Btooom! is a story about a highschool gamer who wakes up on an island with a bag of bombs, a day's worth of supplies and a chip ingrained on his hand. This much can be found from the synopsis. The story has a decent beginning, a great middle and a weak end. The action of the series is good, but interactions between characters, as well as back story flashbacks, tend to overshadow the action in terms of quality. The fighting is good, especially in the middle of the series, but near the end, it falls into a pattern: "impossible escape, fight back, another impossible escape, fight back". This pattern robbed the action of its suspense. The ending seemed abrupt and since there not another episode after it to cushion the blow, it only makes it worse. The manga is still going on, so a sequel could help the series recover from this pitfall.
The art in the series is great. The character designs fit the characters personalities and the animation is good too. Enviroments, while a bit redundant, help bring life to the battle scenes.
The sound is the best I've heard in a while. The voice acting is spot on and the opening is fantastic. The sounds of explosions and other SEs are good too. The one fault I have is the ending. The music does not seem to fit with the series and its slow pace decompresses the adrenaline that the series thrives on.
The characters of this series each had the potential to be great, but many of them had their spotlight taken off too soon. Due to the short length of the series, many foes the protagonists face only have about an episode or two of scene time before they disappear until the ending. It was especially sad because the villains are truly frightening. As far as the main cast goes, the protagonist has his on and off moments. One moment he is a level-head young man, the next he's a naive person who seems to have learned nothing from his time in the game. The female protagonist is much more consistent and she isn't only just eye candy. She has a believable personality and easily bucks the stereotypical 'dumb hot blonde'. The side characters are decent enough, with exception of a man named Taira. At first he seems like a well built character, but as the series progress, his presence seemed to only fill up time in the series, especially near the end.
The enjoyment of the series depends on the viewer. Those who play online shooters and love leveling up in games like CoD will probably find more in this series than just the passive gamers, but the point is that this is an anime for gamers. If you hate FPSs, you probably will have hard time understanding some of the concepts of this anime and that may hinder your enjoyment. The memorable villains and heroine keep this series from falling into the decent bin, but due to the predictable ending, I won't recommend watching it again.
Overall, this anime has a decent, albeit rushed story, nice art, great sound and solid characters. Would I watch it again? Probably not, but it wasn't a waste of time.
