Battle Royale - Review, Overview, and History

Writer: Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi
English Adaptation: Keith Giffen
Illustrator: Masayuki Taguchi

Content Guide: Intense scenes of violence, sexuality, and language. Not recommended for younger readers.

Imagine you won the lottery.

Now imagine that the prize was to be dropped off on a deserted island with your classmates. Add into the fact that the only way off the island is to kill each and every one of them. If you don’t, you will die, either by their hands or by the bomb that’s in the collar around your neck. Now who wants to play?

Battle Royale is about an alternate future in a military society that is ruled by a dictatorship. For one reason or another, 9th graders in a graduating class are pulled by random to compete in a game of life and death, but mostly death, called The Program. The kids are told that there are rules to the game:

• All kids must kill each other until there is only one student left.
  
• Each student is supplied with food, water, and a random weapon.
  
• Each student wears a collar that has a bomb in it and monitors life signs.
  
• There are designated danger zones that are addedd throughout the game. If you go there, your collar explodes.
  
• If, at the end of a 24 hour period, someone has not died, then all of the collars explode.

They are each given their equipment and sent out on an abandoned island. After that, its every person for themselves.

The story centers mostly around Shuuya and Noriko, a young couple banded together to find a way to beat the system. There is Kawada, a grade repeater with surprising knowledge of the game. Most of the kids are like Shuuya and Noriko, desperate to avoid the true nature of the game, to kill. But then there is the too cool and calm Kazuo Kiriyama, and Mitsuko, psychotic and over sexual, especially for being a 9th grader. These two rapidly rack up the kills in an attempt to be the last one left.

Pulling all of their strings is the enigmatic Yonemi Kamon, the headmaster of The Program. Yonemi is sick, twisted, and violent, the perfect person to oversee such a gameshow.

Soon, the body counts start to grow. Either by themselves or others, death seems inevitable to the students of Junior High Class B. Will they massacre each other, or is there another way.