Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa are the boy and girl who wind up together because Shuya’s best friend (who dies before the games even start) had a crush on Noriko and she, in turn, has a crush on Shuya along with most of the girls in their class. We meet the main players in the Battle and are given enough information that we not only bond with some of the kids, but we can see why the other children act the way they do.
But like every government that is part of a dictatorship, it is corrupt and unfair, despite the propaganda that tells the masses otherwise.
The whole exercise is to show just how equal everyone is in this new Japan. These 14 and 15-year-old children are then transported to a secret location where they will be armed (some better than others) and set out to kill each other off. It is part of this isolated countries culture that random Junior High School classes are picked (by computer) and “kidnapped” by authorities. Japan’s isolationism has allowed them to indulge in practises that would be frowned upon by other countries. Of course both books are set in “the future” Hunger Games in a post apocalyptic America and Battle Royale in a future Japan that has outstripped America as a world power through the appointment of a dictator and an economy that has reduced the USA to third world country status. There are, however quite a few circumstances where the two stories share a lot of things the contestants being chosen by “lottery” or the packs that each contestant picks up before the battle commences are just two such instantances. I am sure that she is telling the truth as there are enough instances of the two stories (although Collins has spread the Hunger Games stories over three separate books) being vastly different. The story of a group of Junior High School students who are made to kill each other off until only one remains, still shocks and astounds 13 years after its first appearance in bookstores and libraries across the world.Īfter reading the book and watching the film of The Hunger Games written by Suzanne Collins, I still find it hard to believe that she never heard of either the original story or film (made by the iconic Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku). Originally published in 1999 amid a flurry of controversy that would rise to a cacophony when a film one year later was adapted from the novel, Battle Royale still packs one hell of a punch.
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