Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Battle Royale

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Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

17 reviews

bluejayreads's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.5

This was a recommendation from a friend (the same friend who got me to read the Dark Tower series, incidentally). It’s the original “kids forced into a game where they kill each other until only one is left” story. It pioneered the idea that The Hunger Games made mainstream, gave a name to the entire battle royale video game genre, and the book where Fortnite got 95% of its rules and mechanics. Forty-two fifteen-year-olds are together on an island, and only one can make it out. (It is clarified that they’re fifteen, Japanese junior high is apparently a different age range than American junior high.)

Think of some adjectives that might describe a book like that. You might think of words like “violent,” “gory,” “dark,” and “bloody,” or perhaps even “sad” or “horrifying.” But I bet you won’t come up with the two words I’d use to describe the first half of the book: “Slow” and “political.”

The class starts with forty-two students, but our protagonist is Shuya, who teams up with his best friend’s crush Noriko and standoffish transfer student Shogo for the duration of the contest. The killing starts immediately, and the story switches perspectives often to show how everybody dies, but it keeps coming back to Shuya and Noriko (and Shogo after he joins them). For roughly the first half, Shuya and Noriko hide and talk about how they can’t believe their classmates are just killing each other, and after Shogo joins them there are several long political monologues discussing the fascist government that made this dystopia happen and all the problems with authoritarian governments. It’s a little weird going back and forth between Shuya and company’s story – which is mostly survival, disbelief, and political discussion – and the violent deaths of their classmates.

Reading this as an audiobook was not the best way to read it. The narrator kept the same patient tone of voice regardless of whether he was talking about sports, politics, or kids killing each other, and since I’m not very familiar with Japanese names, it got very confusing to keep the characters straight. It doesn’t help that there’s forty-two of these kids and many of them have names that sound very similar when spoken – Yukie, Yumi, Yuki, Yuko, and Yuka are five different characters. The descriptions, conversations, and deaths were sometimes difficult to follow, as I had to take a moment to figure out which classmate was currently being discussed.

About halfway through, Shuya and Noriko finally accepted that their classmates were killing each other and Shogo ran out of things to say about politics, and the story finally picked up. Despite all the deaths, it didn’t feel like the action got started until this point. After that, though, the action picked up, the plot started moving, and I actually started liking Shogo as a character. The rest of it ended up being pretty good, and there were two minor twists at the end that I did not see coming.

Battle Royale was not entirely what I was expecting. Yes, you get the gore and horror and survival elements of a bunch of kids stuck on an island until all but one is dead, but there’s also a remarkable amount of commentary on fascism and authoritarian governments, and considering the deaths start immediately, I found it surprisingly slow to start. But I pushed through, mainly because a friend recommended it, and it did get better. Overall, it was actually pretty good. Definitely not my favorite, but solidly good.

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taleofabibliophile's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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atalea's review against another edition

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dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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mara28's review

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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aandromeda's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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thegr8estangell's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-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? No

2.75

I'm glad this author wrote only one book. I really liked the premise of this book. I think they were way more brutal in this book than in the Hunger Games (a series with a similar plot). I liked the way that some of the deaths were from the 1st person POV of the person being killed and other deaths were from different POVs. I wished we got more POV time with Kiriyama.

The pacing of this book was all over the place. Sometimes it was fast and tense, other times it was slow and arduous. There were so many flashbacks to stupid elementary school grudges and stuff like that. It got old pretty quick. I skimmed alot of those since they had little to nothing to do with the actual plot of the story.

What really bothered me about this story was the sexism and causal homophobia. Do I expect anything different from a middle-aged Japanese man in the 90s? No. Does that mean I have to look over that to enjoy this book? Not really no. I can still criticize it and still think the book is okay. Noriko was about as useless as Sakura during the Zabuza arc in Naruto. She was written as a damsel in distress and that was all she played the entire time. Just a helpless little school girl who just wanted to survive and was content with letting her big strong men of Kawada and Shuya protect her. Shuya was this weird, white knight character that felt like every girl had a crush on. He was so popular but didn't know it. That was really annoying. He was always this, ethical person during the whole thing. He never had to make a bad or hard choice about killing someone. There was no morally grey with him like there was with Kawada. He was in this situation where he had to kill people but he never had to make that tough decision without weighing the consequences. Kawada was a cool character. I liked him. He was the only rational one in the whole book. I know it's because this was round 2 for him, but still. Good character.

The BIGGEST plot hole was the GOD-TIER status of that stupid bullet proof vest. After one bullet, those things are done. They don't last 14 other bullets to the chest, a shot gun blast, and 300+ rounds of an UZI. They don't. That's not how they are made. That was plot device that got tired real quick.

Overall, I think the violence and stakes were done well. But the actual plot needed some work. Would I read this again? No. Would I recommend this book to someone? Maybe, depends on the person.

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thefoxyreader's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

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

4.0

A group of children are selected annually by a totalitarian government system to participate in a deadly game where the victor is the last child alive.

Sound familiar? Yes, this is the Japanese version of The Hunger Games, but what might surprise you is that Battle Royale was published in Japan in 1999 and translated and sold in America in 2003.

So, did Suzanne Collins know of its existence? She says she didn’t, but it is beyond obvious that there are many similarities between the novels.

I read Battle Royale back in 2004/2005, so this was a reread for me. At 16/17, I was blown away by the shocking content and loved the characters and their rebellious natures and utter hopelessness in a cruel situation.

At 33, I mostly feel the same way, which I think speaks to the quality of this story. I have some gripes and criticisms that I certainly didn’t care about as a teenager, but overall, the story still feels shocking, the tension is palpable, and I was surprised at how vividly I still remembered several key scenes in the novel.

Honestly, this could also be called Trigger Warning: The Novel. It is violent and disturbing. It does not hold anything back at all and is not for the faint of heart.

The most interesting aspect of Battle Royale is that several classes of students are selected to participate in the Battle Royale program throughout the year, so the students in this book all know each other. I feel like that adds a layer of emotional depth to the novel as a lot of the students struggle with having to kill their friends in order to survive.

There’s not a ton of depth to the characters, but somehow this works for a lot of them. There are a lot of characters that I liked in this book. Shogo Kawada is a teenage John McClane, and Takako Chigusa has a badass female empowerment moment. I also love Shinji Mimura, and

I was still so gutted when he died. He had such a good plan to escape, and it all just fell apart in the most surprising and heartbreaking way possible.

While the Japanese government and the program director are the main antagonists, I love the secondary antagonists in this book. There was enough reason given to their actions that you can understand their motives without having to dismiss their horrific actions.

The main negative of this book is that the translation that I have is not very good. There were many instances where you could tell it was a direct translation because the simile kind of made sense but it is a comparison that no English speaker would make. Here are some examples:

“Her body temperature, which he sensed from her hands and through the shoulder area of the sailor suit, felt abnormally high, as if she were nursing a chick underneath her clothes.”

“Shuya had a dim image of the faces of Megumi Eto and Yukiko Kitano. Just a little, though. Like, two teaspoons each.”

“Mitsuko’s face was twisted with dismay and horror--at the very least it looked contorted. She was priceless.”

“...he was most likely beaten to death. With the gear of his sport--a baseball bat.”

My book is the very first translation. I know they have a much newer translation so hopefully it’s better than my copy.

Because the translation isn’t great, I will not judge this book on the writing quality. The pacing is great, though, and the 600 pages flow by quickly. Even though I knew what was going to happen, I still felt the tension and anguish just as if I was reading it for the first time.

I can see how this book would be polarizing. The intent is to shock the reader, and Takani does just that.

With its shocking plot and horrific imagery, the most disturbing thing about Battle Royale is that its themes about violence towards children and loss of innocence still feel so relevant today.

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