Btooom! is about a young man named Ryota who puts his life on hold to get a job for his favorite game company. All of the sudden he finds himself in a real life version of the game.
The story did not feel right to me. In one scene they show Ryota lashing out at his mom and throwing things at her for asking him to get a job. Then they show him being very against any kind of violence with a stranger trying to kill him. Also with the bombs it should not have taken Ryota so long to figure out that the bomb had a timer on it when he used the exact same bombs in the game. Also after he realized that they had a timer he should not have been unsure how to time it. It all felt very forced. The change should have shocked him some, but it totally changed his character which did not make sense.
Ryota’s face looks a little too much like Light’s for my liking.
Between the preview of the next episode and hints from the episode it looks like the reason that the people are having to play a real life version of the game is for penance. They have done something wrong so they are having to do this to atone. It looks like what they did to get into the game is going to happen to them in return. I do not know why fighting for their lives is going to make the past better, but it is fiction. I wish there was a deeper or at least more original reasoning behind all of this.
Overall the animation for Btooom! was quite nice, but the story kept changing the way the character acts. I hope that they stay more consistent with the characters in the future.
