Reviews with content warning for Bullying - Battle Royale

The most Punk Rock novel I’ve ever read.
Battle Royale is the next step after Lord of the Flies; after you examine the cruelty of humans in a vacuum, you must examine our cruelty in the systems we’ve created ourselves. It’s so incredibly difficult to fix a broken system when people insist on participating in it, and “play the game.”
It was difficult to keep up with so many names, but that can be attributed to me being a westerner not accustomed to Japanese names. Even so the author did a great job with context clues, so even if you didn’t remember a character immediately he helps you with what they did previously.
What really blew me away was how effortlessly the narrative voice changed; we got a perfect psychological imprint of each character as they became the focus.

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

Brutal, intelligent, and politically biting, Battle Royale absolutely flies by with its fleeting snapshots of different lives and deaths. It connects you to characters you may only stick with for a few pages, yet it all feels relevant to the themes, story-world, and overall narrative.

I’ve seen the film adapt more than once before, and reading the original book provided so many pieces of context and extra character bits that made reading it entirely worth it. Koushun Takami absolutely nails the action. Even knowing what happens doesn’t remove from the intensity and suspense provided by each encounter, and god, what a premise.

I especially love Kazuo Kiriyama’s gang, though I wish Kazuo himself got a little more background towards the end, but that may just be my bias talking. And I also love Shogo Kawada because… I don’t know, I just love him, okay? 🫶🏻 Now that I think about it, there isn’t a character I don’t really like, maybe besides Shinji, though even he has his moments. But Mitsuko, Kazuo, Shogo, Shuya, Hiroki, Chigusa, and Noriko are all characters I absolutely love.

I will say that the action can ride the edge between believable and ridiculous, especially when characters do somersaults mid-fight. And on top of that, Shinji’s computer jargon and his exposition on pre-established information made his chapters a little repetitive, but other than that I can’t pick out any glaring problems with the book or it’s story.

Overall, it’s a book that is still incredibly entertaining, shocking, and politically powerful as it was when it was first released, and it only made my appreciation grow for the story and the film adaptation.

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