Btooom!

This year has provided us with a reoccurring theme of online gaming based anime. First we had the superb Accel World, then it was the masterpiece which is Sword Art Online. Now comes Btooom!, but straight away I am put off by the strange name alone - named after the sound a grenade makes when it explodes, which is the whole premise of the story. Btooom is a first person shooter style online game where players can only uses grenades to kill their opponents. Unfortunate name aside, there is an interesting premise to the story that saw me watching the first few episodes, in the hopes that it might have a good plot.  Unfortunately, I'm not entirely convinced yet, but have kept giving the anime more chances to impress me. I'm still waiting.

The anime follows the story of Ryota Sakomoto, who is one of the top players in the world, but during the course of his rise to fame in the virtual world, his real life suffers. He lives at home, leeching of his mother who is constantly attempting to push him to get a job, and often finds himself lashing out violently in response to her pressure. As a consequence to his violent behaviour, he is unknowingly signed up to an experimental game that sees him kidnapped and sent to a deserted island, where the people stranded there are forced to play a very real version of the Btooom game, with fatal consequences.

Equipped with only a pouch full of grenades  he must kill other players to collect eight gemstone-like tokens, which will buy his freedom off the island. While alive, the gemstones act as a form of radar, capable of sending out sonar pulses that detect other players when they move, allowing players to track and use strategies to trap their opponents. Once dead, any remaining grenades the player had then belong to the victor, replenishing their supply, except every player has different types of grenades. Some explode on impact, while others have timers, even more work like mines, and explode when a player comes in contact with them. The nastiest form of grenade I have seen so far would be the poisonous gas type, that kill any player, or even wildlife, that is exposed to it.

My biggest complaint with the show so far would be the stupidity of the main character. He is supposed to be this elite player in the Btooom! world, yet when faced with a real life version of the game that works identically to the virtual game, he seems to forget everything about how to play and fumbles around for several episodes, trying to get a clue about what he is doing and going so far as to almost kill himself when he activates one of his timer mines, not understanding what it was, only at the last second throwing it away and discovering it was a grenade. It gets worse when, faced with his first enemy fight, he doesn't understand at all how a timer grenade works, even though he no doubt would have used them many times in the virtual game. This issue makes for a serious disbelief in the intelligence of his character and harms the story for me. Five episodes in, he is still learning things about the game and island that should have been obvious to an elite player of the game. I'm afraid the personality of the main protagonist leaves a lot to be desired.

Another failing point for me with the show would be the depraved sexual content. It's not sexy, its cruel, and disturbing. The main issue comes in the form of the secondary protagonist, Himiko, who so far has existed for the sole purpose of giving the writers an excuse to include distasteful sexual abuse. It starts with the reason why she is on the island. Back home, she invites three of her classmates to a friend's house party, where a famous rock band are visiting as guests. Come the night of their 'party' and she is running late, while the other girls have gone ahead of her. Upon arrival at the house, she finds her friends in the middle of being raped by the members of the band after they were drugged. When they attempt to do the same with her, she abandons her friends and runs away. The girls blame her for what happened, and as punishment, sign her up for the experimental game on the island. That's only the beginning though, and gets worse when a grotesquely obese player catches her, and proceeds to try rape her. My biggest problem with this situation is how helpless the writers make out Himiko to be, and not just here, but all her scenes except for possibly one. She pretty much just lets the rapist molest her, only stopping him when he is about to do the final deed by triggering one of her timer bombs. She would rather die that let somebody rape her, and hopefully take the rapist with her.

Unfortunately, it doesn't end there either. Fast forward to the next episode and you have her facing off against our main character, Ryota, who ends up knocking her unconscious. We are then treated to a very uncharacteristic change come over him, when he suddenly turns into a pervert and is about to remove her underwear and rape her himself when she starts to come around again. Comments he makes like 'but she smells good' just make it worse, and seriously, she wouldn't smell that good in the first place. They are on a stranded island, it would be hot, they would be sweaty and in desperate need of a change of clothes. If anything, they would all stink, bad.

It's pretty clear that she is supposed to be his romantic interest in the story, but so far, he is off to a very bad start in my opinion. Thankfully, he comes to his senses after that and decides to protect her instead, but from that point on she is a broken and troubled character, who can't trust any man, certainly not him. Although there is a positive spin the writers can put on this, which I can see is the angle they are taking, and that is to show the effects of rape in such difficult situations on the human psyche. In that respect I guess they are doing well, but the whole concept of women being raped just so 'something bad' can happen to them is a tired and cliché plot device that should really be left behind. As a writer myself, I can be sure that it is a plot element best avoided if you don't want to alienate a large portion of your potential audience.

Unfortunately for Btooom! the writers wanted to put their viewers through an even worse situation when they introduce the psychologically damaged Kosuke Kira and his paedophile father, who over the episode featuring him proceeds to abuse the boy through very distasteful methods. Once again, the writers use this as an opportunity to show the psychological effects such actions have on Kosuke, to the point of it turning him into a woman killer before arriving on the island. Because of the abuse, he is a sadist, which reflects in his personality on the island. Hopefully, future scenes involving Kosuke might not be so bad, after how the episode ended.

In the end, this show has several weaknesses that hinder its potential, and pushes an archaic impression of women's ability to defend themselves, falling back on the flawed concept that they need men to save them. It unfortunately makes for a frustrating story that has yet to show any true plot developments. The story might be brutal and sometimes painful to watch, but it has potential, there is no denying that, and when battles do happen, they are typically quite entertaining, which has been enough for me to survive watching it so far. But, if it keeps on going the way it is, this is an anime I will likely drop.

If you want to watch an anime based around an online game, you're better off watching Sword Art Online.