makes a ruckus and then dies down and nobody, but fans of the genre remember it. Nothing experimental nor original was presented here and nothing memorable to go by. Notice I didn't even name the characters. That's how much appeal this show has. None.

Overall enjoyment 3/10

A person being forced into a game of death and having to cope with the moral dilemma of killing others sounds like it could make for a fairly compelling psychological story, but Btooom! managed to turn that concept into a shitshow instead. Btooom! tried to deal with ideas of trust, morality, and despair with this plot synopsis, but it ultimately squandered its potential.

The first episode showed promise, as Ryota's NEET life and unhealthy, otaku-like obsession with the game is immediately shown in a negative light as opposed to being glorified, and it gives us a taste of Ryota's moral dilemma to come when he kills ... one of the "players" of the death game in self-defense. However, a setup like this isn't difficult to achieve, and problems begin to arise quickly.

Firstly, the plot often lacks suspense and tension. The game, despite trying to add variety with different kinds of bombs, is very simplistic, which is problematic when the show tries to focus on tactics. For example: the main characters are under assault by an enemy, who is using a homing bomb that detonates only when it reaches its target. A character who isn't being targeted intercepts the bomb and disables it, then decides to take the next bomb while protecting the original target. Given the situation, you'd think the assailant would now switch gears and switch targets. I came to this obvious conclusion almost instantaneously, but the show has the main character figure it out in an overly dramatic, Death Note-esque manner, absolutely shocking the other characters present. There were times in which the tactics were a bit more interesting, such as one case in which wind was used to the characters' advantage (and it was noted that this was a difference between the game "Btooom!" and the real version), but these moments are few and far between.

On top of the boring tactics, the two main characters are protected by an unbelievable amount of plot armor that sucks the tension out of many moments. Expect scenes in which one of them dramatically reveal that they either "threw the bomb away at the very last second" or "jumped into a hole in the ground in the nick of time." One time a girl was saved because the bomb bounced off her boobs. Sometimes the show won't even bother with that. A bomb might be thrown near a character and the character will simply fly back when it explodes, emerging unscathed in the aftermath. It's hard to take the show seriously as a result, especially when there are other ludicrous aspects lumped in that make things feel more silly than dire – Komodo dragons, anyone? How about Ryota's twisted smile when it looks like he's about to break and sacrifice someone, when two seconds later he manages to come up with a plan to save everyone (how edgy)?

Speaking of edge, Btooom! falls into the trap of taking an attempt at depth and turning it into (what has become quite the buzzword among anime fans) "edginess," a word that has come to be defined as something that occurs when a story tries too hard to be dark or deep and fails, potentially coming off as unintentionally funny, campy, or in-your-face. The show often portrays the majority of humans to be very corrupt, which serves as a plot device for characterization or a contrast to the main characters, but the problem is that this "all people (or just men in Himiko's case; more on that later) are kinda scum" trope is too overused. Granted, an island full of psychopaths may not be too out of place given the premise, but many of these people were thrown into the game for being dicks, not psychos. The show's presentation of the idea feels hamfisted rather than meaningful with all these "edgy" killers and rapists coupled together with funny shots of sadistic smiles and lifeless faces and other overdone instances of creepy, freaky nonsense, all of which contribute to the "edginess." This kind of presentation makes it feel as though Btooom! is beating the viewer over his/her head with its themes and messages.

The characters are arguably the show's biggest weakness. Ryota's character feels contradictory. On one hand, he is the chivalrous heroic type who is unbelievably kind and wants to save everyone, but on the other hand, he is portrayed (in flashbacks) to be a complete asshole who cares only for his game and has no issue with shouting at and even physically hurting his mother and stepfather – this, incidentally, is why Ryota got thrown into the game. A rocky relationship with one's parents compared to others can be understandable, but the contrast here in particular is too great to be believable. Ryota did act more amicable among classmates when he went to school, but this was before he became the obsessive NEET that we now know him to be; he is also shown to be acting very polite with representatives from the company that made "Btooom!", but it's only natural that he would suck up when he's trying to get a job doing something related to the only thing he cares about. As such, there's nothing in Ryota's flashbacks that could hint at his nature in the death game, or vice versa. It isn't as though one should expect Ryota to be a heartless killer in the game, but had he shown more of his bad personality in that setting, there could have been actual progression in his character from asshole to nice guy as he learns the value of having a friend he can trust and protect by meeting Taira (the person he partners up with in-game) and Himiko, thereby redeeming himself for what he did to get thrown into the game in the first place. Instead, Ryota is left inconsistent and bland. There's actually a scene at the end in which Ryota says that he shouldn't have looked down on people so much and should've learned about the value of caring for others besides himself, but this only fits with his flashback character – it goes contrary to the Ryota we see on the island who was nice and caring all along. It's like the author had the right idea at the start, but wanted to make Ryota more likable at the same time by making him nicer on the island, and so we're left with this confusing character.

Himiko doesn't fare much better. In a strange backstory in which her friends wish the worst upon her (i.e. elect her to be thrown into the death game) because she ran away and "betrayed" them while they got raped (that selfish bitch ran to go get the cops...!), we learn that Himiko is very distrustful of men, and a similar experience on the island solidifies her belief that men are scum. She showed potential to be a strong female protagonist here, but the show wastes no time in turning her into a damsel in distress who soon becomes entirely dependent on Ryota, a trope that should've been avoided. Learning that not all men are so bad is one thing, but the presentation of Himiko's character is something else altogether. The portrayal of her character is even worse when examining all of these rapey scenes that Himiko is thrown into, which seem to be presented in a fanservicey way; they give off the impression that the animators are also trying to flaunt Himiko's body at the audience for sexual appeal, which is very out of place and awkward (there's a problem when you're not sure if a scene is supposed to be appalling or erotic).

The side characters mostly serve to present various psychological aspects of being thrown into death games. One character, Taira, puts his trust in Ryota on the island, but when the he's left alone several times after being injured, his mental stability begins to falter. There's this woman who trusts a man she loves (who, by the way, had already betrayed her once before), and was betrayed later when he took her chip. There's another guy who used to know Ryota from school, and he was used as a device for Ryota's characterization at the end. The concept isn't bad, but they all end up as one-note characters who are forgettable, although the dynamic between Ryota and Taira was sometimes decent, especially with the two of them expressing their fears in putting their trust in complete strangers in the environment of an "every man for himself" death game. The antagonist is shown to be a manipulative person who acts nice before he betrays those around him and reveals that he's a super evil prick (muhahaha...ha) – it appears that he's just super evil to act as a foil to Ryota's integrity. He comes off as a mere caricature, mostly, and is forgettable.

Character stupidity is a bit rampant. At the beginning of the death game, it took Ryota numerous tries before he realized that the bombs he was granted had timers attached, despite the fact that he'd already made the connection between the online and death games, that the bomb was identical to the timer bomb in the online game, and that the bomb had numbers counting down on it to signify a timer that Ryota had seen even before coming to his realization. Also, when Himiko voices her concerns regarding a certain bad guy's loyalty when the latter's tricking them, Ryota dismisses her suspicions, despite the fact that she had good reason to have them, and that he had learned before not to be so trustworthy; even when the totally-not-a-bad-guy acts very suspicious later on by asking Ryota if he trusted him out of nowhere when nothing prompted the question, Ryota doesn't feel as though anything is off. Moments like these are prime examples of how NOT to handle dramatic irony, and they're very frustrating to watch. It isn't as though Ryota was always foolish as fuck – as was mentioned prior, he's come up with a few decent strategies – but when he is, it really breaks the immersion.

Moving on to aesthetics, the art style is passable, albeit lackluster. The character designs look uninspired. Ryota is a thin guy with Light Yagami-styled hair, Himiko's a cute blonde with big tits, and so on. The designs serve their purpose, but little is done to make them stand out from other characters in other anime. The setting looks decent, but the most positive thing that can be said about it is that it works. The animation is nothing special for an action anime like this. The camerawork is poor, although the bombs' explosions look decent enough. The soundtrack is unmemorable and boring, but it usually isn't unfitting. The OP is exciting to listen to and serves well to pump you up for an action-packed gorefest, though the fact that it overshadows the anime could be seen as a bad thing as well.

Btooom!, in trying to be mature, ends up beating its audience over the head with its attempt at dark themes. The characters are either cliche, inconsistent, or serve only to portray a trait or idea as opposed to a real character. The game is boring and lacks the tension that a survival game needs to be exciting, resulting in underwhelming fights and ridiculous escapes from dire situations. The anime doesn't even have a proper conclusion, ending off with a shitty cliffhanger after the main characters finally hook up, with no second season in sight. Btooom! is a prime example of what not do to when trying to make something gritty, dark and meaningful.

Okay, let me start with the story

Highly predictable, nothing new or out of the ordinary but it isn't a that bad tough
the bomb thing is quite unique tough, it is a little bit like the hunger games 74 and 75 mixed with the whole island thing but it doesn't have the clock feature like the island in hunger games book 2. the whole survival game concept is used often and not that entertaining.

everything is mediocre or kind of good except for one big thing. The Characters, i don't think there was even one well written character in there, let's start with sakamoto

His intelligence ... is bad written, the thing showing this is the thing with the timer bombs. I mean he was 10# BTOOOM! player in the world (wich i hope require some intelligence) he was programmer etc. etc. but it takes two bombs to figure out its on a timer? Then the thing with the fight with implosion guy fight, It should have been more things with the mind state of seeing him from behind or i don't think it should have been added, and i also his personalty breakdowns works according to his overly good personality

and himiko, first of i think this show has to much rapists and androphobia. And i think the whole incident that sent her there could have been better. Like the think her friends was really mad on her when there really there was nothing she could have done except for running and get the police, And then getting away from them was good to begin with. even without accounting gender 4 v 1 is a quite hopeless situation. and the other man hater is misjudging since it was a horrible human act that wasn't influenced by the male gender that traumatized her in the first place

Since only horrible human beings that people wanted to disappear got to the island i think the characters are allowed to have some weird personalities but atleast their past could have been better written and be more realistic and be more in accordance with the influenced traits

Despite being based off a manga well-received enough to warrant an anime adaptation, BTOOOM! manages to fall spectacularly on its face, in the end only deserving an overall score of 4. Be warned, this review is more of a rant than anything else for having made the mistake of wasting 6 hours of my life on this anime; however I hope it can help you avoid making the same mistake. A breakdown of scoring is as follows (slight spoilers included):

Story: 4/10
The setting is your standard all-out survival game in which players kill or be killed. While the premise initially offered immense potential for dramatic confrontations ... and conflicts between each character's morality and personal beliefs, nothing like that---or anything even remotely interesting---happens throughout its entire run. No moral conflict happens whatsoever; the protagonist is spared from making any kind of moral decision at all, because it's conveniently written somewhere in the producer's footnotes that he should forever remain untainted on the moral high ground. Let's be honest; in a survival game, this makes for an incredibly boring protagonist and an incredibly contrived plot.

Art: 4/10
Backgrounds can be pretty despite many shots being recycled. Character designs however leave much to be desired, and their facial expressions aren't all that expressive. The art tells the story well (if and when there's any at all to be told) however, so it's decent.

Sound: 5/10
Sound gets a 5 here not because it's necessarily any better than the other aspects, but because it's so boring and bland; it got a mediocre score for its mediocre performance which I barely noticed at all. While the soundtrack barely enhanced viewing experience, it didn't detract from it either; in other words, it was negligible and thus got a score neither praiseworthy nor critical. The OP/ED were better however and deserve more merit than this show itself.

Character: 2/10
Characterisation is, in my opinion, easily the weakest point of this anime; most of the characters are little more than cardboard cutouts filling up mandatory roles, and the reasoning behind their behaviour is so forced it's frankly a challenge to believe or empathise with them on any level. 1 point here goes to Daira for being the only character who demonstrates believable fears and doubts that I would expect out of the entire cast when being put in such a game; the other 1 point goes to the entire ensemble of supporting characters that flesh out the main cast's background, who drew more sympathy from me instead of the main characters themselves.
The protagonist here, despite being a world-class gamer at the game he is supposed to conquer, turns out incredibly wimpy at the beginning---and actually manages to get worse as the story develops---or maybe the story doesn't develop, because it honestly doesn't go anywhere. He has plot armour stronger than the plot itself, surviving traps and explosions that previously managed to kill others; bombs LITERALLY ticked slower around him. At the same time, he manages to conveniently avoid any decisions that could possibly bring his own code of morality into question, never killing any other players until it becomes morally justified self-defense, out of either naïveté, stupidity or a combination of both I don't know. What the producers blatantly ignored was that a well-handled conflict in morality was one of the best things that could happen to a character; instead they seemed to think that putting the protagonist above all such confrontations would draw him sympathy for his compassion. Well, not from me.
Meanwhile the female lead is one of the most useless, if not THE most useless, heroine in anime that I have seen in recent years. A high-schooler with the boobs of a million-dollar surgery and the intellect of a toddler, she needs constant babysitting from the protagonist to survive, as if her only purpose in the plot was to get into trouble so that the protagonist has a chance to shine as her saviour. Just being a standard damsel-in-distress born out of awkward fan-service however would not have been that much of an issue if she hadn't been such an utterly useless character; if she hadn't the role of the heroine, she would've been one of the first characters to die. Since meeting the protagonist she seemed increasingly dependent on him to live; she needed her life, her purpose in life, her survival strategy, even her reason for living all handed to her in bite-sized pieces by the protagonist, and immediately lost her ability to function when she believed he was dead. She went from highly suspicious and mistrustful of the protagonist to utterly devoted and reliant in the span of a few episodes---I don't know if this was supposed to be taken as character development, because if anything it seems like regression to me; while she was at the very least independent in the beginning, towards the end she seemed incapable of thinking on her own.
All the other players, particularly ones who lost to the protagonist and heroine, had one-dimensional motivations and contrived justifications for their behaviour; they seemed to behave antagonistically simply for the sake of being evil, perhaps to illustrate the protagonist's compassion in contrast. The sloppy and cliched manner in which this is executed however simply leaves me with a bad impression, and even lesser respect for the

Enjoyment: 3/10
In the end, BTOOM! manages to disappoint so sorely that I would not recommend this show to anyone. It tries and fails so spectacularly in terms of plot, dramatic tension, fan service, character growth and development that the only thing it succeeds at is being a negative example for what NOT to do when producing an anime.
Madhouse, I thought you could've done better.
Watch it if you have nothing better to do; or don't watch it, you're really not missing out.

The only thing in BTOOOM! that makes it unique are the bombs. Seriously, it seemed really cool starting it. However, that's not enough to make a story shine on its own, and as the end reached nearer, I had hoped something would turn things around and make it not so predictable and disappointing. I wanted it to surprise me just once!! Unfortunately, that didn't happen.

First off, story: 4/10

Pretty simple. You read the summary on here, and it's basically just that. They fight to survive in a game that needs them to kill other people. The fanservice was incredibly annoying. I couldn't help but eye roll ... every time. There were a lot of flashbacks. They didn't hold back.

The pacing is fine, but the ending is pretty unsatisfying. They left you with something you probably already expected to happen. In fact, everything was so predictable here. I feel like the protagonist was a little bit of a gary-stu.

Art: 8/10

The art was pretty good, but not what I would call spectacular. I mean, Madhouse always does really nice close-ups of characters, and overall I think it was pretty consist. I was neutral towards the character designs. As for backgrounds: there wasn't anything too notable.

Sound: 5/10

I really enjoyed the opening. I found myself humming it while I tended to my cats. As for background music, I don't think it was too great. I can barely recall any.

The voice acting was tolerable. This goes for the subs, of course.

Character: 4/10

Dear lord. It's hard to begin on this. The protagonist is kinda a mess. He starts off as a self-entitled lazy guy but then when he gets on the island he's extremely selfless. He keeps saying he's not the same person and that he's changed after an experience, but 5 minutes later, he's back to how he was when he first landed on the island. Also, he's way too in shape for some lazy bum that plays video games all day. Seriously, I keep wanting to refer to this guy as a gary-stu. He's just so good for no reason. I could rant all day about this.

The girl, Himiko, was fine. The one thing that annoyed me was how she kept being seen as a sexual object. There was a lot of mention(and even showing) of rape happening. It was gross and I'll say it a hundred times and then some more. It didn't feel like they were trying to send a message out. It was like an excuse for more fanservice, and that's what makes it so gross. It wouldn't bother me so much if they didn't keep throwing it in your face. I'm sorry if you think that mentioning the rape scene is a spoiler, but I feel like people should be told beforehand because it made me cringe. I don't want anyone to be triggered or anything. This is my biggest issue with this anime.

All the other characters were okay. In my opinion, it wasn't that they were totally forgettable, it's that I wanted to forget some of them. I didn't like any of them. Plus, you only saw some once or twice. There was Taira, but they weren't being subtle with throwing him aside. They showed you backstory of characters who you didn't even know or see that many times.

Enjoyment: 4/10

I found myself eye-rolling a lot through this, but I did enjoy some things about it. I don't have anything to elaborate on here because that's all I have to say on the enjoyment section.

Overall: 4/10

I can't give it anything else but a 4. I look at this anime and I think: "Wow, this was probably created by a bunch of straight guys who have absolutely no lives whatsoever, and then put their desires within this anime." Even if that's not the case, it's the feeling I get.

It just tried too hard to be too many things in so little time, and by the time it reached halfway, I knew deep down it wouldn't get better. I don't like how this anime had so much sexism in it.

It finished without answering a lot of questions, but those questions probably have answers that are as predictable as everything else. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone, but if you like bombs, don't care much for story, or anything else, go watch this.

Story: Starts off revolving around a NEET gamer which becomes really good at what he does as a NEET. Later he gets abducted and sent to an island to fight other people, a pretty decent story line enough to grab your attention.

Art: Looked pretty clean so it's good enough to watch to keep yourself entertained for a bit.

Sound: It sounded like what you'd expect/hear from playing an FPS with grenades and that type of stuff so it's good enough to pass.

Character: Similar to what you'd find in an average anime, white knight protagonist gets beat down stands back up. Gets a few allies along the ... way, nothing special.

Enjoyment: This part may seem very biased and is entirely my opinion but the anime was good all the way up to until the end , I couldn't believe it that one episode could ruin the entire anime. Mr. Protagonist is trying to be a good guy and he gets beat down (best example I could think of without spoiling the entire anime.) This made it very hard for me to enjoy the rest of the anime thinking how cliche it was , and it not only happens once but twice and totally ruined it for me.

Overall: I recommend watching it ONLY if you're prepared for cliche scenes that are almost cringe worthy and if you're okay with the risk of getting cancer near the end.

This is an awesome version of the island death match "Battle Royale" concept, except everyone has special bombs and radar. The only problem is that the entire show is about rape. The female protagonist is a busty blonde whose backstory is she got a bunch of her friends raped. This is actually all they do to tell us about who she is. Now she's on this island with bombs and radar and needs to kill people to survive. So of course the logical next step is that every man she encounters is doing everything he possibly can to force himself sexually upon her. You know, ... because she only has tons of bombs and radar to defend herself, so it only makes sense.

Sound is standard. Art and animation is slightly above average. Would have been a great show if they only ever stuck to the male protagonist. The writer is so mind numbingly obsessed with trying to rape this girl you'd almost think he was trying to tell you something. Even the high moral male protagonist has his moment.

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| Btoom! : Review |
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Btoom! is an 12 action anime based on a manga by Junya Inoue and animated by one of my favorite Studios Madhouse. To be honest I really didn't expect much from this when I started watching this and I got what I expected. Would I recommend this to anyone ? Unlikely. Let's find out why

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Story - 3
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Story of Btoom.., is nothing to write home about. The basic premise of the show is a bunch of people are put in a island , given bombs and instructed to kill each other to get off the island. And this itself is flawed ... because..., There's nothing really keeping them there, Just craft a boat and get the fuck out of there maybe ?
And as the series goes on , story doesn't really go anywhere and doesn't really have much of an ending. The supposed "twists" in the series are plain cheating , they clearly show us that happened and then later they show something completely different happened there ? How's that a twist ? That's plain cheating.
We can clearly see that this series tries to tackle a lot of mature subjects as it takes on matters such as rape and trauma but it has no idea what to do with those and saying it falls flat trying to tackle those would be an understatement , it absolutely humiliates itself.

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Characters- 3
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Nope , nothing to see here.
The series doesn't manage to create interesting or "believe" characters. I highlight believable mainly because none of the characters feel human , even though that's what they are pushing for. Every character is extremely one dimensional having one trait that defines them and that's it.
The main character of series is neither interesting , likable or compelling. Only positive thing I can say about the main character is that he does receive some positive development towards end of the series.
How story handles the characters brings down the plausibility even more , as every character is extremely dumb that even the most common thing to do is considered strategy. And have I mentioned how none of them ever gets injured (except one character) ? all the bombs , being blown away , jumping around and even falling from fetal heights.

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Sound and Animation- 6
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I'm going to keep this section extremely short because there really isn't much to talk about here. Both sound and animations are competent , nothing special and nothing bad. Character designs are admittedly pretty good. Animation is done by Studio Madhouse so no worries there as they always deliver. Soundtrack is nothing notable and the Opening Theme is actually pretty good.

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Enjoyment and Overall Experience - 4
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This is an extremely passable but watchable anime. Would I recommend it ? No , there are much better alternatives (Not SAO) , If you want a spectacle of explosions go watch a Micheal Bay movie or Black Lagoon (Black Lagoon preferably).
So do yourself a favor and just pass on this one.

SUMMARY REVIEW: This shit is ass. Don't watch it.

FULL REVIEW:

-Story 3 : The story could've been SOOO much better, this show had a good concept, it could've been a masterpiece if they gave a fuck about the series but it seems they cared more about catering to that average "pervy 12 year old" audience. But in 2018 this anime is 5 years old so I have to cut it some slack.

-Art 4: The artwork was average, nothing crazy, nothing ugly, its just ok. Killing people with only Explosions was the main reason I wanted to watch it but they all look the same.

-Sound ... 6:Everything audio-wise sounded good except the explosions and the music, which disappointed me. Oh and the dub is horrible so just go with the sub if you plan on watching it.

-Character 2: Oh shit this was baaaad. Lets get the worse character out the way: Himiko, Her as a character, she was useless unless her tits where on screen she was just a fantasy dream girl that would please the audience this show was going for. Her nearly being rape every other episode was just fucking disturbing for no reason. It was just there to, again, please the stupid audience. I didn't care for ANY of the characters. Why? Because their development was rushed. They really don't give us any background knowledge of the characters other than the reason why they were cast to the island. (I'm not saying that every character has to have a tragic past to have a watcher care for a character but it was the only thing this show had to build character) Sakamoto is the same character as Kirito from SAO: He's a clueless pervy nerd who is good at the game because he was good at the digital game. If you think about it Sakamoto should be dead, (if was dead it would've made this show 10x better because, it would show that nobody's safe and that anybody can die) as a NEET that plays games 24/7 he doesn't have any real physical or mental advantage. The ONLY advantage he has is that he knows all the BIMS and what they can do. Other than that he's not smart or clever or charming or anything. He was just good at the digital game. The first enemy Sakamoto faced should've killed him 5 times already, he was fit, knew how his BIMS worked and he was prepared to kill. But since Sakamoto was good a clicking a mouse he beat him....I don't want to talk about the others characters but here's a small summary: boring.

-Enjoyment 1: I think you know what I was gonna say.

-Overall 2: If they really cared about this series they'd gave the show more thought and more time to develop but they just wanted to make a quick buck instead of a masterpiece. I really wish this show was better but it's not so suck a dick

Story & Writing:

Btoom's writing is nothing short of an offensive joke. It's so shallow, pretentious, and utterly devoid of personality that I do not hesitate to compare it to Sword Art Online , if that gives you an idea.

First off, the characters are extremely one-dimensional and horribly developed. Most of them are hackneyed "villains" who embody what this show would like to unironically call "human nature," betraying everyone they meet and thinking only about themselves. What's worse is that Btooms takes itself seriously and seems to expect the audience to agree with its laughable message, one akin to what a 12 year old would ... come up with after listening to one too many Linkin Park songs.

Every single character who is not the protagonist will always be reduced to either a Saturday cartoon villain or a sex object. This would be somewhat tolerable if only protagonist wasn't such a braindead cookie-cutter self-insert jackass who, due to his "game experience," is the smartest and most formidable player on the island. He never loses a duel and can never die. He is protected by so many layers of plot armor that no conflict that involves him ever feels substantial or interesting, because nothing is ever at stake. Did this extensive description remind you a certain other overpowered protagonist from another anime? Well, that's exactly my point.

But it does not end there.

The plot started as a somewhat interesting action thriller but slowly devolved into a parody of itself. First of all, the "battle of wits" are made to look very dramatic and intense but in the end they all boil down to wacky deus ex machinas and very basic strategies that are not as clever as Btooom thinks. Secondly, the bare-bones romance subplot between the protagonist and the heroine is purely unneeded and nothing short of cringy. This is when the self-insert undertones really creep to the surface, reducing Btooom's writing to nothing but masturbation fodder for male audiences.

And worst of all, Btoom has a very uninformed and oftentimes sleazy obsession with misogyny and rape culture. It's like the writer learned everything he knew about misandry, androphobia, and rape culture from the first two paragraphs of a fucking wikipedia page. Btoom treats rape as if it's just a fact of life, as if it just happens and victims of rape should just move on, should just forget about any physical, mental, or emotional trauma inflicted on them in the process. Btoom's message is neither sympathetic nor complex. It just uses rape as an easy cop-out plot device to pull edgy backstories out of its own asshole. But then again, I would at least tolerate this offense if Btooom didn't approach the issue so shadily and lecherously.

To give you an example, a character was nearly raped twice.
You'd think the show would exhibit some degree of sympathy towards her, right? Show her compassion and maybe put her in more comfortable situations?
Nope. Btoom proceeds to sexualize the fuck out of her, frequently showing shots of her in her underwear and actively puts her in very sexually provocative poses. It also does this very scummy thing where it treats her like she's stupid and crazy for being distrustful of men after her traumatic experience. By the end of the show, she is reduced to just a powerless sex object whose only purpose is to get into trouble and be rescued by the oh-so-heroic protagonist. Once again, deja vu? Shit Fart Online vibes? I don't believe in coincidences.

tldr:
Basically, what I've described is the scope of what this dogshit show can do with its writing. Truly a travesty. A completely predictable, shallow, edgy tryhard story with piss poor execution and obscene character writing.

Art:
Madhouse does good work, but sadly that effort is wasted on this pile of dung disguised as a "story"

Sound:
Mediocre. Nothing memorable.

Enjoyment:
3/10

Overall:
3/10
Fuck you Btooom. You're neither deep, thrilling, nor clever. You're just glorified self-insert wank bank material.

PROPER MINDSET
Oh look, another series about an antisocial hero who is very good at video games. Trope of the year folks; you will lose count with how many like those were made in just a few months along with it. Anyways, this is yet another show about some waste of life who does nothing but playing video games all day and all of a sudden being thrown in a life or death situation. And we are supposed to cheer for him despite being a total jerk. Sorry but I couldn’t do that for a completely ridiculous show.

PRODUCTION VALUES
Very good, coming from the king of anime ... shows, studio Madhouse. Everything looks a nod more realistic than your average anime, akin to Death Note in terms of atmosphere and cinematics. Soundtrack and voice acting are ok but nothing major; the main song left me with no major impressions, while the secondary cast has some really ridiculous pitches to their voice, like they are all retards.

SCRIPT
It’s about a video game 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 realize it’s all a bunch of nonsense.
- When a bomb explodes right next to you, something happens to you even if you do a flip. From the noise, the shrapnel, the shock wave, etc. An explosion has a radius of several meters and not just the few square centimeters the bomb stands on. So imagine nothing happening to the protagonist three times in ten minutes. And the lolz part is that he wasn’t even trying to avoid them. He was literally standing still and unprepared in an open field all the time, attacked by someone who was prepared and dead-set on killing him. What would he do if he was prepared; fly in the air and fire lasers from his eyes? And of course this applies only the main character, who constantly survives without the tiniest scratch, while everybody else just dies in one hit. Plot armor ftl; the otherwise "real" death game loses its appeal in the very pilot episode it is introduced.
- 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 video game is nice... Oh wait, this is not a video game but a realistic death game… Supposed.
- When you throw a video game controller at a wall, it is the plastic controller that breaks and not the brick wall.
- I also can’t help but facepalming at how they are trying to transfer the tactics of the game in reality. Each player has a sonar device on his hand that allows him to know where the others are. The thing is, the sonar is cancelled if someone else is using it at the same time. It is still completely stupid to have a guy getting frustrated for not being able to sense an opponent running around him in thick foliage. He doesn’t really need the sonar when he can just as easily hear or see someone a few meters next to him.
- They are even trying to transfer the technology of the video game in real life, and the result is ridiculous at best. Each one of those bombs must have cost a fortune, not to mention the whole kidnapping, and transfer operations. There is for example a mini black hole bomb. Can someone calculate how expensive such a thing is to be used like that in a silly death game that it’s not even paying back its expenses or even has an ulterior goal? As over the top the Gantz technology was, eventually it was excused just fine to be as such. Over here, it’s just some sadistic asshole’s playground. They even included a mechanism that doesn’t allow someone to use somebody else’s bombs, or remove the integrated sonar crystals on their hands, for as long as he is still alive. Yeah, sure, make it even more expensive with DNA signature triggers that go offline when they no longer receive the brainwaves of their original owner as confirmation code.
- And on top of everything else, the show is full of continuity errors. People just disappear for no given reason, or teleport instantly to impossible places. Remember how the Hunger Games had huge magical dogs towards the end? Well, over here all of a sudden giant man eating lizards appear out of nowhere. Because WHY NOT?
- As if even that wasn’t enough, the directors are constantly using flashbacks from just a few episodes ago, to waste time and to further remind us of all the stupid things in this show.
- And add to all that how the story is left incomplete, so nothing is really resolved.

CAST
Of course one could forgive all the nonsense and just enjoy the show for its characterization. It would be interesting just to see how each character would react in a life or death situation. And even that is impossible to do, since the very protagonist has character rewrites every 5 minutes. I mean really, it’s impossible to tell what his personality is, since he acts completely different in every scene. And no, I don’t mean he is cocky when he thinks he is in control but scared when cornered. He LITERALLY is a different person.
- We are told he is great in the game yet all we see him doing is throwing bombs at defenseless players who don’t even try to fight back. That is hardly a way to show how good he is at it.
- 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. Top player material right there.
- In one he is anti-social and angry, in the other he is very social and polite.
- In one he acts as a leader figure, in the other like a dork who can’t even walk without tripping.
- In one he is cunning and sets a trap to his opponent, in the other he gets surprised to witness the exact same trap being used on someone else.
- And there is no bloody excuse for how a NEET like him can 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 video game by pressing buttons really fast, but in reality he wouldn’t be able to even run for 5 seconds without getting exhausted.

In a similar way, every single character in the show has a personality that can be described in two lines. And even that is 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 place 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 at first site. Because WHY NOT; we need a slut in any cheesefest. She is the main source of fan service and the animators never miss the chance to go apeshit regarding her privates. As for her personality, it’s a joke like pretty much everything else in this show. She is supposed to be afraid of men but when the plot asks for it, she will trust them right away, only to have them betray her. Then she will hate them again, until the plot needs to trust them immediately once more, and so on.
- Then there is the reason of why these people were chosen and sent to this death game. Turns out you can right down the name of someone you don’t like and he is soon kidnapped and transferred to that hellish island. Jigoku Shoujo anyone? And I would understand if you were to wanna get rid a person that had been sadistically tormenting you all your life, but turns out the reason can be ridiculous as heck.
* The protagonist for example was chosen by his mother, because he was mean to her. Yeah, 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 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 them from becoming prostitutes or corpses. 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 life-saving support she gave them. Talk about bad friends.

LEGACY
It is just another stupid show a la Deadman Wonderland or Future Diary. Do not expect anything deep or elaborate or realistic about it and just eat popcorn while laughing at how bad it is.

And now for some excused scorings.
ART SECTION: 7/10
General Artwork 2/2 (looks nice)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 2/2 (basic but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (lots of cheap explosion filters)

SOUND SECTION: 7/10
Voice Acting 2/3 (corny but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Music Themes 3/4 (not great but fitting with the feeling of the series)
Sound Effects 2/3 (ok I guess)

STORY SECTION: 2/10
Premise 1/2 (cheap Battle Royale imitation)
Pacing 1/2 (erratic)
Complexity 0/2 (tries to be complicating in psychological issues and fails miserably)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (doesn’t have one)

CHARACTER SECTION: 2/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 0/2 (cardboards and unsympathetic)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 0/2 (random mood swings)
Catharsis 0/2 (incomplete story, so no catharsis)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (just read Battle Royale instead)
Memorability 1/4 (totally meh show)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Art 1/1 (looks nice)
Sound 0/2 (sounds meh)
Story 0/3 (generic, badly written, and incomplete)
Characters 0/4 (cardboard cutouts and unsympathetic)

VERDICT: 3.5/10

The "fight-to-the-death" genre isn't a new one, with shows like Mirai Nikki and Deadman Wonderland having saturated the anime market in past years. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this genre, it can quickly go downhill if not handled carefully, and in BTOOOM!'s case, I'd say that's what happened.         

I wanted to like this; I really did. But it fell flat in my opinion, and here's why.

PLOT
Ryota Sakamoto is a NEET, and an avid video game player at that. So much so, that he manages to seize his spot as one of the world's top players for the online action battle game, BTOOOM. One day, Ryota’s reclusive lifestyle is suddenly ... turned upside down when he inexplicably wakes up on an island with others who are trying to kill him. Vowing not to play this real-life version of the game he’s spent so long perfecting, he is determined to stick together with the other players and survive. 

The very reason for why Ryota and the other characters were sent to the island in the first place is briefly mentioned a few times, and we do get glimpses of who exactly is pulling the strings for this death match, but it's still not explained very well. They're portrayed as these evil people who joyously clap their hands together like a circus seal while watching the contestants in their twisted game kill each other off. There's not much explanation for why any of this is happening (I only remember them mentioning their motive only once or twice). In fact, the whole plot is so rushed that making sense of any of it is difficult. We don't even get any sort of resolution; the end is incredibly abrupt, and considering the buildup until that point, you'd think there'd be some sort of payoff, but unfortunately we're not that lucky. A cliffhanger like that would have worked if they were planning on making a sequel, but since the second season never came to fruition, it's just frustrating and confusing.

CHARACTERS
You don’t really see a lot of the other characters until halfway through the anime, despite the flashback scene to the airplane clearly showing around 20 or so of them. When they do show up, they’re killed off before you have a chance to comprehend what’s going on, they just simply disappear, or not much is explained about them so you’re left with these cardboard cutouts of people. In fact, I found myself skipping a few minutes at a time here and there because things were just… really not going anywhere, honestly. Considering this is a death match, I was expecting a bit more tension and action.

Ryota has a bit of a plot armor problem, enough to make Yuno Gasai proud . Almost every explosion that happens, he manages to dodge without so much as a scratch. Meanwhile, Taira and Himiko are getting the shit kicked out of them by everything that comes their way, but Ryota’s perfectly fine. Literally, I barely blinked an eye when an explosion occurred because I pretty much knew Ryota would survive it anyway. The only time he ever gets severely injured is because it's convenient to the plot, and even then he wasn't as hurt as he should have been.

Himiko, too, has issues of her own. She constantly switches between the damsel in distress and the badass female lead depending on what's going on. It's hard to really tack down a main personality trait for her since her character has such drastic mood swings. And honestly, her tragic backstory™ was unnecessary. The studio seemed more preoccupied with finding ways to add shock value to BTOOOM! rather than handling such serious issues in an intelligent manner. This is evidenced by how afraid she is at first of everyone, including Ryota and Taira, and then magically manages to overcome her trauma within a short period of time because... drum roll... she starts to fall in love with Ryota. C'mon, really? While I've never been a victim of sexual assault, I do know that it oftentimes takes years, to overcome something so terrible. But I guess it doesn't matter with this anime, since it's proved that as long as long as it's convenient to the plot, anything goes.

ART + SOUND

The art is better than what I expected, and while it is pretty decent, it’s a bit lackluster. The studio's budget seems to have gone into the backgrounds more so than the actual characters, but oh well. As for sound, I was told the OP was pretty good, and I have to agree! I didn't like it too much at first, so I skipped it; then when I took the time to listen to the whole thing I couldn't stop. It's catchy as hell, that's for sure. 

Overall rating: 4/10

Disappointed in this one :/

Forgive me, but this is my first review I've actually written out about an anime; but this one just pissed me off so much that I just felt the need to express my opinion on it. The show tries to damn hard to be edgy, and dark but it fails so much. First I will start off in saying that this show has basically the some of same story elements from SAO, No Game No Life, Konosuba, and Is it Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon. Most(if not all) came after Btooom! but at least they did it right(ok maybe not SAO, but ... I think it was OK).

Characters:3
Himiko- The Feminist Poster-Child: The girl who thinks all men are out to rape her. I suppose that would make her a pretty good character, if they had actually decided to make her the strong independent woman she started out to be; but that is needless to say, not what we have here. Not spoiling the story(too much) for people who haven't seen the show, but something happened that made all of her friends hate her despite it not being her fault at all. Let's just say it involved rape. After this event they chose to send her into this game. After which, she is almost raped herself, and decides that all men are her enemy in this game. In the end she relies solely upon Sakamoto, completely disregarding what little character she had to begin with. It's like if this shows developers wanted to make an even bitchier version of Asuna from SAO- and she probably can't even cook.


Sakamoto- Neet Gamer Cliche. He is this shows equivalent of Sora from No Game No Life, or Kirito from SAO(I should stop comparing...). He's that dude who was a shut-in gamer from one world, who is taken to another world where he is suddenly gifted and actually can contribute something to the world. The only thing about this show is how much of a fucking dumbass this guy is. The dude has to be the absolute densest motherfucker I have ever seen in anime. He is also like a hypocritical spiderman/batman. He says he isn't gonna kill, but then he will, then he tries, then he doesn't... it's just really dumb. There really isn't much to say about him, he's just a cliche of the Guy-who-gets-transported-to-another-world genre which I have seen at least 7 different times.

For the rest of the supporting cast I will just list off my nicknames for them, and once you watch the show you will figure out exactly who they are mearly from the name. We have; Daddy Issues, Everyone's Weird Uncle, The Fonz Wannabe, Basic Bitch, Token Black Guy #1, Token Black Guy #2, Papa Bear, Obvious Bad Guy, and Female Jack Skellington.

Story:4
Like I said, it starts off pretty much like Konosuba(SAO, No Game No Life, ReZero.... is there an actual name for this kind of story?) Where the dude gets taken to another world that turns his life upside down. I would like to say that at least 20% of the story is due to some of the characters own stupidity, but I will let you decide that for yourself. The story really is nothing special, except for one thing- It doesn't have an ending. I watched 12 episodes for some kind of closure, and all I got was cock-blocked and disappointed that I had wasted 3 hours of my day. It was at this point that I decided to write this review. The ending(or lack-thereof) alone is why you have this garbage review to read.

Animation:5
I would say it was somewhere between meh, and OK. It's really nothing special in my opinion. I have certainly seen better, but I have also seen a lot worse.

Sound: Same as the Animation, nothing really special about it. I'm not a sound geek, so I'm not really picky.


My Personal Enjoyment: 1
I kept on waiting for something that I hadn't seen before, and I didn't get anything. The story is as cliche as the characters. That being said, the best way i can describe is if Michael Bay had an autistic baby with Reki Kawahara.
There was absolutely nothing about the show I can say I enjoyed.

There is no, and never will be, an ending. That should be everything you need to know about this.


But it says I need to write a needlessly longer review.

The story was OK. The MC was both a genius, and an idiot. I found it hard to get over the glaring contradiction of that. At times he would have unmatched insight, at other times he was more dense than your average teenager. And no, I'm not talking about romance.

If the series went on it could have lead to some exciting battles, but the author decided not to show any yet, save one or two. ... I suppose his idea was to do that much later on and keep the MC a pacifist as long as possible.

It does touch on some more mature themes and do so alright in terms of realism.

But again, none of this matters as it has no plans on ever finishing. There is no ending nor resolution.