Battle Royale is definitely not a SUBTLE book, in it’s premise or it’s execution, and everything was explained so neatly. I like that the morality of the kill-or-be-killed was so murky. I like that it made me cringe and cry at the violence and loss. I like that this book gave me serious wiggins. Before they begin debating which juniour high student will survive the bloodbath, Sakamochi mentions that his own wife is pregnant with their third child, stating “Well, we just want to contribute to our nation, joining the fight against its dwindling youth population.”ĭon’t get me wrong though. There’s another chilling moment when Sakamochi (see a pattern here?) is on the phone with one of his superiors, discussing the bets they have placed on this year’s Program. That was the moment I knew this book was not pulling any punches. There’s a shocking moment near the beginning where Sakamochi, the nasty, awful, disgusting, greasy, terrible instructor running the Program - I don’t like Sakamochi, can you tell? Well, there’s a moment where Sakamochi admits to raping a young woman who tried to fight back when told that two children in her care had been selected for the Program. One moment, they’re chopping at each other with axes or playing complex games of emotional manipulation or threatening sexual violence, and you forget how young they are in the next moment, they’re huddled together, whispering about who they like, and you’re back to the gruesome reality of the situation. He also keeps his characters very realistic, 15-year-old students. Takami does a brilliant job of helping you keep track of his 42 characters, which was my biggest concern going into the book. The emotional fallout from that setup is devastating.Īnd these kids are wonderfully written. They are offered no time to prepare for the Program, merely gassed on a bus ride, dumped on an island, and told to kill each other. This causes one of the biggest differences between Battle Royale and the Hunger Games, in my opinion, and one of the factors which makes Battle Royale so chilling: these kids all know each other. Every year, 50 such classes are randomly selected for the Program, which is billed as a highly necessary military research experiment of some sort. The kids in Battle Royale are all members of the same third-year juniour high class, which has been chosen to take part in this year’s Program. I enjoyed the book a lot (more, I think, than Kelin did). The violence is the point of Battle Royale, in many ways.
The violence is overwhelming, yes, but it doesn’t feel gratuitous. I’m not usually bothered by violence or gore in fiction, but there were moments in Battle Royale that shocked even me.
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