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Let me start off by saying that Btooom! was awful. But wait, before you say anything, let me type some words down to make this review a little bit longer. Now that I’m done with that, let’s get back to the review. I actually watched Btooom of my own free will after it aired a few months ago, so you might think that it couldn’t have been that bad if I didn’t drop it, right? It’s actually quite the opposite. I thought that the awfulness actually added some uniqueness and entertainmentness, without that special awfulness, Btooom would have just been a basic, extremely forgettable series. If you’ve ever watched the English dub of either Garzey’s Wing or Ghost Stories, then you might understand the feeling. Or if you watched… you know… Btooom itself. Garzey’s Wing and Ghost Stories takes the concept to a whole new level, but Btooom isn’t just your average bad series either.

Story

The story wasn’t awful, in fact, it may be the only thing that keeps you watching. It wasn’t incredible, in fact it was slightly generic and predictable, but it still managed to stay interesting. I especially liked the whole concept of everybody using bombs, and those bombs not coming out of some magical self-replenishing pocket. The players only have a certain number of bombs, so it makes the sense of danger seem much more threatening. Instead of having uber characters run around with infinite ammo and god-like hand to hand combat experience. I also really liked the island that they were on, although that is just a random preference for scenery and has nothing to do with the quality if the series itself. Even so, I’ll give a point or two to Btooom for those things. On the other hand though, I thought that it was rather misleading for this show to be advertised to take place in a “gaming” world. I wouldn’t associate Btooom with a video game theme at all. Yes, they play the game at the beginning, and the island is based loosely on the games mechanics, but aside from that, video games are irrelevant to this series. There are no cyber worlds, or gaming elements that you might expect after reading the promo summary, or looking at some of the cover images. So I will deduct a point for that. and I will now proceed to deduct the rest of the points and many more as I move on to the characters.

Characters

This section is going to consist mostly of me describing to you how horrible the protagonist of this series is. The other characters are pretty bad as well, but mainly just because they’re boring. The protagonist actively emits particles of suck at a high frequency. This seems to be something that Japan is quite fond of, and I will never understand. They like to make these awful characters that are just impossible to not hate. They are usually some sort of failure to society, they usually have no job, don’t go to school, and have no friends. In Btooom, they decided to kick it up a notch and have the main character be an absolute dick to his mom who he lives with. But alas, this is all part of the story, isn’t it? Sort of, although making them that bad wasn’t necessary as demonstrated by [i]some[/i] of the side characters. Un-likable personalities aside, the main character is also beyond retarded. He spends most of the series trying to figure out how to use a device with a single button on it. Then, when he finally figures out how to press the obvious fucking button in episode 54, it takes him 87 more episodes to realize that the giant glowing countdown indicates when it’s going to explode. Someone get this character a ph.d (no seriously, that is essentially what a phd amounts to these days). Now team him up with a worthless fat guy, some bitchy girl who hates men, then pit them all against an emo gone wild and a crazy doctor and you got yourself a cast that legends are made of. Awful legends… Actually, after typing that out, it sounds a lot more interesting than it really was. I think I understand slightly what the writers of this series were thinking now.

Conclusion

I started this review off by telling you that Btooom is awful, and I’ll be finishing it off by telling you that it’s awful, because it is. But even with all of it’s flaws, it was somewhat entertaining, because a lot of it’s flaws were unique. It wasn’t just your usual crappy anime with a bitchy protagonist and a ditzy heroine, Btooom was much much more. It had an idiotic bitchy protagonist, a ditzy heroine that’s afraid of men, and it had generic plots. None of these things are new to bad anime, but what Btooom added to the formula was bombs! It had moments where you were laughing at the possible death of certain characters, it had a chubby old dude who you couldn’t determine to be a evil genius or just a fat guy. But best of all, Btooom had an ending, after experiencing all that is Btooom, there is a bitter-sweet ending that relieves you of it all. Ahhhhh, sweet sweet black screen of endification. *empties recycle bin*

I probably wouldn’t recommend this series to anyone that I like. I wouldn’t go so far as to warn anyone not to watch it, but I definitely wouldn’t go out of my way to mention it to anyone. If you can get past the stupid characters, then it will entertain you for a while. But you’ll probably end up quickly forgetting about it and only the lingering taste of bad characters will remain.

I refuse to give this series a score because real numbers are unable to reflect my true feelings towards Btooom. I have determined it’s value using imaginary square roots, quadratic formulae, and estimation using inverse triangular measurements and geometric influx timing comparison, but it will take more space to write that out than this entire review.

ok, I’ll give it a 3/10

The Verdict

3Bad

The Good: – There were explosions at various times throughout the anime.

The Bad: – Most of it.

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