Battle Royale

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I heavily enjoyed the majority of Battle Royale. When entering the series, I wanted a violent story about kids pitted against each other in a game to the death with no easy answers and a desire for an unhappy ending.

Battle Royale mostly lived up to that bar.

First off this is a VERY violent manga, Battle Royale whether it be novel/movie/manga or anything is about kids killing kids, and the manga may be the most graphic. This isn't necessarily a horror manga but a number of images will stick with readers long after they finish.

This also isn't a "happy ... time", this is intended to be a warzone, and while some characters have moments that are a little too normalized, sitting around cooking a meal, or hiding out in a location for entirely too long, this is a game of life and death, and almost any encounter between players will be either violent, or a tentative level of trust.

Finally, there's no easy answers. With out spoiling it, while the game they're playing is resolved, there's no "And the evil people stopped being evil and everyone woke up." This is very much focused on the game, or as it's called int he world "The Program" where there is only one winner. While the brutal government puts them into the program, this isn't a hero's story or a battle against the great evil empire. It's a question of survival in a horrible situation, and the question of both who will win and that's where it's strongest.

But not everything is good here.

Let's start with the small points. I'll call out that this has a number of HEAVILY sexual scenes, like there's points where I almost think this manga could just be hentai for a couple of chapters. It's well told, and while a bit graphic, it also really develops a couple characters, and that does a great job really helping people understand why those characters are the way they are. Probably farther than it needs to be, but if this makes people stop reading, ask yourself why watching kids forced to murder each other in graphic ways for 100 chapters bothers you more than a couple characters having sex for 10 chapters? That's a weird line we draw as a society.

That's not necessarily a negative, but something I felt needed to be said.

So There are two major negatives.

Almost every character is... somewhat boring. Characters are either "playing the game" or "not playing the game". AKA "Killers" or "To be killed". There's a question of which is which when each character is introduced, but after that point it's a binary choice.

There's very few in the later camp who ever kill, and almost no one in the former camp that lets anyone get away. The problem is it makes so many characters boring because with out seeing them break the line especially in this situation, we're not seeing characters really evolve or change. We're just saying almost a morality play on display, and while Killers do die, I get bored of the "pacifist" characters as the main characters or heroes of these stories especially when put in the absolute worst environment possible.

It's just forms of black and white sadly, and very few ever even take on any shade of grey, and when it is done, it's always the lightest (or darkest) variants.

The bigger issue, and probably what ruins what could have been a near perfect story is the main villain. In the final 20 or so chapters, there's a final showdown that begins, but for a manga that has spent 100 chapters in almost all ultra realistic environments, rules and characters, characters you feel like you could meet in a school, one character just has almost super human abilities to continue to be a thorn. I don't want to spoil it, it's something ever reader needs to experience on it's own, but while this is a manga, I still call him an "anime villain" as a negative, because the majority of this manga isn't that type of over powered or ludicrous idea.

Trust me, when you read, it you'll understand why I think it detracts from the series.

With that being said... man the rest of the chapters, books and experience here is worth it. There's a definite question of what will happen, and who will survive in a world and game where... that's a very real problem, and like I said, this is a satisfying ending as long as you aren't hoping for a fairy tale or unrealistic ending for the world that is set up.

I'd definitely recommend this, strongly recommend if I'm honest.

Bad, so bad. In the beggining you feel that a good atmosphere is about to grow, for it's a good manga that you are reading. But, in meantime, you get a lot of cliches and characters so dumb that make you angry with them.

It's tremendously wrong how the characters have a justice sensor that always they have to do the right thing, even if this will kill them. So many times the main character struggles to decide wheter he kill someone or not, and because of this struggle so many things happen in a bad way.

Other thing, the pure cliche that is to put the ... socialism behind the government, and make the EUA a great country to live, that it's supposed to live a good life without problems with the government. Bullshit, one who read history will know how dangerous the EUA are, and it seems to me a lot more realistic if the show passes on America.

If you're aware of the premise of this manga and you're hoping that it's at least a semi-realistic, it isn't. You will find martial arts so powerful in this manga that they can tear down tree trunks. This scene was ridiculous. Out of no where, some characters have KI now and literally reference DBZ when preparing some charged KI attack. Later on you will encounter a guy that literally got shot in the face but is still able to do backflips everywhere. It's just dumb. There is an endless amount of examples of how ludicrous this manga gets. It is plot holes and discrepancies' galore. ... Be prepared to turn plenty of blind eyes to the author just lazily letting people do very convenient things in fights. Hidden weapons coming out of nowhere, last minute recuses, an insane level of endurance. I lost count of how many times someone got shot in the leg and casually kept running for hours on end. Ammo. We need to talk about ammo. It is RARELY addressed, RARELY an issue. The people with Uzis come across as if they have unlimited ammo which just gives them an insane advantage over everyone else. Which leads me into how they set the game up. Every person gets a bag with essential items and a random weapon. These can range from forks to machine guns. While comical at first, it's just blatantly one sided very fast.

This manga is filled to the brim with flash backs. 9 times out of 10 they are boring as shit and go on for way too long. On top of this the author has the audacity to reuse old panels to 'remind' the reader about things that happened previously, even if it was only 5 chapters ago. Blatant filler. The characters are absolute ass and I loathed the MC. All he ever did was preach really lame shounen "believe it" nonsense. What makes him worse than a generic shounen character is that his words are hollow. He hardly does anything of significance in the entire story. It's bizarre, so many of the characters in this manga talk so highly about the MC but there's absolutely no reason why they should. He's a weird Elvis larper who just repeats his utterly dumb arguments again, and again, and again. Then There's Noriko. Noriko was so boring, we hardly know her. There was nothing even remotely interesting about her at all, we were just expected to care about her because the MC did. I swear, a quarter to half of the story is just the MC with two other people in the forest having the same dumb arguments time after time while other events around the island unfold. So many side plots just lead to nothing and just feel like an utter waste of time.

There's so many series I love that are clearly influenced by Battle Royale (Gantz, I am a Hero, Hunger Games, Danganronpa) but the execution here is absolute ass. The morbid premise is fun in itself, it doesn't need over the top martial arts and matrix bullet dodging to improve it. As it doesn't, in my opinion it weakens it. If you want to read something similar involving kids being stuck in a dog eat dog scenario then I would recommend The Drifting Classroom over this. It's not perfect and has some really bizarre sci-fi elements to it. But the way the kids conduct themselves in that scenario seems a lot more believable than what was displayed in Battle Royale. I would argue that Battle Royale draws some inspiration from The Drifting Classroom. Even if you think my suggestion is a crappy one, that's fine, I would still not recommend wasting your time with this series. It can't be taken serious and your time would be better spent elsewhere.