Battle Royale: The Novel

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The book is not well written. It feels like a lumbering engine. Doing what it has to do mechanically but without any real finesse. Now maybe that's caused by a less than gifted translation from the original Japanese. I'll give it the benefit of the the doubt... Dieses Buch ist sehr realistisch, obgleich es zur Zeit der Jahrtausendwende in der Vergangenheit spielt. Es ist eine Situation, die sich jeder vorstellen könnte. Es gibt auch heute in unserer Welt genug Diktaturen und oftmals wissen wir gar nicht, was dort vor sich geht. Wer weiß, was in dieser Welt alles passiert? Authentisch wird es auch für den Leser, denn jeder von uns ist oder war einmal Schüler und weiß, wie es ist, wenn man in einer Klassengemeinschaft ist. Again and again and again, we're told how this character or that character or somesuch other character just couldn't believe that their class was chosen, that their class was here, that they were really playing, that they were up for it and killing each other. Again and again. Every perspective change we have to go through the same 7-stage process. Every conversation covers the same ground. Does it make me a terrible person that I just wanted them to start killing each other already?? Just to stop the horrible repetition. Almost nine years later, things in my home city have gotten worse, but we will never forget, never forgive. Whenever I think of this book, I picture the author sitting down with a piece of paper and making a list of dozens of violent, unusual ways to kill a person. Poison! Jumping off a cliff! Lot of guns! Strangulation! An exploding head! Falling off a roof! Splitting open a head with a machete like it is a ripe watermelon!

Good, Tom (October 7, 2007). "Book review: Battle Royale (Novel)". The Journal of the Lincoln Heights Literary Society . Retrieved March 28, 2012.Each Battle Royale student is fitted with an explosive metal collar identified as the Guadalcanal-22. Its likely namesake is the Pacific island of Guadalcanal, the focus of a decisive battle between the United States and Japan during World War II. This collar will explode, killing the wearer, if: I had watched the BR movies years ago, but reading the novel version of it still manages to provide new insight to different subjects: human nature, freedom and survival etc. I am going to compare this to The Hunger Games, though not because I want to make a statement about how Collins plagiarised - she probably didn't and, even if she did, no one's going to prove it either way. Their similarities just make them good books to use for a comparison: fight to the death, teenagers, isolated arena, etc. The Hunger Games, as I'm sure you all know, focuses on Katniss and her life, the other characters - both good and bad - are seen solely through her eyes. In Battle Royale, the perspective changes frequently (I liked it but it may infuriate some) and looks at many different types of people. Shogo Kawada – A transfer student from Kobe that is one year older than the rest of the class and covered in scars. He is a loner and, unbeknownst to his classmates, won the Program the previous year. He teams up with Nanahara and Nakagawa with a plan to escape the island together. Harvey, Dennis (March 26, 2010). "Toronto Film Review: 'The Belko Experiment' ". Variety . Retrieved December 19, 2016.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique: In the end, only four students remain: Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa, Shogo Kawada, and antagonist Kazuo Kiriyama. There is a car chase and shootout between the three main characters and Kazuo. Kiriyama is killed, and soon Kawada succumbs to his wounds and dies, as well. Heeding Kawada's advice to "show no mercy," Shuya and Noriko board a nearby ship, kill the soldiers on board, and escape to the mainland, where they become fugitives and try to the reach the US as refugees. People are killed right off the bat and the book never lets up. I had a pretty good idea who would survive based on who got the most time on screen but the journey was well worth it. Kazuo and Mitsuko both needed their hash settled from the opening bell. Yes, I teared up several times but I didn’t actually cry until the very end. The last two sentences. After everything I went through with these characters, I just found them so amazing and touching.The yearning for freedom stubbornly refuses to die, the desire to take charge of our own fates stubbornly refuses to die, imagination and free will also stubbornly refuse to die, that's why we must fight for them. Now no one responded. Everyone remained frozen, like figures in a still photograph. But—Shuya noticed—Shogo continued chewing his gum. His expression hadn't changed. But Shuya thought he'd caught a glimpse of a faint grin flash across his face. Coming of Age: Battle Royale at 20, an exclusive new 42-minute documentary about the legacy of Battle Royale

And still after all those scary things there were some really touching moments too, when you get to see love and kindness are as important traits of a human being as fear and cruelty. Hunter, Rob (September 11, 2016). "Review: The Tournament". Film School Rejects . Retrieved December 19, 2016. Takami describes the characters as possibly all being "kind of alike", being "all the same" despite differing appearances and hobbies, and being static characters. Takami used these descriptions in contrast to the manga adaptation he wrote, with Masayuki Taguchi illustrating, which he believes has a more diverse and well-developed cast. [9] A busload of Japanese teenagers is kidnapped and dumped off on an island, where they are forced to fight to the death until one student remains, all in the name of The Program. Which of the 42 students will survive? They tried to believe in their classmates. They must have believed that if we could all get together, then we might end up being saved. We should commend them for that. We couldn't do that.”

The "Program" is officially a military research program. At the end of the story Kinpatsu Sakamochi states that the Program is actually a means of terrorizing the population, with the idea that routinely witnessing such atrocities will cause people to become too paranoid and divided to stage an organized rebellion. The novel and manga Battle Royale takes place in an alternate timeline, according to the book's prologue, where Japan is a police state, known as the Republic of Greater East Asia. Once a year, randomly selected classes of middle-school students are forced to take arms against one another until only one student in each class remains. The program was created, supposedly, as a form of military research, though the outcome of each battle is publicized on local television. The first battle in the series took place in 1947, and the novel follows a battle that takes place in May 1997. a b "Viz to Release All You Need is Kill Graphic Novel, Battle Royale Essay Book". Anime News Network. July 18, 2013 . Retrieved July 19, 2013. The Correct Way to Make Battle Royale: Birthday Version, a new version of the original instructional video made to celebrate Kinji Fukasaku’s birthday Only, UGH. In case you couldn't guess from the eleventy-million ranty-sarcastic status updates, I didn't enjoy this book. It was not awesome. It was awful. AWFUL.

Eventually, halfway through the third day, only Shogo, Shuya, Noriko, and Kiriyama remain, with Kiriyama dead set on hunting down the trio. After a frantic car chase, Kiriyama is finally gunned down. Still, Shuya and Noriko are held at gunpoint by Shogo, who taunts them over being so naive as to trust anyone in the Program: the collars record gunshots and Shuya and Noriko flatlining. At the Television Critics Association winter press tour on January 13, 2013, CW president Mark Pedowitz stated "At this time, we're not planning to do anything with Battle Royale." [26] He clarified that the reports stemmed from one phone call he made to see if the rights to the book were available and also noted that his interest in the novel predated the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. [27] Reception [ edit ] I love this concept. I could spend years dissecting what I or anyone I know would do in a similar scenario. It is endlessly intriguing to me. I question why school kids were used and not (say) University students. Killing off children in a novel - by the dozen - was quite gratuitous. Perversely, this story would probably work better as a movie than a novel because the gory death descriptions would probably not appear so sadistic (I have not seen the movie BTW).Just when I was reading Battle Royale at 12:00 in the morning, I learnt from Facebook that police had been rounding up protesters and ready to arrest them at the other part of the city I live in.