Btooom! – 04

Kira Kousuke, who murdered then raped three women, is deposited on the island with his lawyer Soichi and his father. When his father goes into an abusive range, Kousuke snaps and plants an implosion bomb on him, killing him. Soichi runs off, but Sakamoto and Taira bump into Kousuke, still standing over the corpse. They run too, but Taira sprains his ankle. Sakamoto draws him away and learns that Kousuke is an experienced Btooom! player, but not as good as him. When a bomb blast makes him concuss his head against a rock, Sakamoto forgets he’s in the real world, and nearly kills Kousuke before snapping out of it. Instead he ties him up and leaves him a candy bar, taking his bombs and supplies.

We consider ourselves lucky and blessed that we had good parents who not only taught us about right and wrong, but were also loving and caring, and didn’t use us as mini punching bags. Kira Kousuke wasn’t so lucky: his dad is human garbage. Well, was. While it isn’t solely his dad’s fault his son ended up a homicidal psychopath – genetics and neuroscience also played important roles – Pop certainly didn’t help matters with his parenting style of “when in doubt, crush your kid’s junk”. Some people back home were clearly so disgusted with him, his rotten son, and the snivelling lawyer, they voted to send the lot of them to the island to kill each other. This drives home the point that everyone on the island were extremely loathed by some of all of their peers.

Voting for someone to die is a lot different from pulling the trigger, especially if you assume the voting is just a game.  Himiko’s crime was abandoning her friends to a gang of rapists – which isn’t technically a crime, but definitely earned her loathing; while Kousuke did terrible awful things, but did them because he is quite literally a psychopath. Who knows why Taira was chosen, but the reasons are as diverse as the people, so for all we know one of his coworkers didn’t like how he finished the coffee without making more. Maybe that video game company got sick of Sakamoto’s applications and had him shipped off. Lastly, we’re curious about Sakamoto’s “trance” in which he acted like everything was a game, much like Kousuke. Was this incident unique to his head injury? Will it happen again, causing him to kill?

Rating: 6 (Good)

Car Cameo: In the cold open we see Japan’s favorite squad car, the Toyota Crown GRS180.