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Hunting down the true origins of the battle royale craze

From Fortnite to Japanese films to one novelist’s sleep deprivation

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The battle royale genre is a black hole from which no franchise is safe. Since PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and DayZ popularized the genre, Fortnite ’s Battle Royale mode catapulted it into the zeitgeist, Apex Legends proved the format could adapt, and Tetris 99 extended the philosophy beyond shooters, major gaming studios are turning to “last player standing” gameplay hooks in order to build a player base.

As the genre continues to dominate attention, transfixing players with its last-man-standing hook, the origins of the battle royale become blurrier and blurrier. How did we get here? The battle royale genre didn’t start with PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds or Minecraft survival mods or The Hunger Games . The seed of the idea — as far as old-fashioned, local library research can determine — lie with a novel that got adapted into a manga that in turn got adapted into a cult classic film starring Beat Takeshi: Battle Royale . But the book has its own origin story, too.

Author Koushun Takami released Battle Royale in 1999, a refined version of a story he submitted to a writing contest in 1997. (He didn’t win.) A year after publication, the novel received official manga and film adaptations, as well as condemnation from the National Diet for its horrific and graphic content.

Takami’s Battle Royale is dark — darker than the murder-heavy games that it inspired. When the novel starts, Japan is under a fascist government that wants to crush any potential rebellion by any means necessary. In order to instill that fear in the citizenry, the government enacts the “Battle Experiment No. 68 Program,” which calls for a group of high school students to be transported to a remote location, given random items and weapons, and thanks to explosive collars latched around their necks, pitted against each other until only one is left alive.

The perverse genius of the dystopian competition’s rules is the obvious seed from which the battle royale craze grew. Game developers cribbed tons of rules and regulations from the story, from growing dead zones that would instantly trigger the explosives in the students’ collars, to the random nature by which students are equipped with starting weaponry. (In the novel, a poor student gets stuck with a boomerang when the program starts. Anyone who’s dropped into Apex Legends and found nothing but helmets and Mozambiques can relate.)

But how did Takami begin to imagine the horrific Battle Experiment No. 68 Program? In a 2009 edition of Battle Royale , the author wrote an interview/afterword hybrid as a kind of goodbye to the mega-popular story. He wanted to say everything he could about his work so that he could finally leave it behind and start on another story. (Sadly, Takami has still not released any new work since Battle Royale .)

Takami originally wanted his story to be a detective horror novel, but couldn’t make the structure work. Like many artists, however, he was able to get inspiration from a somewhat unlikely place: a hallucination brought on by lack of sleep.

I was lying in my futon, half asleep, half awake, and I got the mental image of a teacher from a school drama I saw on TV long ago. He said, “All right class, listen up.” [...] “Now today, I’m going to have you kill each other!” The image of him grinning as he spoke was so vivid, I laughed, but was also terrified. [...] And with just that, I knew I had something to write about.

Battle Royale blossomed out of that mental image. Once Takami knew that the story was going to revolve around classmates killing each other, discussions with his friends revealed to him that he’d basically reimagined the pro wrestling battle royal (or royal rumble, if you watch the WWE.) These matches have been an integral part of professional wrestling entertainment for as long as pro wrestling has existed , and they were (and continue to be) huge affairs, with upwards of 20 combatants entering the ring before being eliminated one by one.

What really interested Takami about this concept was the social aspect of a battle royal; the way former enemies could come together to overcome a superior opponent, and the way that friends and partners would be forced to betray each other for their own glory. This, more than anything else, is what makes the book so horrifying: the fact that the rules necessitated betraying someone important to you in order to ensure your own survival.

Takami struggled with this realization for a while, especially because, as he says in his afterward, he intended for the book about children murdering each other to be a light-hearted romp. Since he was a pro wrestling fan, Takami wanted there to be an air of sportsmanship surrounding the whole affair. But he kept coming back to the element of betrayal, of how there is, in his words, a huge difference between being double-crossed by your friend and pinned for the enjoyment of a crowd, and being double-crossed by your friend and shot dead.

The level of distrust for your fellow man wouldn’t even be comparable. I had arrived at the realization that it wasn’t sportsmanlike at all. And I think it was at that point that it became possible for me to write this story.

His inspirations also extended outside of the ring into real-world post-boom Japan. Takami grew up in the 1960s, when large groups of revolutionaries in Japan fought back against police brutality. After an economic boom, the revolutionary instinct largely vanished, either because of laziness or, again in Takami’s words, because they realized that throwing Molotov cocktails wouldn’t change anything.

This reality, combined with inspirations from his favorite Stephen King novel, 1979’s The Long Walk , about a walking contest organized by a totalitarian government, helped inspire the fascist universe of Battle Royale . This is a world in which “even if everyone were against it, no one could say it out loud. That’s why nothing changes.”

Given everything Takami has said about his story, it seems like a more apt video game adaptation of the original Battle Royale novel would be less like Fortnite, and more like the Danganronpa series: each game in the series features a large group of students forced to murder each other, and the games are built around mistrust and betrayal. Sportsmanship and honor have no place in the world of Danganronpa , in the same way that they have no place in the world of Battle Royale . Sure, the Danganronpa games have built a cult audience, but the series isn’t a worldwide phenomenon like many battle royale games are.

Danganronpa and Fortnite can each serve as representatives for the varied nature of Takami’s influences. From his interests in psychological horror and Stephen King novels, we get the mistrust and intrigue of Danganronpa. From his interest in professional wrestling, we get the sportsmanlike mayhem of Fortnite, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, and countless others. Though Takami knew he’d have to throw the concept of sportsmanship out the window to give his story emotional weight, game developers don’t really have that same restriction.

That said, up until now there hasn’t been a game that seems in line with Takami’s full vision, a game that truly embodies the spirit of Battle Royale and everything that influenced it. Perhaps the next great battle royale game will have a sort of turncoat mode, where a squad member has a hidden agenda of betrayal and deceit, tearing the team apart from the inside as it attempts to defend itself from outside dangers. You know, kind of like the way the Polygon staff played PUBG that one time.

There’s also a lesson here in why battle royale games that don’t innovate in some way (see Radical Heights and countless others) struggle to find an audience. The last player standing format isn’t enough to engage folks on its own, and Takami knew that. The real genius of Battle Royale is in the way that Takami blended different aspects of his interests and obsessions together, using them like puzzle pieces to create something truly new and horrifying.

Sam Greszes is a writer and podcaster currently based in Chicago. He has written for internationally distributed print publications such as ION Magazine and prominent websites like Eater, UPROXX, Kill Screen, and Thrillist for over a decade. He also thinks he can beat you in a thumb-wrestling match, but he’s probably wrong.

Battle Royale

Koushun Takami | 4.47 | 53,531 ratings and reviews

Ranked #25 in Japanese , Ranked #43 in Asian — see more rankings .

Rankings by Category

Battle Royale is ranked in the following categories:

• #100 in Survival
• #62 in Translated

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Review: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

“Sakamochi clapped his hands a few times and admonished, ‘All right, all right, all right, quiet down, everyone!’ The uproar quickly subsided, and he continued. ‘Okay, I’ll explain. We’ve had you come here for one and only one reason’. Then: ‘Today, you’re all going to kill each other’. This time, no outburst came. The students froze like subjects of a still life photograph – except Kawada, Shuya noticed, who kept chewing his gum. Kawada’s expression remained impassive, though Shuya thought he might have seen the flash of a faint smile. Sakamochi maintained his broad grin and continued, ‘Your class has been chosen for this year’s Program’. Someone whimpered.”

Generally speaking, I avoid with passion any novels that could be categorised under the labels ‘horror’ or ‘thriller’. To my overly-anxious mind, the stress that accompanies the tension of books that rest on overt violence or pulse-increasing unpredictability makes it much simpler to give such works a wide berth when considering what to read next. While I am well aware that this means I am likely missing out on some truly great novels, I do make the periodic exception w hen I feel that any impending stress will be outweighed by the weight of a book’s overarching narrative. Koushun Takami’s cult thriller, Battle Royale , is one that has been on my radar for some time. My fascination with locked-room scenarios (in the vein of works such as Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express ) is something that easily translates to the ‘game’ famously depicted in Battle Royale (and translated, for contemporary western consumption, by Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games ). Although absent of the mystery-solving element specific to Agatha Christie’s works, Battle Royale initiates a similar process of problem-solving within the violent, political parameters in which 42 junior high school students are isolated to an island and told that they must kill one another.

Although an overtly violent premise, Battle Royale rests upon a foundation of dystopian authoritarianism that divorces the novel from the gratuitousness that might otherwise characterise its graphic offerings. Set in an alternative Japan of 1997, in which the country is known as the Republic of Greater East Asia, Battle Royale details the story of Shiroiwa Junior High Ninth Grade Class B. On their way to school trip, the 42 students are involuntarily abducted by the country’s authoritarian state forces and removed to an island where they are expected to engage in the Program. Surprisingly, this Program is no secret to society-at-large but rather sold by the government as an experimental conscription in which the state is afforded the opportunity to collect statistics for the progress of the nation. To this end, 50 ninth grade classes are selected each year to participate in a game wherein the students are expected to kill one another, until the single remaining survivor is declared the ‘winner’. As Class B wake up to a reality in which none of the students expected to find themselves, the hope is that the students will band together in order to uncover a route to escape. Few expect that their friends and colleagues will engage with the game. As suspicion begins to turn the students against one another, however, it is clear that Class B will be no exception to the rules of the Program.

“Every junior high school student in the Republic of Greater East Asia knew about the Program, which was covered in textbooks starting in the fourth grade. A somewhat detailed description appears in the government-compiled Republic of Greater East Asia Compact Encyclopedia :

Program … 4. A battle simulation necessary to our defense and conducted by our nation’s Ground Nonaggressive Force. Officially titled ‘Combat Experiment 68th Program’. First held in 1947, the annual simulations are conducted by fifty ninth-grade classes selected voluntarily nationwide (prior to 1950, the number of classes was forty-seven), with various statistics collected from the trials. The experiment itself is simple: the students in each class fight each other until only one remains, and the findings, including the elapsed time of the simulation, are determined. The last survivor (winner) in each class is awarded a lifetime pension and a personally signed autograph from His Majesty the Leader.”

I wrote earlier in the week about my thoughts in favour of graphic violence in fiction . These reflections were largely inspired by finishing Battle Royale and attempting to reconcile the discomfort I felt at the gravity of the violence depicted in the novel with the sense that I had read something quite remarkable. What is clear from reading Battle Royale is that the violence, while extreme and incredibly graphic, is never superfluous to the novel’s broader narrative. At its core, Battle Royale feels more like a political novel than anything else. While one undoubtedly and, to a certain extent, unwillingly becomes engaged with the game and its outcome, the reader is never far from reminders that this is a profoundly psychological work steeped in the consequences of life in a totalitarian state. The novel’s primary protagonist, Shuya Nanahara, is an orphan, guitarist, and devotee of prohibited rock music. He and his closest friends have their own thoughts on the state of the nation, displaying a clarity of understanding peculiar to those that live without access to democratic freedoms. Unlike teenagers that exist with the privilege of dreaming to manifest concrete change, the students of Class B are forced realists – all aware that, even in playing the game of the Program, they are pawns of a system that has a reach so much larger than their own.

Early in the novel, Shuya allies himself with the mysterious Shogo Kawada, a recent transfer to Shiroiwa Junior High. Kawada has an intriguing degree of insight into the operations of the government of the Greater Republic of East Asia. With a profundity typically believed to exist as the sole terrain of explicitly dystopian fiction – in the vein of George Orwell’s 1984 – Kawada understands that the success of totalitarianism exists through the willing obedience of the people:

“Kawada nodded. ‘Yeah. In other words, I think the system used by our government has been tailor-made to fit its people. Obedience to our superiors. Following blindly. Dependence on others and following the herd. A conservative nature and avoidance of conflict. That hopeless stupidity that enables a person, who, say, snitched on someone else, to convince himself that he did the right thing, provided someone else offered the noble-sounding rationale that it was for the good of the group. And so on, and so on. Have they no pride? Have they no reason? They can’t think with their own heads. They just follow, like little baa-baa- ing sheep. Just makes me want to puke’.”

Battle Royale resounds with this kind of insight, elevating what Takami has achieved to something far beyond the realm of a thriller or a simple horror novel. Juxtaposing this type of discourse with the forcible murder of 15-year-old school children, the graphic violence takes on the character of a constant, jarring reminder of the social manipulation at work at the foundations of the Program. The horror felt by Kawada and his classmates as they awake to the reality of a program of systematic, state-sanctioned murder that receives implied consent from the population at large – and, in its own way, successfully reinforces the fear and division that underlies that consent – works its way into the psyche of the reader with a force quite equal to the violence inflicted upon the Program’s participants. It is not the violence of Battle Royale ‘s deaths that most sticks with the novel’s readers, but the systemic, socially-reinforced violence that permits the Program’s existence.

Battle Royale ‘s publication came at a time of incredible strife within Japan. The Kobe earthquake had devastated the southern part of Hyogi prefecture, killing over 6000 people. In the same year, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo committed the infamous sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground. The book also followed closely on the heels of the Kobe child killings, in which a 14-year-old boy impaled the head of a classmate on the school gates, along with a note stating “This is the beginning of the game…” Given this context, it is no surprise that Battle Royale created significant controversy at the time of its release. This feeling of ‘hitting too close to home’ is also implicit in the discomfort of western audiences with the novel’s material. School shootings in the US continue to condemn the country to repeated attempts to wrestle with moral obligations and the leveraging of political favour. Yet it is precisely this feeling of Battle Royale as an uncomfortable mirror of contemporary social dynamics that makes it such an important read. While it is certainly possible to dismiss the novel as an extreme depiction of ‘social experiment gone wrong’, a horror so unimaginable that any comparison with modern problems is an insult, to do so is a misunderstanding of dystopian fiction at its most excellent. 1984 was not, after all, simply a warning of things to come but a call to consideration of what society had evolved to in its contemporary state. As fantastically removed as Battle Royale may seem from anything represented today, it certainly demands that we consider our own herd mentalities and the tendency to implicitly condone that which we are uncomfortable explicitly challenging.

“Given the slightest chance, the imperialists would invade the soil of our Republic, the most advanced revolutionary state in the world. By weaving their plots to bring ruin to our people, they lay bare the depths of their devious ways. [ Scattered shouts of anger ] With our nation surrounded by this state of affairs, the 68th Program is absolutely vital. In truth, I myself will be unable to hold back my bitter tears of remorse over the loss of the lives of thousands, even tens of thousands, each at the age of only fifteen. But if their lives serve to protect the independence of our people living in this nation of abundance, then will not their flesh and blood live on for eternity, becoming one with this land of beauty passed down to us by our gods?”

Battle Royale is a incredibly multifaceted work. A supercharged, controversial thriller, it is certainly possible to read the novel for the heart-pounding entertainment that it willingly provides. In light of contemporary political and social developments, however, the novel also stands as a warning. It is not, perhaps, a warning that death games are where society is immediately headed – no more than Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale posits itself as a prediction of a society headed toward women as explicitly property, forced to sleep with the men by whom they are chosen. These novels are, however, a call to reflection on political direction and social priorities. Battle Royale offers no easy answers by refusing to lay culpability squarely on the shoulders of the political establishment. Instead, it parses blame as shared by both the exploiter and those offering themselves (and their 15-year-old children) up for the utility of the powerful. Battle Royale is an example of the power wielded by violence in fiction, as a refusal to sanitise the most uncomfortable truths, forcing introspection on the question of what we, as a society, are willing to permit.

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Review: Battle Royale, Koushun Takami

I have a lot of conflicted feelings on this book.  My most immediate basis for comparison is The Hunger Games .   Battle Royale * is set in a dystopia based in Japan, but both essentially involve isolated kids killing each other after being given random weapons.  It’s a thriller and apparently both very popular and shocking in Japan.  I didn’t find it to be particularly shocking, although it did read very quickly for a 600 page book.

The problems started right at the beginning.  I found the writing to be very plain.  It’s readable, but there is something very juvenile about the sentence structure.  I kept noticing the poor writing and it constantly threw me out of the story.  Some of the characters quote poetry and song lyrics, but even these never rise above to form anything I’d consider quotable.  I don’t know if this is down to the fault of the author or the translator, but I definitely felt let down.  I didn’t like the narrative structure, either.  The main focus is Shuya, but the viewpoint switches often.  Unfortunately, after a few switches, it becomes apparent that almost every time the author introduces a new student, it means they’re going to die within a few pages.  Few of the students are really interesting, but the author also tends to include a flashback from each one of them, introducing background that is generally unnecessary and boring.  I get that they’re supposed to be regular kids who are forced into killing each other, the background is showing their personalities and motives, and that’s meant to be shocking, but again, I’m already familiar with the horror of this premise, and so this time it didn’t work.  Three to five pages was not enough to make me care.

I also couldn’t say I liked any of the characters.  They are only fifteen, but they are all in love with one another.  Naturally, most of them are in love with Shuya, but we’re also treated to little dramas between all the other characters that are in love.  To me, these seemed like simple crushes, and while everything is intensified in this sort of “game”, I simply got tired of the constant surprise each character exhibited upon learning that someone they barely knew loved them enough to die for them.  I couldn’t imagine this happening in real life.  Maybe if I was also fifteen years old, when I was convinced that a smile from a boy was everything in the world, I would have found this to be terribly tragic and romantic.  As an adult, the students annoyed me without exception.  I got tired of reading their irrelevant backstories and I didn’t really care much when any of them died.  For some I even found myself flipping ahead to see how long before they died because I was so impatient.  The book didn’t engage me at all on an emotional level.

There is also a lot of criticism against girls here which really bothered me.  All the boys are convinced that the girls would never kill one another, not only because they’re all good but because a girl wouldn’t have the stomach to do such a thing.  Worse, the author seems to agree; the girls are universally portrayed as weak and needing protection by the boys, none of them are intelligent enough to come up with an escape plan, and in general they do absolutely nothing of interest except act stupidly and get themselves killed.  The only girl who does fight with some skill is a bully, beautiful but despised universally, who doesn’t hesitate to kill her friends.  Even though her behavior is understandable to some extent given her backstory, out of so many girls is there really only one who can stand up to the boys?  And does she have to use her body to do it?  It just bothered me.  I missed the strong, smart girls so prevalent in today’s YA literature.

Largely, this book suffered a lot from comparison with The Hunger Games. There, the concept of kids killing each other is carried out, in my opinion, to the best possible result, providing an emotional, riveting, exciting, and unpredictable read.  If I’d read this first, maybe things would have been the other way around, but given what I’ve said here, I doubt it.  I can’t say I really hated Battle Royale , as I certainly read it fast enough and wasn’t conscious of all its faults while I was still wading through it, but I didn’t like it very much.  It brought up some interesting questions about trust and suspicion between friends, but not enough to save it from bad writing/translating, boring characters, and frustrating structure overall.  It’s interesting for anyone who’d like to see what all the fuss is about, but I wouldn’t read it again.

*This link goes to a new translation which I hope will prove better than the one I read. I am an Amazon Associate and will receive a few pennies if you click these links and buy something from Amazon. I bought this book.

13 comments to Review: Battle Royale, Koushun Takami

I’m on page 400 of this book and I’m really struggling with it – it’s a slow read for me. I agree with you on the writing – I’ve also noticed several errors (probably from the translation) that have bugged me. I think I figured out who’s going to survive very early in the book and I also think I figured out another plot twist that I don’t want to reveal here. I was thinking it wasn’t working for me because I’m not the target audience. .-= Kathy´s last blog .. Review: Julie of the Wolves =-.

I am not really looking forward to reading the one based on your review and Kathy’s comment! Of course, I still haven’t received my copy yet so I’m freaking out for another reason!

I’ve had this book on my TBR pile for YEARS. I have to say, it sounds pretty horrible, especially the thing with the girls being weak and passive. Soooo annoying. .-= heidenkind´s last blog .. New Year’s Readathon Wrap-Up =-.

Gulp. I haven’t started it yet. I plan to read as much as I can by book club. Actually, I flipped through it and it didn’t draw me in. But I’m willing to try. .-= Beth F´s last blog .. Weekend Cooking: Movie Review: Julie & Julia =-.

Since I just finished reading Hunger Games, I’ll pass on this one. I have trouble with some books that are written for teenagers. Authors tend to write younger or something and that works my nerves. Thank you for the review. .-= jennygirl´s last blog .. 2010 Challenges =-.

I remember the Twitter conversation around this book. Don’t know if I’ll be able to read it, but I must clearly get my hands on The Hunger Games… .-= Aarti´s last blog .. Sunday Salon: How many books do you read at a time? =-.

Did you read the manga or the book based on the movie? I heard that the manga is far better (and I got it for Chrismukkah so it’s in my tbr pile). .-= Amanda´s last blog .. Best Discoveries of 2009–Boston Places, Web Clips, and Recipes =-.

All I read was the book – no manga or movie and to be honest I’m not really inclined to read/watch either. I also heard that the manga was the author’s ideal vision of the story, so I hope it works better for you!

Great, great, great review – you’ve given me a lot to think about! I completely agree that it went really fast. I think I liked it more than you, but I agree with many of the problems you had with it. I can’t wait until our book club discussion! .-= S. Krishna´s last blog .. Her Mother’s Daughter – Julianne Lee =-.

This book seems like it just hashed out territory that has already been covered, and not in any exciting new way either. It sounds like a painful reading experience, and although you didn’t absolutely hate it, I don’t think I will be picking this one up. Thanks for the very frank review! .-= zibilee´s last blog .. The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone – 384 pgs =-.

I think it probably plays better in Japan. I only know it from the movie verson, but I understood it was meant to be a satire critiquing the dog-eat-dog mentality in Japanese schools which are very competitive and have several make-or-break exams etc. The movie was supposed to horrify viewers and make them re-think how teenagers are treated in Japan. I don’t think it worked and I won’t be reading either of the print versions. .-= cbjames´s last blog .. I’ll Be Watching You by Charles de Lint =-.

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Battle Royale (novel)

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The cover of the first English translation.

Battle Royale (バトル・ロワイアル, Batoru Rowaiaru ) is a novel written by Japanese author Koushun Takami . It was first published in Japan in April 1999, and it is one of Japan's best-selling and most controversial novels. It later formed the basis for a cult film (which spawned a sequel ), and has been adapted as a 15-volume manga series , later adapted into English by Keith Giffen and published by TOKYOPOP, which itself now has a sequel .

An English translation of the novel was published in the United States by Viz in February 2003, and has been available in the United Kingdom since July 2006 from Orbit Books. [1]

The Viz book was re-released in 2009 with over 50 new pages, special features (including interviews with the original Japanese author & movie director), and some revised text (cleaning up translation issues mainly). Viz released a new translation by Nathan Collins in 2014, under the title Battle Royale: Remastered .

• 1 Plot Overview
• 2 Student List
• 3.1 The Program
• 3.2 Guadalcanal-22
• 3.3 Danger Zones
• 4 Development
• 7 External links
• 8 References

Plot Overview

Battle Royale takes place in an alternate timeline; according to the book's prologue, Japan is a police state, known as the Republic of Greater East Asia (大東亜共和国 Dai Tōa Kyōwakoku ). From time to time, fifty randomly selected classes of secondary 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. A character discovers that the program is not an experiment at all, but a means of terrorizing the population. In theory, after seeing such atrocities, the people will become paranoid and divided, preventing an organized rebellion.

Under the guise of a 'study trip', a group of students from Shiroiwa Junior High School (城岩中学校 Shiroiwa Chūgakkō ), a junior high school operated by the fictional town of Shiroiwa (in Kagawa Prefecture ), are corralled onto a bus and gassed, only to awaken in a school on an isolated, evacuated island, wearing metal collars around their necks. After being briefed about the program, the students are issued survival packs (along with a random weapon or a tool) and sent out the island one by one. While most of the students receive guns and knives , some students acquire relatively useless items like boomerangs , some common dartboard darts, or a fork . In some cases, instead of a weapon, the student receives a tool; Hiroki Sugimura finds a radar that tracks nearby students, and Toshinori Oda receives a bulletproof vest .

To make sure the students obey the rules and kill each other, the metal collars around their necks track their positions, and will explode if they linger in a 'Forbidden Zone' or attempt to remove the collars. The Forbidden Zones are randomly chosen areas of the map that increase in number as time goes on, re-sculpting and shrinking the battlefield and forcing the students to move around. The collars secretly transmit sound back to the organizers of the game, allowing them to hear the students' conversations, root out escape plans, and log their activities.

The students are also given a time limit. If twenty-four hours pass without someone being killed, then all of the collars will be detonated simultaneously and there will be no winner. It is mentioned that only 0.5% of Programs end in this fashion.

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.

Student List

The program.

Every year since 1947, fifty 3 rd year Junior High School (15 year olds) classes (47 classes were chosen before 1950) are chosen to participate in The Program . Each class is isolated, and its students are required to fight to the death until one remains. The survivor is the Program's "Winner". Of around 2,000 participants per year, 42 students - one per class - survive. To ensure students obey, an explosive metal collar is fixed around each student's neck. This collar will explode, killing the student, if they try to escape, or break certain rules. Students are also given a time-limit. If twenty-four hours pass without someone dying, then all collars will be detonated simultaneously and there will be no winner. It is mentioned that 0.5% of Programs end in this fashion. A Program supervisor announces new deaths every six hours.

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.

There are a few students who seem to have known about the program:

• Early in the story, in a flashback, Yoshitoki Kuninobu and Shuya Nanahara (along with the other children from the orphanage) witness a broadcast of the winner in the program before Shogo Kawada 's.
• Shogo Kawada was the winner of the last program. Unfortunately, he was held back in the ninth grade and was selected to be in the current program.
• Sakura Ogawa is seen telling Kazuhiko Yamamoto that she bet on a girl in the last program, who died the next day.

Guadalcanal-22

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:

• someone tries to remove it.
• the wearer lingers in a Danger Zone .
• a special signal is sent to it.

Secondary functions include monitoring life signs and allowing the organisers to listen in on students via a built in microphone. The collar also emits a tracking signal, allowing the organisers and the student given the tracking device ( Hiroki Sugimura ) to monitor student positions.

The Guadalcanal-22 directly influences Battle Royale' s narrative on two occasions:

• Kazuo Kiriyama lures Sho Tsukioka into an area shortly before it becomes a Danger Zone. Through deception, Kiriyama is able to escape unseen and exit the Danger Zone, while Tsukioka waits. Tsukioka notices the deception too late, and is killed when his collar explodes.
• Shinji Mimura 's plan to hack the organisers' computer system is thwarted when he is overheard discussing it with Yutaka Seto . The organisers are able to block Mimura's attempt, forcing him to develop a new plan, while alerting him to the built in microphone.

The collar more subtly influences the narrative, by making escape tangibly impossible.

Danger Zones

Each Battle Royale student is issued with a map divided into a coded grid. Danger Zones are randomly chosen grid-sectors which are declared off-limits to students.

If a student enters a Danger Zone, or fails to leave in time, their collar will explode, killing the student. Once an area becomes a Danger Zone, it remains for the rest of the game. Consequently, the number of Danger Zones increases as the game progresses, forcing students to move around in an ever shrinking battlefield.

• The school headquarters are declared a permanent Danger Zone as soon as the last student leaves the area it's in. This makes it impossible for students to circumvent the game by attacking the headquarters.
• Shinji Mimura and Yutaka Seto are forced to accelerate their attack on the school headquarters when an adjoining zone is declared an impending Danger Zone.
• Sho Tsukioka is tricked into lingering in a Danger Zone, and is killed when his collar explodes.
• Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa are attacked by Tatsumichi Oki as they are exiting a Danger Zone; this leads to a series of fatal confrontations.

Development

Takami describes the characters in the novel version as possibly being "kind of all alike," being "all the same" despite differing appearances and hobbies, and being static characters. Takami used the descriptions in contrast to the manga version, co-written by himself and Masayuki Taguchi , which he believes has a more diverse and developing cast. [1]

B-R-U.net developed a free Internet game Battle Royale Ultimate with PHP and Perl in Japanese. This site distributed a game and it has been translated into both Simplified and Traditional Chinese by the community.

The English-language official Battle Royale site stated that it had a Flash mini-game in development.

There have been a number of adaptations into other media which themselves have spun off sequels. These include:

• Battle Royale — the film adaptation, directed by Kinji Fukasaku
• Battle Royale II: Requiem — the film sequel, directed by both Kinji and Kenta Fukasaku
• Battle Royale — the manga adaptation
• Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale — the manga sequel
• Battle Royale: Angel's Border - A manga based on the original novel
• Battle Royale — a US remake of the film.
• Battle Royale - a television series. It was announced in July 2012 that The CW has been considering developing the franchise into an hour-long dramatic series.

External links

• Battle Royale fan website
• Official English-language Battle Royale film website
• Battle Royale Trading Card Game
• Battle Royale preview at Mangareviewer.com
• Battle Royale at The PPN
• ↑ "Final Chapter Memorial Discussion: Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi." Battle Royale . Volume 15. Tokyopop
• 1 Characters
• 2 Mitsuko Souma (Manga)
• 3 Mitsuko Souma (Film)

deus ex magical girl

Official blog of author D. G. D. Davidson

Book Review: ‘Battle Royale’

The original bloody mess.

Here it is, the instant classic that has informed so much of Japanese pop culture in the twenty-first century. If you like anime and manga, you sooner or later run into allusions to  Battle Royale. Indeed, if you’ve followed this blog, the anime version of  Magical Girl Raising Project , which I discussed at length , is basically  Battle Royale with magical girls.

This novel by Koushun Takami appeared in 1999 and was an instant sensation probably in part because it resulted in some pearl-clutching. As an exercise in ultraviolence, it received some condemnations, and its notoriety was secured in the following year when the movie adaptation received criticism from members of the Japanese parliament. I noticed a DVD of the film at the store one day and saw that the blurb on the back proudly boasts that it is banned in several countries.

I didn’t know what to think of Battle Royale when I first approached it, aside from recognizing it as something I ought to read sooner or later. My opinion of some of its derivations (see the aforementioned  Magical Girl Raising Project ) is largely negative. I read it in fits and starts because it honestly didn’t grab me, though I found a few of its chapters good for an ironical chuckle and found its action sequences to be generally well-constructed in spite of some flubs. As I read it, my opinion swung wildly from love to hate to indifference.

To my own surprise, however, my final take on  Battle Royale is positive: I don’t like everything about it, but the last chapters provide a succession of plot twists that result in the story having a  really good ending. Like, really, really good. A great ending can do much to redeem a book; so, though I will refrain from giving details, I will say that, in the last analysis,  Battle Royale is badass.  Magical Girl Raising Project still sucks, though.

Likely as not, you know the story already, but here goes:  Battle Royale is set in a fictional totalitarian dictatorship called the Republic of Greater East Asia. The exact borders of the Republic are unclear, but it at least includes Japan. On a yearly basis, the Republic nabs one class of middle-school students, takes them to a remote location, gives them a random assortment of weapons, and forces them to kill one another. The last student standing is declared the winner and gets to go free.

The book opens with an engaging but intimidating infodump: We meet the students (Ninth Grade, Class B, Shiroiwa Junior High) on a bus, believing themselves to be on a field trip. The POV character in the first chapter and through much of the novel is Shuya Nanahara, a slightly rebellious guitarist who happens to be thinking about the life histories of several of his classmates when the story opens. Counting him, there are forty-two students in his class, which, if we know the premise of this book, might appall us, but Koushun Takami does a masterful job of keeping track of his characters so we don’t have to.

Shuya and the rest of the students are knocked out with gas, and they wake up in a classroom in a schoolhouse on a remote island, where a government agent calling himself Kinpatsu Sakamochi informs them that they have been selected for the “Program.” Each will be given a random weapon and sent out of the classroom one at a time. They have been fitted with explosive collars that will go off if they try to escape the island. What’s more, the government will regularly add “forbidden zones” to the island’s map, which will cause the collar of anyone who enters them to go off. If someone doesn’t die every twenty-four hours, the collars will go off. To break them mentally, Sakamochi makes them write, “We are all going to kill each other,” on a piece of paper several times. He callously orders one of the students murdered in cold blood by the soldiers accompanying him. Then the game begins.

Much of the book is taken up with vignettes of students dealing with their own emotional turmoil as they are forced to defend themselves or slay one another. Some of these are reasonably good in themselves, and others are weak. A pervading problem of the book—the same problem I highlighted in my discussion of  Magical Girl Raising Project— is that the attempts to develop pathos often fall flat because we have a pretty good idea that the characters whose backstories we’re getting at great length are just going to die anyway. For this reason, a sense of anticlimax pervades much of the novel, even though the pace is fast and the narration is mostly enjoyable.

Takami makes some wise choices that make this a better novel than it could have been. In spite of the dauntingly large cast, he keeps the focus on a small group of heroes we can root for and villains we can hate. On the heroes’ side, we have the aforementioned Shuya, who’s a likable guy even if Takami goes too far in trying to depict him as a heartthrob. Then there’s Noriko, the girl he’s determined to protect because his best friend was in love with her. And finally, we have the hardbitten Kawada, a survivalist who seems to know exactly what it takes to play the game.

On the villains’ side, we have Mitsuko Souma, a coldhearted seductress who turned ruthless after being raped repeatedly in childhood ( oy ), and Kazuo Kiriyama, a psychopath suffering from a very specific brain injury that renders him incapable of feeling emotion (yes, really). The depiction of Kiriyama clearly owes something to  The Terminator, which was a popular movie in Japan. He quickly becomes a villain we can love to hate as he implausibly escapes certain death several times and callously cuts down most everybody else.

There are others who struggle and fight and make bold attempts, of course, but these listed above remain the most important ones, and it is that narrow focus that prevents the large cast from becoming bewildering. Even when Takami brings up characters we haven’t seen for several chapters, he does a good job of gently reminding us of who they are. Even though I read the book slowly and fitfully, I found myself having no trouble keeping track of the cast. As an additional bit of help, or perhaps as a nasty joke, the novel also keeps a running tally of how many students are still alive, printed at the end of each chapter.

The particular edition I read, which runs under the title of  Battle Royale: Remastered , was translated by Nathan Collins. This is the third (!) translation into English, all of which have come from VIZ Media. It claims to be less literal than the previous editions, for the purpose of being more readable in English. I have no intention of comparing translations (because I haven’t read them all), but I will say that I found this edition to be pretty good, though it could have survived a few more passes from an editor to fix typos, repair grammatical flubs, and tighten the prose. There’s an excessive use of passive voice and a tendency to wordiness, both of which place unintended emphasis on the schlockiness . To be fair, however, I will add that the sometimes tin-eared prose makes  Battle Royale read like exactly the melodramatic, pulpy paperback it is. Given that it’s a first novel (and probably last novel, considering the author’s output), it’s very strong. From time to time, it waxes maudlin when it tries too hard to elicit pathos from its blood, guts, and weepy backstories, but it’s pretty good overall considering the premise.

Discussions of  Lord of the Flies tend, in my experience, to leave out an important fact, which is that it is a science fiction novel. The story takes place in the near future, and its backdrop is World War III. The reason the schoolboys are trapped together on a desert island is because Britain, in a last-ditch effort to preserve some fragment of its populace, sent them away on a plane before being consumed by nuclear fire. Without adult supervision, and under the combined pressures of untamed wilderness and superstitious fear, the boys revert from civilization to savagery, and this is apparently a microcosm of what is happening off the page, where civilization is tearing itself to pieces: the children pillage, rape, and murder because the adults that left them behind are doing the same thing on a larger scale.

“Heart of Darkness” seems to say that civilization is fragile and perhaps illusory.  Lord of the Flies seems to say that civilization has a built-in self-destruct button. Both works seem to say that even civilized man still has a savage heart, a “heart of darkness.”

Battle Royale, however, appears to say almost the opposite. The brutal game in which the kids find themselves trapped derives not from civilization’s absence nor its breakdown, but its excess. “This is what successful fascism looks like,” one of the characters says near the beginning. The “Program” that forces the children to kill one another is the product of a rigid bureaucracy. It is a totalitarian state and the faceless organizations that enable it that force the children into the battle royale.

On top of all that, he states in the afterword that the fascist state in the novel is supposed to be a satire of Japan in the 1980s, though exactly what he means by that is not easily discernible to a foreigner. Certain hints in the book suggest that, like many people who live in a free society, he has a sort of schoolgirl crush on totalitarianism, specifically North Korea, perhaps similar to the infatuation American radicals had with the USSR in the 1960s. This seems confirmed by the praise he gives to a song called “Wanna Be in North Korea” by Kiyoshiro Imawano. At the same time, however, he mentions that an address from the Republic’s dear leader early in the novel is based on propaganda broadcasts from North Korea, and he appears to admit a resemblance between North Korea and his fictional Republic. After his ambiguous commentary, he simply invites the reader to study East Asian geopolitics, which is fair enough. In any case, we can say with reasonable certainty that he chafes at rigid rules, and he mentions that he thinks people in Japan (especially in the 1980s) are unwilling to speak up against pointless traditions for fear of being criticized.

On account of its sheer popularity, I think this novel sometimes has depth attributed to it that isn’t really there. But although it is not exactly deep, it is certainly entertaining. I find myself satisfied with  Battle Royale, especially its superb finale, and I recommend it.

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Author: D. G. D. Davidson

D. G. D. Davidson is an archaeologist, librarian, Catholic, and magical girl enthusiast. He is the author of JAKE AND THE DYNAMO. View all posts by D. G. D. Davidson

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Book Review: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

If you enjoy stories that include themes of both loyalty and death, love and hate, and ultimately friendships and betrayal, then Battle Royale by Koushun Takami is a novel you will surely enjoy. In this action-packed thriller, author Koushun Takami will take you, the reader, on a gut wrenching ride that will leave you exhausted by its finish.

The novel begins on a bus, following a high school Junior named Shuya Nanahara. While initially we learn they are departing on a school field trip, things take a turn for the worst very quickly. While his classmates begin to lose consciousness around him, Shuya fights to keep his eyes open. Just before falling asleep, he sees an unknown man enter the bus. Something was wrong.

We come to learn that Shuya’s class has been picked for the years “program”. Unfortunately for the class, this was not an educational program like they anticipated. Instead, this government program forces the students to fight. For this program, officially known as “Battle Experiment No. 68 program, fifty third year junior high school classes are forced to fight each other to death on an isolated island until only one student remains alive. They are given a weapon, which varies for each player, and a small supply of food and water. Then, they are released into the island where the fight for survival begins.

“ Program n . 1. A listing of the order of events and other information […] 4. A battle simulation program conducted by our nation’s ground defense forces, instituted for security reasons. Officially known as Battle Experiment No. 68 Program. The first program was held in 1947. Fifty third-year junior high school classes are selected annually (prior to 1950, 47 classes were selected) to conduct the Program for research purposes. Classmates in each class are forced to fight until one survivor is left. Results from this experiment, including the elapsed time, are entered as data. The final survivor of each class (the winner) is provided with a lifetime pension and a card autographed by The Great Dictator. In reaction to protests and agitation caused by extremists during the first year of its enactment, the 317th Great Dictator gave his famous April Speech.’ ” (Takami, 25)

As typical in battle royale stories like this, specifically The Hunger Games, upon release into the “arena” there are many different strategies that the players take. Some, like Yoshio Akamatsu, immediately begin to kill without any remorse. Others however, like Shuya, Shogo, and Noriko attempt to form an alliance in hopes of finding a way out.

With at least one death required every 24 hours, there is no shortage of action and death in this novel. However, hidden between bouts of blood and death, author Koushun Takami is brilliantly able to weave in stories of love and friendship. Upon entering the island, we meet Sakura Ogawa and Kazuhiko Yamamoto, two classmates who are in a relationship. In order to avoid the possibility of needing to harm each other, they both grab hands and leap off a cliff to their deaths. In this defying act, questions about the power of love in the lives of young adults are silenced.

As the number of students quickly begins to drop, Shuya and Noriko learn that Shogo was actually the winner of last year’s program. Thus, they quickly turn to him for help finding a way off of the remote island. He informs them that they collars they are being forced to wear have embedded microphones and that any and all communication should be done in writing to avoid having their plan thwarted by the government.

Shuya and Noriko both had one plan. Get off the island without having to kill each other. However, that would be easier said than done. But, thanks to the knowledge Shogo had gained from successfully beating the program in the past, they come up with an idea. If they are able to remove the collars, they might be able to fake their death and make a run for it.

After all the remaining participants were eliminated, excluding Shogo, Noriko, and Shuya, Shogo fired a fake shot into the air. Immediately following this shot, he removed the collars from Shuya and Noriko’s necks. This they hoped, would trick the government into thinking they were dead.

They were right. Sort of. Following the final announcement, Shogo is taken on a ship to go back home. As he heads out to sea, we learn that they hadn’t deceived the government and that the program coordinator, Skamochi, knew what Shogo had done. Ultimately, this would lead to Shogo and Skamochi’s death.

In the end, we learn that Shuya and Noriko have become wanted by the government. Our last scene follows them as they begin running away from a policeman who had identified the two runaways, leaving the reader questioning what will happen to them. However, if Koushun Takami was able to teach us anything throughout the novel, it’s that these two are not going to go down without a fight.

After closing the book for the final time, I was struck by the wide range of emotions I had just experienced and how effortlessly author Koushun Takami was able to guide me through them. While some readers may turn away from young adult novels for a lack of substance, I found this novel was a truly unique entry into the genre. Ultimately, this novel was able to impart a level of maturity onto the young characters like I had not experienced before. By doing this, Takami is able to successfully portray the lessons he wants in a truly meaningful way. Whether it be lessons on working together to forge off seemingly unbeatable opponents or on the often overlooked power of love in young adults, I was both surprised and pleased to walk away with a different point of view than I had upon beginning this eye opening work of fiction.

WORKS CITED

Takami, K. (2003). Battle Royale (Y. Oniki, Trans.). San Francisco, CA: Viz Media, LLC.

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Battle Royale: The Novel Paperback – November 17, 2009

• Part of series Battle Royale
• Print length 632 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Haika Soru
• Publication date November 17, 2009
• Dimensions 8 x 1.7 x 5.25 inches
• ISBN-10 1421527723
• ISBN-13 978-1421527727
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Haika Soru; 2nd edition (November 17, 2009)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 632 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1421527723
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1421527727
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.24 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1.7 x 5.25 inches
• #4,266 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
• #12,900 in Science Fiction Adventures
• #30,802 in Suspense Thrillers

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