Btooom! Manga Quarterly Review 3

Seems it’s American Thanksgiving /and/ Google’s also reduced the damages of their recent change by adding a new ‘display density’ function. But, I LIVE IN CANADA AND THANKSGIVING IS GONE, and I DON’T TRUST GOOGLE ANYMORE AFTER THAT STUPID, STUPID CHANGE IN THE FIRST PLACE!

My face this week:

I’d have a lot to say, but it’s been like a month since I read chapter 39, and I hardly remember anything that happened. My notes don’t seem to help either. They go something like this:

– i think this guy is like insane
– hmm so ryota’s really anttisocial isnt he
– ok so himiko landed on the island with three other men and [eighty words of plot summary removed]
– yeah im pretty sure this guys’ insane
– oh so the laweyre guy (check who he is later) takes sitmulants because if he doesnt he’ll obviously collapse from mental damage or w/e
– maybe their the pills the guy at the beggining were eating?
– yep the manga confirms this guy’s insane, delete the previous nots

Still going to harp on about Tyrannos’s ultimate goals. Btooom!’s in-game radar systems function much differently from how real-life radar systems function – something Tyrannos may wish to fix, after seeing how Ryota took advantage of that situation. Although Ryota may not have been adept at using real-world radar systems, he is the most proficient Btooom!-radar system user on the island.

Perhaps Tyrannos is merely a front – maybe they don’t even want to develop that game. Their observations seem more psychological in nature – Battle Royale-esque observations of human relations straining under… stress, or the strange calmness that occurs after something horrible happens, such as when Taira’s fingers were cut off (though I doubt this is what actually happens in real life). You’ve got to feel sorry for the guy – nothing ever happens to Ryota, but Taira suffers a permanent injury every five chapters :(

I’m not sure why I included the picture. I suppose it was to bring to attention the question (not an exclamation nor a declaration, it’s a question, question, question time) of who exactly decided that you will be of use luter, motherfaker, ‘gator.

Anyways, the nurse girl (more like old lady) was all like ‘man, I hate men and you should never trust them!’ She shouldn’t be distrusting men; rather, she should be distrusting all companions. After all, wouldn’t the same thing happen if she had a woman companion? Yet, perhaps there was more of a scar because of the doctor’s… ‘interactions’ with her. It’d be interesting to see what would’ve happened if the person who betrayed her were a woman, though.

It seems like the author’s drawing Himiko so much more ~moé~ly after she became Ryota’s ally, compared to before. Honestly, I think having fanservice of a rape victim on covers of volumes is a horrible idea, but maybe they were purposefully doing it for shock and metairony, or whatever hipsters decide to call it these days. Battle Royale incorporated heavy sexual elements in its story, because that’s what humans degenerate into. I’m not sure if Btooom!’s incorporation of these elements is passable; the entire thing seems woefully shallow. I mean, Btooom! doesn’t even explore her assaulters’ rationalizations nor mentalities. Then again, I could just be holding Battle Royale up on a pedestal (you see, I haven’t actually read the thing).

The doctor being sent back into the game actually /strengthens/ Ryota’s companions’ bonds. If, say, Himiko thought she could leave the island and all the players behind by simply collecting seven chips, she would probably kill Ryota – after all, nobody’s watching! Nobody will ever know! However, now that Himiko knows that she’ll be sent back to the island /anyways/, she’ll definitely wait to find another way out.

tl;dr: A Comparison of Various Scythe-Based Characters: