Battle Royale by Koushun Takami, Translated by Yuki Oniki
Battle Royale by
Koushun Takami, Translated by Yuki Oniki
There
are twenty one male students and twenty one female students in Third Year Class
B, Shiroiwa Junior High School. Their bus was supposed to take them on a study
trip to the island of Kyushu. But once all the students had succumbed to the
gas that forced them to sleep their bus driver, who was conveniently wearing a
gas mask once the gas was released, steered them off course. When the students
awoke they were all in a classroom, seated in the positions they would be if in
their own classroom at Shiroiwa Junior High School. This was not their school
as they were informed by “Instructor” Kinpatsu Sakamochi. This class had been
chosen for the ‘Program.’ This ‘Program’ was a military exercise conducted for
security reasons. The Republic of Greater East Asia chooses fifty third year
junior high school classes and all students in a class must fight each other
till there is only one survivor.
I was so excited to finally get to
read this book. In no shape way or form was I disappointed. The tone for this
novel was set in the first few chapters and it only increased in intensity.
There were no boring moments. It was a relentless onslaught of emotion and the
body count continued to decrease. Takami filled this novel with detail from the
deaths of each student, to the relationships formed and extinguished. It became
obvious that the government of the Republic of Greater East Asia was obviously
as much as the student’s enemy as were the other students. What kind of
government forces kids to kill each other and is willing to kill anyone who
opposes their action? Is there any way to defeat such a system? The answer
seems to be an overwhelming “no” as more students continue to kill each other
with the hopes of surviving to receive an autograph from the dictator and the
pension to hold them for the rest of their lives.
This is
not The Hunger Games and I mean that
in the best way possible. These two get compared a lot because of the premise
of children having to fight each other to the death but that is honestly where
the comparison ends. This is a different animal completely. Battle Royale is a psychological
thriller filled with action, tension, fear, and an ongoing sense of peril like
I’ve never experienced. What kind of person can kill their classmates? Who can
you trust when eventually everyone has to die in order for you to survive? Can
you be the person who pulls the trigger or plants the knife? This is what
ultimately in my opinion separates Battle
Royale from The Hunger Games.
Takami delved into the psychological states of many of the students
participating in the program and exposed their mental anxiety (or lack
thereof). The reader becomes entrenched in the minds of these students as they
plunge into the madness that their lives have become. It is extremely interesting,
entertaining, horrifying and inventive. (Honestly how many different ways can
you come up with to knock off forty two students?) I didn’t want to put this
novel down. There were moments when the novel got a little repetitive but I’m
not sure if that was the fault of Takami or of the translation. Regardless, Battle Royale comes highly recommended
from me. I give this novel 5 out 5 stars. I’m not sure if there is anything
more I could have expected from such a high octane novel.
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