Battle Royale by Koushun Takami Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Battle Royale
Book Review: "Royale" A Winning Battle
Summary: 5 Stars
"Battle Royale" begins with a bang, literally and figuratively. An innovative and unique presentational style starts with the introduction printed on the lower half of the first few pages which is mirrored by having the last two sentences appear alone at the bottom of the story's last page. From there, a compelling and gripping narrative unfolds.
There are shining moments in this novel that serve as a vindication of the human spirit. Amidst the disturbing imagry of middle school students slaughtering one another there are examples fo courage, caring, kindness and love. It is the bloodshed that highlights the the touching moments, making them all the more poignant by contrast. The graphic brutality, of which there is much, emphasizes the sympathy and tenderness that is also present. Justice is prominent as well, providing a balance that prevents the story from sliding into nothing more than senseless, gratuitous vilence.
Though sometimes compared to "Lord of the Flies" or "1984", this is a much more sophisticated and well constructed vision than either, offering a more hopeful ending than either. Koushun Takami has so successfully captured the human psyche on all its levels, expertly presenting it in all its varied forms, highlighting compassion and sacrifice, that "Battle Royale" should be required reading for college level psychology and sociology course curriculums.
Other recommended readings: "Lord of the Flies" by William Golding; "1984" by George Orwell; "The Running Man" by Stephen King; "The 10th Victim", "Victim Prime", and "Victim/Hunter" by Robert Sheckley.
Book Review: "We will kill each other"
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was amazing. It had an excellent blend of action, friendship, and even a little romance. I reccomend this book very highly.
I knew I was hooked as soon as I picked it up. A brief summary of the plot on the back cover described it as a "pulp classic" and I must say that it did not dissapoint.
In this novel, a group of Japanese teenagers are subjected to a trial devise by the government. They will all be place on a deserted island and forced to kill each other until only one of them remains. As they fight (some willingly, others not) to ensure their own survivals the reader receives a glimpes into their everyday lives in a country ruled by the morally corrupt.
This entertaining, and touching tale with remain with me.
Book Review: "You better obey me, girl. A woman obeys his man."
Summary: 2 Stars
It would be something of an understatement to say that the hype for his book was overwhelming. I had seen the film version long, long before getting my hands on the beefy novel -- it's already a bonafide cult classic destined to sit beside RIKI-OH: The Story of Ricky. You can imagine my anticipation when I hauled ass to work and sunk my teeth in. Shuya Nanahara is an unfortunate sod who lives in Japan. The good news is practically every girl in class has a crush on him. The bad news is that en route to a "study trip" their bus takes a detour and winds up on a remote island somewhere. All this is well and good, but that was just basic setup and already we're 60-something pages in! Guess what -- when the reader's interest is at its lowest, it's not wise to begin your tale with droning exposition that doesn't apply anywhere else in the story. As we go on, the narrative will suddenly screech to a halt and we're treated to endless scenes of one-dimensional students with identical names reciting stale soap-opera platitudes.
Eventually we learn that a totalitarian government has ferried the kids off to the island so they can kill each other. Cue up the characters griping about how cool it would be if the government was Democratic. They're so evil, they've banned Rock N' Roll, even! Why'd they do that? So Shuya and a buddy can recite Bruce Springsteen lyrics like solemn profundities, of course. For the next 500 pages the cliches come flying like bullets from a MAC-10 -- for every inept "action" scene there's at least three of meandering babble. Middle-schoolers tend to get existential when they're pitted against one another, and you can smell the angst whenever a character dies and someone's there to bawl about not saving him/her. This is not helped by stilted, awkward translation that should have been proofread more than once (sometimes producing unintentionally hilarious sentences, such as the title of review). For 600-odd pages we go, slamming headlong into the sloppy conclusion like a ton of slushy concrete.
Does this sound like the next big Pretentious Coffeehouse Book? It's big, and I've noticed a lot of pretentious types raving about how meaningful and important all this foolishness is. Some have gone so far as to compare this to Lord of the Flies, which couldn't be more inaccurate. LotF was mainly concerned with the buildup prior to the sudden explosion of violence, as well as factions and crude "governments" springing up out of the rubble. This starts off with a boy getting machine-gunned in the chest by a commando. There are two kids who like to kill others and the rest hide and are slowly killed off one by one while they gripe about how dumb life is. You tell me how these can be compared.
Don't believe the neverending hype for this book. Its only redeeming qualities are some fiendishly creative death scenes and the occasional moment of accidental comedy. Really, Battle Royale's dry, uneven translation should be the least of your worries. Nobody under the age of 16 should be reading this book. Anyone over the age of 16 should be slapped upside the head for trying to milk "meaning" from it. I think it's appropriate to end this with a verbatim quote from the book:
"This guy was at least ten cenimeters taller than [him], who at 172 meters was short for a basketball player."
This book is 172 meters too big for its boots. It's too meandering for an actioner and it's too ADD-stricken for an allegorical study of "being young and alive in a 21st-century world". Just see the movie, it takes much less time away from your diminishing life.
Book Review: <3 Battle Royale
Summary: 5 Stars
J**** R*****
Period 5
1/19/06
Battle Royale
I personally loved Battle Royale; it made me laugh, cry, read again and again. The storyline is genius and it's interesting throughout the book. Battle Royale is based in southern Japan during a time of Dictatorship. This book is focused on the future of Japan with overpopulation, corruption, and teenagers ditching school for months. Japan's Dictator has now created the Battle Royale Program. The Battle Royale Act is a way to help control overpopulation and punish children who've ditched school and ridiculed adults.
This Program randomly selects a high school class to be taken on a "study trip" which involves sleeping gas on the bus, collars put on all students, and waking them up on an abandoned island. Students then are told that the collars will monitor their movements and pulses; explode if attempt to escape or go into a forbidden zone; and will be supplied a random weapon to kill each other until one survivor is left. Announcements are made every six hours to tell who've died and additional forbidden zone's coordinates. The bag that students are given at the school, when they wake up, contains a map with coordinates, bread, water, a flashlight, and the random weapon. Forbidden zones are a way to speed up the game by eliminating space and add more protection to the school (military base) because the collar will instantly explode a head off if they're caught in these zones.
Absolute dictatorship has given the government unlimited power to kill anyone who opposes anything or show the slightest amount of resistance. Parents either allow their children to be apart of the Program or be killed. Seriously, think of what you'd do if your only child is taken to an island to kill students and a 1:42 chance of coming back alive.
You got to admit, random weapons get pretty funny-a pan lid to a machine gun, luck of the draw and the strategy put behind each character is amazing. The book made some characters over powerful and too smart but after watching the movie, it made more sense. The book tells of how Shogo Kawada being randomly selected twice into Battle Royale, but it never mentions anything of how he hacked to get into the program for revenge by being added as a transfer student. Then Kazuo Kiriyama joins for the fun of it, he ends up owning all the students but the book makes what he does not seem possible. The movie really helps and is almost as good as the book.
Being a normal teenager, hormones, girls, emotions, life is good. Then one of your friends decides to come back to school and stabs your teacher. Then coming home and finding your dad hung himself... Life seems like it can't get any worse? Well, for Shuya it did. Now he gets to witness all his friends killing each other. One ends up dying by the teacher in the beginning by a knight thrown into his head. Then his best friend's corpse is found right outside the exit of the island's school with arrows lodged into him. And this is barely the beginning of the game...
Yeah, this book gets pretty violent but it does show a different view on life and makes you think. "It's so hard to love" is one of the quotes from this book by Motoharu Sano. After reading this book or even watching the movie, you'll believe this quote is absolute true. Battle Royale gives a sense that friends and couples would stick by each other, but twists and betrayal are unique throughout this book which makes it so interesting!
I was a bit skeptical when reading of Shinji's plan to make a bomb. He came so far and failed to my favorite character. I'm still confused on how my favorite character managed to escape from the explosion and I was almost certain he would win easily. Apparently, Shogo and Shuya got lucky and their plan was more successful then poor Shinji. Shogo's main purpose for rejoining Battle Royale was to screw up the game by having more than one survivor. The previous game, Shogo had lost his only true love and managed to hack his ticket back into the game and how to deactivate the collars. Shogo's original goal was to save as many people as he can but controversies only ended with Noriko and Shuya allying with him.
Battle Royale will be one of my favorite books forever and I recommend it to all my friends. Once you start reading this book, you'll never want to put it down-literally, and I mean this from a picky reader's taste. Harry Potter is nothing compared to this book. Battle Royale is definitely one of the most thrilling books ever and realistic in a sense you can relate to. The book isn't encouraging violence or anything; it's just a book to read for fun and show a different view on life. Someday, this Program could be used. Who'd you trust in a life or death situation like this?
Book Review: "...And we wont stop till we win."
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is awsome. I will not bother with a summary, there are plenty on this page, however this book blew my mind.I picked up this book in the back of a Borders book store and read the cover which said that Battle Royal was a "Lord of the Flies for the 21 century". Having just completed Lord of the flies for the 4th time ... this time for my tenth grade humanities class ... I decided to buy it.
I have heard from a lot of people, including my teacher, that Lord of the Flies was a chilling psychological tale, yet I felt that even though it was a great allusion to the world situation at the time, the Lord of the Flies did little in the respects of exploring the individual psyche.... Battle Royal does just that.
One of the reasons for the book being so long (616 pages) is that it splits itself into many different perspectives and what is going through their heads during the "game", the most prominant beng that of the antagonist, Shuya Nanahara. Battle Royal brilliantly sums up the basic human steriotypes and their perspectives on life. Even though some situations may be a little unbelievable (like how Kazuo ends up the way he is) Battle Royal is a great concept and presented (even through it was translated) beautifly.
One of the best things about this book is the way nothing is held back, nothing is censored. Battle Royal is not for the faint of heart, or the altruistic, because if you have that attitude twords life you woudn't last an hour on that island in "The Program" and would also find it hard to believe some of the choices made in the novel. If you can stand a little discriptive gore and know that the real world isn't all fun and fair, then this is a must read.
Being a 16 year old myself, i can say that nothing in Battle Royal is beyond each and every one of us.