The plot is paper thin, as is the worldbuilding, but the characters are vital and real and you start caring about them even though you know up front that all or almost all of them are going to die. I usually plow pretty slowly through 600-page novels, but Battle Royale, with its short, snappy chapters in which something always happens (and more often than not, someone dies) sucked me in for hundreds of pages at a time. Most of its meaning is right there on the surface. That's not to say Takami is a genius or that Battle Royale is some sort of profound literary achievement. But the more I think about it, the more I think that Koushun Takami really did create quite an interesting work here, with qualities that are reflected in the movie. My first thoughts, after finishing the novel, were that it was just over-the-top pulp fiction, half gratuitous violence and half satire. Having seen the movie many years ago (though I rewatched it after reading the novel before writing this review), I remembered it as being an example of over-the-top hyper-violent Asian cinema without much of a story to it, just a bunch of teenagers killing each other. Probably many more Americans have seen the movie than read the book, but Battle Royale is a hell of a book. Be warned that this is not your typical American YA novel. I don't think such a distinction was/is made in Japan, or that the author wrote with a YA audience in mind, but when published in the U.S., it seems to be considered YA, content notwithstanding. (Google images suggests that the manga seems to be about hyper-endowed porn stars killing each other between sex scenes.) Second thing to point out is that I am not sure whether Battle Royale would be classified as 'Young Adult' or not. A manga was made based on the novel, but I haven't read it. Criticized as violent exploitation when first published in Japan-where it became a runaway best seller- Battle Royale is a Lord of the Flies for the 21st century, a potent allegory of what it means to be young and (barely) alive in a dog-eat-dog world.įirst thing to point out is that this is a review of the original novel (and the movie, below), not the manga. Koushun Takami's notorious high-octane thriller envisions a nightmare scenario: a class of junior high school students is taken to a deserted island where, as part of a ruthless authoritarian program, they are provided arms and forced to kill until only one survivor is left standing. Gollancz, 2003, 624 pages (English translation) Ohta Publishing, 1999, 616 pages (Japanese)

Battle royale by koushun takami