Battle Royale

The next time someone tries to pin down my taste in books, I’ll have to remember to point out that I followed up John Adams’ biography with Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale, and enjoyed it about as much.

Battle Royale caused a big ruckus in Japan when it came out, and it’s understandable why. The plot is this – at some point in post-war Japan (and that war is WWII), the country is isolated and presumably as much of a superpower as any other country. They have a policy called The Program, or Battle Royale.

In a nutshell, The Program is this – ninth grade students are taken to a remote island and randomly given weapons, tracking devices and a set of rules. The basic premise of the “game” that they are in is that they have to kill each other – until only one student remains alive.

Literally.

The novel is insanely graphic, to the point of being so over-the-top as to be numbing, much in the way that Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill films were. The Program is reported on throughout the country, and while some reviews of it refer to it as ‘the ultimate in realty television,’ that part of the book is really not discussed.

It’s more about the horror of realizing that, suddenly, mere children are forced to be horribly violent and kill their friends, their girlfriends and boyfriends, in order to survive themselves. It’s also, of course, a commentary on the government itself, and how it wages fear among the country through programs such as this.

But most of all, it’s sheer entertainment. Battle Royale is not for everyone, but for those who don’t mind taking a huge leap of faith and reading a lot of graphic violence, it’s really enjoyable. Of note is that this was also broken down into a series of graphic (manga) novels, but what I read was the original translated novel.

Rating: 7.5/10.0