Entertainment
Value
With the hype hunger games brought up and the popularity of the battle royal type of story I shouldn’t be surprised something like this finally popped up. Btooom has a very simply concept, imagine battle royale, and replace ALL the weapons with bombs, grenades and such; shazam! One anime coming right up. Btooom is as original as it is enjoyable; basically, only the real hardcore fans of action anime and battle royal will enjoy this, IMHO this was pretty much just a moneygrab because the genre resurfaced lately.
Btooom really is nothing different from battle royal in matter of story a part from the fact the ‘’evil’’ here is not the government but some video game company. Everyone just jets thrown on an island with bombs and voila, instant story right there. Not only did Btooom have little to no originality in manner of story, but even the interactions in between the characters are ridiculously unoriginal and I’m pretty sure that you could find the exact same conversations in battle royal. By now, I’m sure you understand what I mean when I say this lacked character, it seemed a lot like a lot of other action anime out there, but it did have some good points. For what it’s worth, this is pretty entertaining if you can get past the ridiculous drama and the over the top moments in the show. Not only that but it did initially peak my interest by providing a not so annoying main character, this promise of entertainment and acceptable cast can get someone enticed in this show; the main problem is that once the show starts moving on you realise it’s just 12 episodes of the same thing. Sadly, this part of the show is only a 1/2, effectively killing of the chances of the anime of actually hooking me; the anime was basically just a big letdown. I would still recommend this to action genre lovers, but even they will probably agree that this isn’t much. This anime won’t go down in history, but it was still something that could keep you entertained for an evening.
The characters were basically just a copy paste of the cliché they represent; the only one I actually enjoyed was the main character since he was slightly less annoying than what I expected him to be. There is some character development, but it’s so predictable that it can hardly be called worthwhile. The main cast is a mix of acceptable and horrible, the guy was ok whereas the main girl is literally nothing more than fanservice with legs; she brings nothing more than being a female we are supposed to root for in this anime. The character design being pretty bland and generally lacking, it was hard to actually relate to these characters or to want to see more of them, unlike a lot of other anime, I hardly felt any desire to learn more about them since they were generally uninteresting. There was also a half assed love story thrown in there, if you ask me they should have just left it out of there since it brings virtually nothing to benefit the show.
He art is something I quite enjoyed, it was simple enough to be enjoyed and complex enough to be visually stimulating, then again, it wasn’t anything very out of the ordinary for a 2012 show, but it was ok. The music however was quite forgettable; the opening and ending song were not something that caught my attention and was generally something that could have been improved.
All in all, Btooom was a really forgettable anime, not only was it predictable as hell but it had no real authenticity or real redeeming qualities. Some people will love it; I am not one of them.
