(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Battle Royale with bombs.
Characters
Sakamoto is one of the world’s top players of BTOOOM!, an online FPS whose distinguishing feature is that your only weapons are bombs (of various types : contact-triggered, timed, etc.). The downside to his virtual fame is that, well, he’s a bit of a complete loser : unemployed for two years and spending all his time in front of his computer. Bonus points for verbally abusing his poor mother, who has the audacity to keep trying to find him a job, any job. (He’s got his eye on an opening at the game company producing BTOOOM!, but if he really believes he has a chance, he’s deluding himself.)
One day, he wakes up stranded on a tropical island, without any clue as to how he got there. (An eventual flashback shows that MIB seem to be involved, always a bad sign). His starting inventory : his grocery shopping from just before he got abducted, a starting set of 8 timer bombs, and a jewel incrusted into his hand that seems to work a bit like the sonar feature in BTOOOM! (except a lot less accurate).
The first dude he meets on the island’s beach never bothers to introduce himself, and point blank refuses to explain what’s happening to the n00b. Instead, he just attacks our protagonist with impact-triggered bombs.
Later on, our hero stumbles on another participant, a girl washing herself in a small lake. I suspect she’s his briefly-mentioned in-game wife, although if this show has any sense of humour that was probably the earlier dude. Anyway, she doesn’t even get a line of dialogue yet ; the next-episode preview suggests it’s entirely devoted to her backstory. (Are we having rotating point-of-view characters ?)
Production Values
Perfectly alright, although the girl’s character design is very fanservice-y indeed. Let’s hope she doesn’t poke anyone’s eye out.
What did I think of it ?
How can you hate a show so refreshingly honest about its nature that it’s called “BTOOOM!” ? This is a thoroughly dumb premise that’s fodder for nicely tactical action sequences and lots of explosions. The unsubtle bits of social satire aren’t unwelcome, either.
Ontological mysteries can often get a bit silly, and with only 12 episodes for an still-ongoing manga I doubt we’ll be getting many answers, but so far I’m tentatively enjoying the ride.
