I never wrote a proper review for this book, but I loved it. Does that make me a twisted person? I don't normally read books like this, but I loved the manga and movie and when I found out the novel came first, I just had to read it! I am so glad I did. I was intimidated by the size, but flew through the novel in a couple days.

 

42 Japanese students hijacked and taken to a remote island for a government sanctioned contest to kill each other off. Only one can survive. The winner, not only gets to live, but also gets some dough and a signed picture of a dictator dude. Sweet.

An excellent survival tale of murder, betrayal, manipulation and violence. For a bunch of 15 year-old-ish kids, some of them were very smart and surprisingly “game minded.” Some not so much.

Even though this clocks in at over 600 pages, it reads quick. There were lots of characters to get backstory on and lots of kills to be had. There may have been a few brief moments of lag here and there, but never long enough to knock me out of the story. Overall a very well done and well written (translated) story.

Battle Royale: Remastered - Koushun Taka... This book. This freaking book! I should've rated and reviewed it months ago.

Let's start with that gorgeous cover. Yes, I said gorgeous. I loved it the moment I set eyes on it at the store, it's got this velvety feel to it, and it's shiny and it's just so freaking pretty, the cover alone contributes to this book's five stars. Not that it needs any help because it's got a fantastic plot which was well executed.

I first found out about Battle Royale waaaay back in the day when I was obsessed with asian horror/gore movies and happened to come across the movie. I have to say, I thought the movie was fantastic, but once I've watched a movie based on a book I'll very likely never bother with the book because I'm lazy like that. So I didn't bother with BR... that is until the day I saw the book in a store and was schocked to see how big it was. The movie wasn't even that long and it was so full of great scenes and brutality that I just had to wonder how much worse it could get in 600+ pages of it.

Oh it was worse... so much worse. Once again, as is the generally the case, the book beat the movie by a long, long shot.

See, the book isn't nearly 650 pages long just for show. It actually delves into the background of each character that makes an appearance, you learn about their sad/disturbing/boring/normal pasts and are forced to care about what happens to them. They're not just there to be killed off for shock value or just as a convenient asset to the main characters. With the movie, I remember barely learning the MCs names and I didn't much care about the rest of the characters and whether they died or not because I felt no connection to them, but with the book I kept finding myself hoping for a better outcome for a lot of them, knowing what would inevitably happen.

This is one brutal read and I enjoyed every excruciatingly detailed moment of it. I haven't read the old translation of the book, and I don't think I will, because the translator, Nathan Collins, did a near perfect job.

I know some people were put off by the "romance" in the book but I thought it didn't take anything away from the story. It mostly took a backseat to everything that was going on and I thought it was handled pretty decently. I think it had just the right amount of emotional/romantic moments and to be honest, I was glad they were there.

I remember liking several quotes in the book but as I don't have my copy with me right now I'll just leave that popular one that most everyone else who read the book loved as well.

"Loving someone always requires you to not love others."

So I picked up The Hunger Ga-, err, Battle Royale as a huge fan of the film. It's one that I've owned on DVD for a good many years, and should I ever get the opportunity, I will happily update to a blu-ray. That's Battle Royale I'm talking about. Not The Hunger Games.

It's an incredible, fast-paced thrill-ride with a heavy social message about the evils of authoritarian government. And just in case you're in any way confused, it is also incredibly gory. So, no, NOT The Hunger Games.

And of course that film comes from this novel by Suzanne Collins ... Ha! I did it again. Of course it didn't. It's from a novel by Koushun Takami, which was written in 1999. Years before Ms Collins published The Hunger Games. Even though she never, ever, cross-my-heart, no way, nope, had not heard about Battle Royale when she wrote an incredible, fast-paced thrill-ride with a heavy social message about the evils of authoritarian government ... only without the gore factor.

Genius. Deny deny deny.

Anyway, back to my now short review. The novel version of Battle Royale suffers from being far too long, and way too detailed in fleshing out the minor characters no-one ever really cared about. It is also overly "teeneagery" with way too many characters focusing on who they like and whether they're liked in return when they should be running, screaming, hiding, shrieking, and murdering as per their innate survival instinct. Simply put, I lost count of the number of times I groaned as they latest bit character who barely been cited in 250 pages lamented about how amazing Shuya was.

But - and this is a massive but - there are still some great sequences, surprising deaths, and the agony over how far any one would go to preserve their life is richly detailed.

So whilst reading Battle Royale was not a patch on my viewing experience, I'm glad I grabbed myself a translated copy and it now graces my bookshelf.

Unlike anything in The Rip-Off Games series.

3 15 Year-Old Empathy-Lacking Psychopaths with a Sub-Machine Gun for Battle Royale.

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