Btooom!


Btooom! is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Junya Inoue. It has been serialized in Weekly Comic Bunch since 2009 and later in Monthly Comic Bunch, with chapters collected into 26 tankōbon volumes as of 2018. Btooom! follows the adventures of Ryōta Sakamoto, an unemployed and isolated young man who is one of the world's top players in the titular video game. After Ryōta is nominated to participate in the real-life version of the game, he becomes trapped inside it and meets his love interest Himiko, who was his in-game wife. With the help of their fellow players, Ryōta and Himiko must find a way to return home.
An anime adaptation covering the first 50 chapters of the manga was produced by Madhouse and aired in Japan on Tokyo MX from October 4 to December 20, 2012 and was streamed with English subtitles by Crunchyroll. The manga series was licensed for an English-language release in North America by Yen Press. The anime series has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks for an English-language release in North America.

Plot

Ryōta Sakamoto is an unemployed 22-year-old young man who lives with his mother Yukie. He is one of the world's top players of the combat video game called Btooom! One day, he awakes in what appears to be a tropical island, though he does not remember how or why he has been transported there. While wandering around, Ryōta sees someone and calls out for help. The stranger responds by throwing a bomb at him. Ryōta soon realizes that his life is in danger and that he has somehow been trapped in a real-life version of his favorite game. In the game Ryōta meets Himiko, who is another Btooom! player — and Ryōta's in-game wife.
As the series progresses during Iida's investigation with the government agents like Matthew Percier, along with the help from Ryōta's step-father and step-uncle Hisanobu and Mitamura, it is revealed that the developer of Btooom!, Tyrannos Japan, has been associated with the terrorist organization called Schwaritz Foundation, in an attempt to use the players as their test subjects to conquer the entire world and getting rid of the evidence of their exposed crimes they are currently committing.
It also contains two separate endings on Chapter 121, a good ending, and a bad ending.

Characters

Main characters

; /

Opponents

;Nobutaka Oda
;Ken'ya Uesugi
;Kaguya
;Kiyoshi Taira

Other characters

Media

Manga

Junya Inoue began publishing Btooom! in Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch in 2009. In 2011 the manga was moved to the new Monthly Comic @ Bunch magazine, which launched on January 21, 2011, after Weekly Comic Bunch ceased publication on August 27, 2010. It was announced in the May 2014 issue of Monthly Comic @ Bunch, released on March 20, that the manga would enter its final arc in the June issue, released on April 21, 2014. Inoue revealed on Twitter that the series will end with the release of its 26th volume, publishing its final chapter in the May issue of Bunch in March 2018. In an unusual twist, the author made two unique endings, providing "the dark" and "the light" versions of the ending, so that the readers are be able to choose what protagonist Ryota Sakamoto will do at a pivotal point in the manga's story.
The series is published in tankōbon form by Shinchosha, and has been licensed for release in North America by Yen Press, who began releasing it in spring 2013.

Season 2

With the BTOOOM! manga ending in 2018, a new BTOOOM! manga spinoff called BTOOOM! U-18 was announced in February 2018. The manga spinoff will be written by Hiroki Ito, who is known for Ouroboros and Impossibility Defense. The name U-18 could potentially mean a real-world reference to a German submarine that was sold back in 2011. The new manga will be a prequel or prologue to the main story and will launch in the same magazine issue that features the original manga's light ending.

Volume list

The series has been collected into twenty-six tankōbon volumes as of February 2018. All twenty-six volumes have been republished in English, with the final volume published in December 2019. The final chapter was released on March 20, 2018, and the final volume was released on August 9, 2018.

Anime

In June 2012, it was announced that the manga will be adapted into an anime television series by Madhouse, director Kotono Watanabe, and scriptwriter Yōsuke Kuroda. The 12-episode series premiered in Japan on Tokyo MX from October 4 to December 20, 2012 and was streamed with English subtitles by Crunchyroll in North America, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and South Africa. The anime has been licensed for a 2013 home video release by Sentai Filmworks in North America. The opening theme song is "No pain, No game" by Nano and the closing theme song is "Aozora" by May'n. The anime covers the first 50 chapters of the manga.

Game

In late February 2017 the BTOOOM! game produced by Masato Hayashi was launched and immediately shot to the top of the charts for free game apps. Despite early success, the game stayed in Japan's top five only for several weeks, and by April 2017 Goboiano reported that the app had “fallen below the top 50”. The game was last updated in July 2017 and never received an English port for Android and iOS/iPhone.
Also called Btooom Online, originally developed in 2016, it was a battle royale game, predating PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite. The original BTOOOM! manga itself also features a fictional battle royale video game. The manga was in turn inspired by the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale.

Reception

Theron Martin from ANN reviewed the first few episodes by making comparisons with Sword Art Online which has similar plot theme but differs in style and takes a "darker, grittier, and entirely more visceral approach" as well as displaying combat "ingenuity" rather than SAO's "powermongering approach". Despite the similarities, Btooom! has fairly typical weaponry that produces "a novel twist which dramatically shapes the strategic moves of the players in interesting ways" and the character choices that sway the audience's impressions of them. Overall, he praised the consistency of thrilling action scenes, the efforts on developing the protagonist and its effective dramatic, intense moments.
Even though the anime series became popular internationally, the BTOOOM! Blu-ray/DVD discs only sold 338 copies in Japan.
At the beginning of November, the company Televisa through BitMe announced the premiere of 3 new series to its program bar, Among those series was Btooom, the same series will be released on November 28, 2019 being dubbed 12 episodes in Latin Spanish and distributed by its video game channel and anime bitme by a large part of South America