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Btooom! App Producer: Anime Gets Season 2 If App Ranks #5 in Japan

By Egan Loo

Masato Hayashi, the producer of Asobimo's Btooom! Online game app, promised at the end of the game's unveiling event on Monday that if the game ranks in the top 5 of Japan's app sales chart, the second season of the Btooom! anime will be made.

The multiplayer smartphone game of Junya Inoue's Btooom! manga is dubbed a "stealth bomber action" game, where the mechanics center on bombs, the one weapon available to players. The game is focused on moving in concealment, and throwing bombs at enemies before they see you. Players are armed with the "BIM" bombs seen in the manga, and there are a variety of BIMs that have appeared in the story, but also types that are original to the game.

The multiplayer game allows players to go alone or team up with other players to corner targets.

The game is free-to-play, and is available for iOS and Android devices in Japan as of Tuesday.

Inoue launched a new manga chronicling the game's development in Shinchosha's Monthly Comic @Bunch magazine in June.

Btoom! centers around Sakamoto, a NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training) young man and a top-ranked player in the online combat game Btooom! One day, he wakes up on a tropical island without remembering how he got there. He sees a figure in the distance and asks for help. However, the figure responds by throwing something at Ryūta — a "BIM" bomb.

Inoue launched the series in Shinchosha's Weekly Comic Bunch magazine in 2009, and then transferred it to Monthly Comic @Bunch in 2011. Shinchosha shipped the manga's 22nd compiled book volume on January 7. The manga entered its final arc in April 2014. Yen Press is publishing the manga in English, and it released the 16th volume on February 21.

Kotono Watanabe directed a 12-episode anime adaptation of the series in 2012. Crunchyroll streamed the anime as it aired, and Sentai Filmworks released the series on Blu-ray and DVD in 2013.

Source: Inside Games via Yaraon!