Battle Royale Review

Hello, one of the new teen fads at everybody I know is into as The Hunger Games series written by Suzanne Collins. The idea of 24 people fighting to the death in order to gain some sort of benefit towards their own moral standpoint appears to be an original concept. But after closer inspection you can see that the main core ideas within the hunger games were taken from a novel known as Battle Royale. (As a side note I will not be referring to the release of the movies which in my opinion do not do the source material justice)

 

The original Battle Royale source material Original writer Koushun Takami in 1999.The original manuscript was very successful but it had several grammatical errors as it had been poorly translated version of the manuscript. Recently the manuscript was re-mastere was given a new lick of paint, so that is the copy I have been reading. I’ve also read the manga series which is pretty good althoughthe grammatical errors are annoying and dull the experience .

 

 

Now time for the plot breakdown, the story is set in an alternative 1997 with Japan has become a republic and all outside influence has been banned by the government. The main setting for the story is the island Okishima which has been specially prepared by removing all native islanders from the island so that the government have control. The main plot of the story is that a class of 42 students is abducted by the government and forced to take part in “the project” which is a constructed by the government in order to show an example of the power the government holds over the citizens of Japan. There are a lot of political undertones within the first few chapters of the novel which kind of sparked my interest as it has the direct link with the militaristic government style that is such a prominent feature of The Hunger Games. Another direct comparison you can draw between the hunger games and Battle Royale is that the number of students and the number of tributes are exactly the same and also the Erin one person left setting (coincidence, I think not) with such a large cast of characters it is incredible that most characters have depth to them such as getting to know their character and their plans are on the island. I will not be spoiling the plot of this novel because this is seen as being a modern classic novel (and yes I have written essays on this in the past) and for you to truly understand the novel read the paperback version first and then read the manga (don’t bother with the movies, they are low quality imitations and do not express the depth that this book contains)

 

 

 

The book in itself interesting from several standpoints first off on the front page it contains a map of the island laid out in grid square format (similar to the map that the characters will use within the plot) it also contains a list of every character that is contained within the book which is very helpful because with 42 students roaming the island it can get pretty confusing about who’s who. Another thing of note is that this book is very large the exact page count is 647 pages, the chapters in themselves are really short with 79 chapters in total plus epilogue.

 

My personal opinion is that action within our lives this book is the perfect companion to when we want a bit of dark horror action within our lives. There is a lot of talk about how the horror anime genre is increasing in size and personally I would love to see this be adapted into an anime or even a Western-style movie (technically it has adapted into Western-style media with the release of the hunger games but I’m not going to split hairs when it comes to source material) it is definitely worth a read or even as a Christmas present to yourself because after all images can scar you in a certain way but when you read it and use your imagination to visualise the amount of core that is contained within this novel it can be seen as one of the most violent texts within modern times.

I hope you enjoyed this review of the Battle Royale re-mastered edition, with Christmas coming up I will hopefully be able to write more articles for you all (Tokyo Godfathers, the quintessential Christmas anime movie) I will also be explaining my manga collection because to be honest I have more than enough manga to do a advent calendar.

Regards Fiona Scott