I originally heard about Btooom! from a friend of mine whilst I was feeling somewhat bored one night, looking for a nice, gore-filled, psychological anime I could really get into and have fun with; Btooom! was the recommendation, as I've stated. I must say, it surpassed my expectations to some point, but it wasn't exactly perfect yet I can't really say why because... well, spoilers.
Anyway, let's get down to the brass and review this anime!
Story - 7/10
A survival story is something I really enjoy, especially when there are bombs and a load of other people involved. One amazing thing about the story with this anime is that it isn't a simple case of "let's throw you into this place and see what happens"... although it actually is... let me rephrase that! The story focuses a lot on Ryouta, the 22-year-old who got thrown into this place and yet it focuses a lot on bonds made with other people and it does surprisingly have a lot of character progression, which is a must in an anime.
I'm not going to write much else about the story, but one little thing about the story which put me off is that I felt it was incredibly similar to the movie, "Condemned", turned into anime with a change of characters and with the use of bombs instead of pure survival. However, that's just me being picky, haha!
Art - 7/10
It may be a very, very weird comparison, but I feel that I enjoyed that art in this as much as I did with Highschool of the Dead in the sense that colours really stood out, meaning colours weren't pale and they didn't look bad. I don't know, it's hard to explain! Anyways, the way the art was done really made things such as the jungle look absolutely beautiful, and the animation was also incredibly well done. I unfortunately can't think about many negatives to the art, considering I'm not much of an artist myself and don't know what's great and what's awful.
Sound - 8/10
I have a certain policy when it comes to watching a new anime, and that is that I must always, always listen to the opening and the ending at least once, even when it changes. It's thanks to this policy that I ended up enjoying the opening and ending to Btooom! and I was able to bask in the glory of such sound.
Along with this, the voice actors / actresses used in Btooom! were pretty damn cool, as all of them seemed to fit their counterparts pretty well and helped me to feel a little more involved in their world, such examples being Kira Kousuke, a psychotic brat who was actually cool who ended up having a voice actress that sounded pretty psychotic when needed; nice going on really getting the good people to fill out the spots!
Character - 5/10
Unfortunately, this is going to have the lowest score for me and I don't like to give low scores, as you can probably tell. The characters were incredibly predictable which ruined all of the fun with absolutely everything. Ryouta was made to be smart from episode 1, and he was way too smart for my liking whereas Himiko was your typical little girl that had to have somebody to depend upon all of the time. Honestly, the characters could have been done much better.
Enjoyment - 7/10
Despite the let down that are the typical character personalities, the show was very enjoyable for me as I certainly found what I wanted in the psychological department along with the gore department. I was really indulged in this anime from start to end and wouldn't mind watching it again if I could be bothered. Shame there's no second season though...
Overall - 7/10
In my own personal opinion, Btooom! was a good piece of work which was very enticing, leaving me wanting more and more with no hope as it's not going to happen. I certainly recommend it if you enjoy gore and a smartass character, especially when he's got some hopeless girl to handle, haha! It's good for the story though as well, so check it out.
Forgive me if this is way too long for you, as this is my first review and I wasn't entirely sure how much I should do or about how I truly, truly, TRULY felt about each little section. However, this is most likely what I'd stick with no matter what, unless I decided to go through and write my review whilst I'm watching each episode, changing it after each episode until I had the final piece... which is definitely not happening.
Hope you enjoyed, and if you do watch Btooom!, ENJOY IT!
