Reviews with content warning for Sexual violence - Battle Royale

Fantastic. I read the last 200 pages all in one sitting, I couldn’t put it down. Highly recommend, especially if you’re a fan of the movie. There are a few key differences, but there are so many amazing scenes that the movie can only make a passing glance at for time. There is also a greater political context surrounding the main events that the first movie completely leaves out. 40+ characters sounds like a lot at first, but separating the book into short vignettes is a great way to show the reader what is happening in other parts of the island to the other characters while still keeping the main narrative going. Everything comes back. I have no idea how Takami Koushun could have possibly kept it all straight while writing but I applaud him for it. Very long but very worth it.

Content Warnings

ollie_again's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I liked parts of this book, but overall it was a little bit disappointing. I thought I'll have more issues with the contents of this book: the violence and even the sexist notions throughout but all of that I could easily overlook. My first main issue is with Shuya. Following a character that is supposed to be "noble" but comes off as a person with no sense of self-preservation is pretty frustrating. Shuya is pretty much piggybacking another character the whole time because without them, he would already be dead multiple times. I was not rooting for him at all and as we get to meet more and more characters and closely see their strategies and motivations, Shuya comes off easily as the most bland and boring character, which might work for a self-insert hero fantasy but not for a compelling and full-fledged character.

My second issue was the constant conversations about who has a crush on whom. I'm not a teenager for quite some time, but I don't think that teenagers are in need of romance drama 24/7 while they are in life-death situations. At least not every single one of them. And how those feelings are discussed is a completely different issue. Just get on with it and get dying. This book would be so much better (and shorter) if the author cut out all the romance crap. The friendship would serve just the same purpose while not feeling cheap, especially because that one characters has/had feelings for their classmate is always revealed in such a rushed way (mostly seconds before death of one or both of the two), it's usually one-sided and it's just about "oh this person is feeling like shit about this person dying because crush, I guess". Characters (and especially girls) freezing and reminiscing about the guys they had a crush on in the most inconvenient times happened one too many times for me to care. The relationship based on friendship worked much better and made more sense, but they were few and far between compared to the crushes.

I could do without the mentions of prostitution of 15y, sexual traumas of way too many girls, but that was something I kind of expected from this book. A lot of things were there just for a shock value and while it might mask as a character's history as to why they are fucked up, it didn't really land.

Might be a controversial take but I would prefer if the book truly ended after Kawada 'shoots' Shuya and Noriko, that part shocked me and I was rooting for it to be the plot twist, but oh well, some semi-happy ending needed to be there I guess.

Content Warnings

stateofiction's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense fast-paced

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

4.0

for an action horror lover, this was everything

Content Warnings

harmonia's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

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

4.25

Content Warnings

thedinosaurkid's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

This book was pretty good.
Obviously (or maybe not) I went into this comparing it to Hunger Games. It faired pretty well. If anything I probably liked it more. If you're looking for a book like Hunger Games but with more murder (first off get therapy), this is a good pick. It has the potential to be a 4-5 star read.
However, that is not what I'm giving it.
Despite the good characters, twists, and overall plot, this book was very obviously written in the 1990's (specifically 1999). There is major misogynistic language throughout the book. Nothing outright,

in fact there is a character who is shown to have horribly sexist thoughts, like "women are property" type stuff. The author makes it clear that this is a horrible person.

but there is a lot of stuff like "oh I can never beat this boy because I'm a girl and girls are weak". It's not as overt as that but it conveys a similar message.
Another reason for the rating is because of a specific chapter that follows a gay character and how homophobic it feels.

The gay character is described as following a character who is particularly brutal and looks like might win. The gay character is then described as having "stalker behavior" and being super feminine. The author mentions that he has the audacity to care about his looks during this murder game. He has a mirror that he holds to make sure he looks good.

Generally, the way this character is portrayed is very homophobic and uses lots of homophobic stereotypes.
The plot is good, don't get me wrong, but its hard to ignore the misogynistic tones throughout the book. The ending was enjoyable and my attention was kept during the whole book but reading about "weak girls" really brought me out of the experience.

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