| | |  | SHOP BY TYPE | Home » » Battle Royale: The Novel | | | | | | | Description: | | In an alternative future Japan, junior high students are forced to fight to the death! L to R (Western Style). Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller is based on an irresistible premise: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill one another until only one survivor is left standing. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan--where it then proceeded to become a runaway bestseller--Battle Royale is a Lord of the Fliesfor the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world. Made into a controversial hit movie of the same name, Battle Royale is already a contemporary Japanese pulp classic, now available for the first time in the English language. A group of high school students are taken to small isolated island and forced to fight each other until only one remains alive! If they break the rules a special collar blows their heads off. Koushun Takami's brutal, high-octane thriller is told in breathless. blow-by-blow fashion. Battle Royale is a contemporary Japanese pulp classic now available for the first time in English. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Koushun Takami | | Paperback:
| 624 pages | | Publisher:
| VIZ Media LLC | | Publication Date:
| November 17, 2009 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1421527723 | | Product Length:
| 7.94 inches | | Product Width:
| 5.68 inches | | Product Height:
| 1.66 inches | | Product Weight:
| 1.41 pounds | | Package Length:
| 7.9 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.2 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.45 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 14 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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 A more sinister/modern-day version of Lord of The FliesJul 30, 2010
After describing The Hunger Games to a friend, he said that sounded almost exactly like what he read with Battle Royale... only with Japanese kids instead. I enjoyed The Hunger Games (and look forward to catching up with the rest of the series), so I gave this book a shot. I was definitely glad I did.
The plot by now is well-known to most reading this review. Every year, 21 male and 21 female Japanese junior high school students are taken to a remote and deserted island where they are forced to compete in a free for all contest where the lucky winner gets to live out the rest of their life as a surviving pawn of the Japanese government's games. The number of characters at first can seem pretty intimidating as there are 42 students at the beginning coupled with a few other characters in the Japanese government. However, the important characters are Shuya, Shinji, Shogo and Noriko. Sometimes it's hard to keep track of every character but Koushun Takami does a nice job of clearly labeling/distinguishing the characters throughout the novel.
The book does what The Hunger Games did for me. It made me mad, but it made me think also. Battle Royale is packed with action sequences and there is never a dull moment for very long as someone must die at least every 24 hours. If not? They all die via their collars which are rigged to explode if the entire group decided to band together against the government. The overriding theme in Battle Royale is one of human survival and a look into just how the human psyche can be twisted. How do you really justify not killing someone in a game like this? It's either kill/be killed or sit-by/be killed. Takami does an excellent job of showing the dark side of the human race that can be brought out in even the most innocent of people. In addition, Takami poses moral/ethical dilemmas that get the reader wondering what they would do in the same situation. It seems barbaric and it seems like most of us would never do such a thing, but you never know when a scenario like Battle Royale takes place. Human beings at the base level simply want to survive at almost any cost and that's prominently displayed in this novel.
As far as back to the novel, I'll say this much. The novel really shines towards the end. The final 20-30 pages are an absolute thrill to read. Just when you think you're right about a character, Takami does a complete 180 and surprises you with an excellent plot twist :). On a side note, I almost wish Takami would do a Battle Royale series like The Hunger Games turned out to be. I think he could have done very well with a three book series in exploring taking down the fascist/corrupt Japanese government. But as this edition tells us (with an interview with the author), Takami isn't very interested in carrying on the Battle Royale line, which I thought was a shame but that's his choice in the end. That being said, stand alone or series... this is a very worthwhile read regardless!
-Travis S.
Great, but could have been betterApr 17, 2010
I think this is an amazing book in that there were so many different characters and each responded to the pulse pounding action in a different way. The dynamic was great in that each character's strategy had the potential to render another character's useless in a rock, paper, scissors sort of way.
That said, the ending left me a little unsatisfied. With the way the story built up I expected more payoff, more earth shattering epiphany, but I chalk that up to culture differences. US reader expect more closure from their books than other cultures do, so I really can't hold that against the author.
But I could have done with fewer knitted brows.
1 of 2 found the following review helpful:
 If Only I Could Give It 10Apr 12, 2010
Now I'm a huge fan of the film, and call me shallow but I actually didn't know the movie was based on a book until I accidentally found it through browsing the Amazon books section. I was shocked to learn it was a book but when considering my own opinions about the somewhat glazing over of certain characters and their personalities, it's not really surprising.
The story follows a group of students from Shiroiwa Junior High School who, under the guise of a study trip, are kidnapped by the government of the Republic of East Asia and entered into "The Program". The Program is a government run competition which pitches a class of 3rd Year Junior High School students against each other in a game of death. They must kill each other until there is only one survivor, otherwise, they all die.
I could not put this book down. I loved every minute of it. I've always had a bit of a fascination with the Japanese culture, and although this doesn't exactly delve into that culture on the traditional level, however, it does give an interesting glimpse (from the English translation) of a use of language that is Americanised in structure. The writing takes on quite a conversational tone which provides for the easy flow of the narrative and presents the characters and the situation in a much more realistic fashion.
The characters are given scope to be explored in the depth that is needed in order to truly understand their reactions to the situation. It's not just graphic and shocking, it's intelligent and insightful as it gives a psychological exploration of kids in a situation so alien. The writer presents a chilling feeling of impossibility, the struggle that the kids in this book find themselves in is frightening, almost claustrophobic with the idea that you either kill or die.
Perhaps it's a more blunt look at the every day behaviour and minds of the modern day teenager. Being unable to really trust those around you, no matter how close you are to them or no matter how much you care for them, they may not feel the same way. Perhaps I'm looking a bit too much into it, but I simply loved this and would highly recommend it.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Holy heck! What a book!Apr 12, 2010
I got this book as a gift, and at the beginning I wasn't that thrilled about it because it was soo long, and there were so many Japanese names I would get confused. But once you get rolling, I couldn't put it down. So much action, and the dark comedy parts really hits. When it ended I wanted there to be more. If your a fan of action this is the book for you!
5 of 10 found the following review helpful:
 Don't believe the hypeApr 08, 2010
Battle Royale's premise is as irresistible as its back cover claims. A junior high class is kidnapped and taken to an island where, as part of a brutal authoritarian Program, they will be provided weapons and set loose to kill each other. The last one standing is the 'champion' of The Game. It came riding high with a controversial reputation and a recommendation from Stephen King. Talk about your pulp gold!
But all that promise is spoiled by clunky writing. I don't know if Mr. Takami is just not much of a writer or if the translation was just too literal (that's my guess), but the writing was bad. Sentences were clumsily constructed or ignored rules of grammar. As brilliant as the concept was, it was tough to get into while reading sentences like: 'After all they were friends ever since they wet their beds at that Catholic institution with the bombastic name, "the Charity House" - where orphans or other children who, due to "circumstances," were no longer able to be with their parents' (p 24) or 'They both didn't accept your assignment...' (p49).
Another bad thing about the writing was the repetition of certain stock phrases. The phrase 'That's right' shows up on every other page. Now, I know you are thinking "What's wrong with 'that's right'"? But it shows up in very inappropriate places in the narration and sometimes breaks the tone or distracts from sheer repetition. There's also 'knit brows'. Every character in the story knits their brows at least six times. There was so much knitting in this book that between them they could have knitted a sweater by story's end.
Though a lot of my problems with the book may be due to a babelfish-like translation, there were some issues that were squarely on the author. One of the students is technically savvy, which is fine until he becomes MacGyver-esque. Another student is supposed to be a year older than the rest (making him fifteen) but he is so world weary and wise that he came off like a forty year old. It didn't help that he was repeatedly described as stubbly, with mannish hands and features. I was just waiting for a plot twist that would reveal that he was an adult posing as a junior high student.
Also, I never felt like there was ever an adequate explanation of how 'The Program' was foisted on the citizenry. We are told that The Program runs every two or three years and that it involves a Game in each of Japan's forty-seven prefectures. An estimated two thousand students are involved of which only forty seven will survive. How was it sold to the public enough to prevent revolution? Even a totalitarian regime would have to provide their public with some kind of reason to ship thousands of children off every couple of years to a game that lead to certain death.
I did like the cynical rationale for what The Program was trying to accomplish, and that it was never concretely provided, just guessed at by the students participating in it. I also liked the way their fascist society was presented to us in bits and pieces via the students recollections. Often the society was shown as being fairly close to the Japan we all know, then their would be a mention of government monitoring the internet or disappearances of citizens or whatever.
Lastly, at six-hundred pages, the book just felt too long. There were too many chapters devoted to the lives of characters who we hadn't heard of before and who were dead by the end of the chapter. Used sparingly, that would have worked, establishing a wider scope rather than just focusing on 'our heroes'. But we learn every detail of every one of the forty two kids involved in the Game, even though there are only five or six who we really follow. It breaks the forward momentum of the story and many of the kids detailed in these one off chapters felt sort of same-y. Even the author agrees with me here (in an interview he gave discussing the manga adaptation). The book could easily have lost two hundred pages and benefited greatly from it.
Battle Royale has a lot of promise. Unfortunately either bad writing or bad translation kills it. I would suggest watching the movie or reading the manga rather than attempting the book. I haven't done either, but they have to be better than slogging through six hundred pages of bad writing.
Please note: while the translation has been cleaned up to correct typographical errors, it is still the same old clunky translation the first edition of the book had. A completely new translation might make the book worth looking at, but as it is now, the book is too poorly done to bother with.
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