Battle Royale - Koushun Takami - So You Haven't Read

So you haven't read Battle Royale by Koushun Takami?! The book that inspired the Battle Royal Genre and media like Squid Game, Fortnite, and The Hunger Games? Then pull up a chair and don't get too cozy as we discuss how in this dystopian world the government is forcing children to fight to the death on an island and how one student's plan is to take the system down!

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♪ Intro music: "Coffee Beans" by Mike Wuerth
♪ Outro music: "So You Haven't Read Theme" by Tiffany Roman

#SoYouHaventRead #BattleRoyale #KoushunTakami

[dzmcroy]

This might be a cliche thing to say, but the original book is even better than its various adaptations. The English translation is excellent. It's a crying shame that Takami has never written anything else!

[robertbreedlovecraft]

I didn't know Battle Royale was originally a novel. The director of the film Kinji Fukasaku was a teenager worker in a munitions factory during World War II and had to take shelter under the corpses of his coworkers during American bombing raids. That feeling of being child abandoned and exploited by the adult world very clearly drew him to the material.

[Triviata]

I always thought the most disturbing thing about BR was the fact the students all knew each other so well. In the Hunger Games the contestants might know the other representative from their district, but the others were strangers. There are no strangers in BR (apart from the few recent transfer students), which makes being made to fight and kill them even more horrific.

[reillycurran]

IIRC Suzanne Collins was referencing the tail of Theseus and the Minotaur with the Hunger games, hence why the releasing of vicious unnatural monsters into the arena to kill off kids that are getting too good at hiding from their competitors is such a recurring theme of the games.

[avscurr]

The beauty of this novel was how every character was introduced to you. You learn a level of detail about each that makes you understand who they are so they don't feel like plot NPC's but main characters of their own story. It makes each death have more of an impact and keeps you hooked on the story.

The film, personally I didn't enjoy as much as it twisted a few very important aspects, such as Shogo being present and Kiriyama deciding to play, which add twists to your perceived motivations for them. I would recommend the Belko Project as a great movie version of this genre, if a little more light hearted (for a Battle Royale murder story!) as it keeps the whole "are they playing or not" and "Is there a way out" aspects that provide a lot of the back bone to Battle Royale.

[thetribunaloftheimaginatio]

"But in times of crisis, the wise build bridges while the foolish build barriers."

[ronaldmccomb]

Ah, The Long Walk. One of King’s underrated short stories.

[dropkickcorpse]

Can you guys do an Extra History on the nationwide Japanese Student Protests that seem to heavily influence modern japanese media?

I see it referenced in games like Battle Royale, Danganronpa, and anime where the adult population fearful about the youth rising up and preemptively pit them against each other to create a new adult generation built on distrust and paranoia towards their neighbors.

[SuperUltraDevin]

This was one of my favorite movies as a teen. This is the first of your series that I ACTUALLY read lol!

[severalgeollosscreaming]

I find the Belko Experiment from 2016 to be one of the better underrated versions of this concept. "Ya'll work together in 1 office building, now do our tasks or kill enough of each other via each time limit and we won't randomly kill enough."
Albeit annoyingly, the office setting had so many good possibilities of what normal objects can be used as weapons, they just implement a "oh well this office building has a gun storage locker" (Albeit the elevator and projector room kills are my favourites)

[GacLosen]

This is easily among my favorite stories of all time. It's the first one that taught me that no matter how bad things get, you have hope so long as you're alive, and that every life, no matter how twisted or cruel, is worth saving.

[Kirabetas]

This is still my favorite novel of all. I own both the original Red release, and the updated version for the translation fixes that came with it. The manga and film have noticeable differences that take away from some of the quality, and the audiobook available on Audible sadly has a very monotonic narration, but I've read the physical print version over a dozen times, and will always go back to it.

But seriously, can we get an audiobook version that doesn't sound like the reader is sleeping through his lines? Please?

[mattdarrock]

I've seen the movie and it was powerful... Specially the lighthouse scene.

[Panda_Roll]

Me: "I wonder why that list of results starts with things like fortnite and not the Hunger games. I mean, it's clearly a copy/paste"

**Suzanne Collins says she never read Battle Royale**

Excuse me, my eyes rolled so hard I have to collect them from the floor!

[nemesis]

A little mention of secondary villian Mitsuko would made it better. Anyway a good video, I like that all the adaptations has different charms. Books has detailed descriptions, movie has nice action and of course Takashi Kitano and manga has some gore and violence and additional characterisation. But in all three version Lighthouse is perfect. Another interesting thing is Kiriyama killed by different people in all iterations. In Movie Kawada, in Manga Shuya, in Book Noriko.

[ranwolf]

Even Marvel had their own take on Battle Royale genre with the Avengers Arena series

[intergalactic]

Appreciate you not spoiling the ending. There's a lot to be said for little things like that.

I have read it and can confirm that it is fantastic. Definitely worth checking out.

[williamwells]

The biggest problem I had with it was keeping the characters straight since it kept switching between first name, last name and nicknames. Also it had two characters with the same first name which I kept getting mixed up which one was which.

[illiarudkov]

I watched movie with my brother (mostly, because I like Takeshi Kitano, The Man), and it was veery scary!
And then I've read the manga and I was in such shock... I'm usually not afraid of gore in media, but that! But I prefer manga version since it opened for me more interesting points that I missed in the movie. Especially I was fascinated by demontration of how fear of your friend or just fear for life changes and twists people in their own way, it's REAL scary and you just can't help but think, that these students before Battle Royale were just like us — ordinary people, but how we could be twisted in our own way.
(Also, while I read the manga, I've immideately understood, where Danganronpa series of games takes inspiration for their story)
Thanks EC for showing this story to everyone! It's amazing effort, tyring to push for learning some really interesting and on-the-time topics with such talent and fun!

[kingflumph]

Thank you EC, you inspired me to read the book and watch the movie too! I'll say I really liked the book, it's one of my favorites now, and was really disappointed in the movie. I see people saying how the book has a lot of flashbacks narrative and it is long, but that was part of why it worked for me. What makes BR distinct from Hunger Games is the fact that the characters all know each other and have that intimate relationship prior to the game, which is how the government exploits them to exert power, and makes it all the more heartbreaking when they have to kill each other. I didn't feel that theme at all in the film; it just felt like "man kids these days sure are terrible, let's kill them all for no real reason." I didn't know anything about the characters before the game started in the film, so I didn't care that they were now in the game. I didn't have the chance to get connected that the books first act gave me.

I respect what the director was trying to do, and there were some good action scenes, but it leaned too far into the action for me. I liked how in the book there were long sequences of no killing, because it gave me time to focus on the characters and world and settle my heart rate, and the narration over the fights gave just the right amount of time for my tension to build. Movie felt like a constant series of shocks with no down time, so it didn't have the punch of the book for me.

Also the epilogue was just so much weaker for me without the Springsteen motif and that ending with the teacher was just...so bizarre in the movie. I'll take Sakamochi from the book any day, thanks very much, haha.

Overall thanks again for adding some new literary interest to my life!