This episode pretty much boils down to a trust-building exercise between our heroes. So there isn’t really all that much to say. There’s just not a lot of commentary you can make about people being chased by lizards. So anyway, I’ll just get to the notes and observations…
Plot summary: Our heroes try to make their escape from the murderous komodo dragons (yes, you heard me), but Taira gets his leg bitten while trying to defend an unconscious Himiko. After a few close calls, Ryuta and Taira stumble upon an abandoned building, and the former scares off their predators using one of Himiko’s BIMs. When Himiko regains consciousness, she and Ryuta work together to treat Taira’s wound, but she maintains her distrust of both men. Ryuta then question her on how she’s gotten all those BIMs and supplies. Before the discussion can go anywhere, however, a radar detects Himiko, forcing our gallant hero to play a decoy in order to protect the person he so suspects.
Notes:
• Ryuta quickly finds out looted BIMs won’t activate if the original owner hasn’t died. In all likelihood, this must be tied to the chip on the back of the players’ hands. Even so, how does a BIM know who’s activating it? How can it tell that the right person’s thumb is on it? I’m also surprised Ryuta hadn’t found out sooner about these limitations. I mean, wouldn’t you test a new BIM out and understand the ins and outs of your new weapon in case you ever need to use it? Ah well, I guess he didn’t think of that.
• These guys seem to lack common sense. Taira probably doesn’t have any disinfectant on hand, but it doesn’t even appear as though he’s tried to wash it in the stream. Plus, why hasn’t he torn out a piece of cloth and wrapped it up? Well, the anime tries to wave this off by saying that our heroes simply don’t have time to do so. Apparently, there are even more komodo dragons in the jungle, and they’ve been following our heroes (very slowly). I just like how we haven’t seen a single animal life form on the island up until the last minute of the previous episode, but now there seems to be an entire colony of komodo dragons just waiting to pounce.
Despite this, I just don’t think it’d take very long to rip a strip of cloth from one of their pieces of clothing to tie around Taira’s wounded leg. Plus, I’m not sure walking in the river is the best of plans.
• It turns out Taira was a jerk in real life too. Maybe not to his family, but certainly to his co-workers. No likeable characters left.
• Haha, c’mon, don’t tell me that Taira’s BIM is a slow-moving, homing bomb. That doesn’t sound like it’d work on anybody but dumb lizards.
• I love how Ryuta and Taira managed to sync up their radars so that they ended up canceling each other out. What a coincidence! Or perhaps they’re greater bros than we realize!
• Look at that!
A whole colony of stalking komodo dragons!
• Even sadder, Taira’s BIMs can only take out a single dragon at a time. Hooboy. These players are definitely not given an equal chance to win the game. I don’t see how someone like Taira is supposed to compete with everyone else. Oh, I’m not trying to imply that the game should be fair or anything. It’s a murderous game in the jungle; I’m sure the creators couldn’t give a shit about fairness. It’s just hilarious how hard they shafted Taira. Old, fat and slow? Here, have this weakass BIM!
• Ryuta gets around his inability to use other people’s BIMs by making the unconscious Himiko activate one of her own BIM… okay, sure, but again, how does a BIM know who’s activating it? What if you happen to be wearing gloves? Could you do it with your toes? I dunno, I’m just throwing things out there because the idea seems outlandish to me.
• Ah, so there have been other BTOOOM! events in the past…
• Duuuuuuuumb:
Also, we should all thank Madhouse for recapping us on last week’s scumbaggery. Obviously, I didn’t get a good enough look at Himiko’s camel toe. Good thing we get to see twice!
• Oh Ryuta, Ryuta, Ryuta… when a girl calls you a pervert, it isn’t a good idea to touch them.
• Where did Ryuta get the bucket? If Himiko’s so distrustful of these guys, why hadn’t she left in the middle of the night or something? Where did Ryuta get that flask? Is it alcohol in the flask? C’mon anime, give us some details, man.
• Amazing — the creators of the game are keeping a very close eye on our heroes. They must have cameras installed throughout the jungle. They’re all crazy-looking (obviously), and they’re collecting data of some sort. It’ll be super dumb if they’re just collecting said data to improve their BTOOOM! video game though. Honestly, data for the government or some massive conspiracy, I can at least suspend my disbelief for.
• What’s even funnier is that they’ve spent all this money on developing actual weapons, kidnapping countless people, making sure nobody in the company leaks any information to the press or the authorities, fueling and flying a plane constantly to some remote island to airdrop supplies without alerting anyone, set up extensive surveillance throughout the island, etc, buuuuuut… surveillance is being done in a dinky office by a guy with three shabby flatscreen monitors.
• I’m still hoping that our characters are all just stuck in a game and they just don’t realize it.
Oh boy. I’m really not even sure what to say. The burning gas gambit was halfway interesting, everything else was dreary and/or silly. I nearly laughed out loud when Taira was suddenly all like, Ow, it hurts now. Ok, adrenaline and all that, but how long had it been? Also, don’t know if you watched the next ep preview or not, but it was cringe-worthy. Looks like next ep Ryuta is gonna find out that Himiko is his e-waifu. Oh what compelling drama awaits us.
Also, I love how somehow only Himiko was detected by the radar. Silly girls, letting themselves get detected by radar. Doesn’t she know how to mind-read everyone else and radar-cancel?
Wasn’t it because she was moving when the others weren’t? They were having a conversation and she was gesticulating, but I didn’t care enough to move the video back and see who was moving right at that point, plus I was slightly dismayed that hand gestures count as movement as well.
At first I thought that the bite had some sort of poison – that’s the stuff that tends to hurt a ton and often comes with time lag. The show didn’t mention it, but Wikipedia seems to agree with me.
I only started watching this recently, so episode 2 (mm rape) is still fresh in my mind. I doubt anything that’s coming can beat that. It’s an enjoyable show, but whoa, the bs that anime often has no problem coming up with…
I think with a show like this, it just makes up the rules as it goes along.
Yeah, it probably was her gesticulating. I wasn’t trying to say that the other two performed radar cancelling and that’s why they weren’t detected. Whatever the case the writers decided to make Himiko the one that gets them detected and I find that amusing.
You’re also probably correct about the poison. My issue is less with the feasibility and more with the execution. If this was the case, as you said, there was no indication, they just talked about sterilisation, nothing else.
Agreed, it’s an enjoyable show. I find train-wrecks like this more entertaining than mediocrity like Robotics;Notes or Little Busters. I spent a good portion of this episode just chuckling to myself at the fact that they devoted an entire episode to them being chased by Komodo Dragons.
Hahaha, delete away the shame. Also, agreed about him explaining the bomb despite it working differently to how he’s used to. Btooom is already so self-contradictory at this point it’s laughable.
What counts as move? What doesn’t count as move?
The rule has been stupid ever since their meeting with Kira.
I know I wasn’t wrong when I labeled that one as logic fail.
In my opinion, however, he shouldn’t have told us that there’s no wind in the actual game. Ryuta’s ability to survive thus far only makes sense because we assume he’s tapping into l33t gaming skills. Since there’s no wind in the actual though, how does Ryuta know how to cope with it in real life? Why does he then go on to explain the mechanics of it as if it had been a part of a game? I mean, he goes all, “These BIMs are effective in so-and-so situations!”
Eh, I hastily deleted the episode from my hard drive.
I have complained about the bomb’s unfairness since several episode prior. This episode only strengthen that fact.
Also, the villains!
Not only the ring leader is Dr. Slump, his partner is a corpse dude who probably hasn’t slept ever since the game started, because the fat ass won’t change shift with him.
I know it, E Minor, this show is not supposed to be taken seriously!
Let’s treat it as Ixion Saga from now on.
I am treating it like Ixion Saga! It’s not my fault BTOOOM! continues to be all rapey and angsty.
“It’ll be super dumb if they’re just collecting said data to improve their BTOOOM! video game though.”
Huh…
…Would they really take -stupid- to the next level like that?
Or what if the surveillance is so shabby (that did make me laugh) because it’s one of the dev team for this virtual reality game watching the things play out?
Oops. But see what happened there? I suddenly used one of my gray cells to think. That kind of exercise isn’t allowed when writing for BTOOOM!.
Well, this is the most plausible scenario. And if they were really collecting data for their game or something, it wouldn’t so egregious in this case.
That’s true, and it would make for a good twist, but I don’t think the writers are smart enough for that. Honestly.
Would make for a good plot to a short story or novella, though.
Also, I realized just now that I can’t think of a single episode that hasn’t mentioned/alluded to rape or sexual violence to some degree out of this entire series. Maybe the first episode?
Maybe the third episode when he meets Taira?