Battle Royale: Remastered by Koushun Takami

Battle Royale: Remastered (Battle Royale)

by Koushun Takami

In a dystopian future Japan, forty-two junior high school students are outfitted with weapons and bid to kill one another until there is only one left standing.

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. 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.

Reviewed by Leigha on

5 of 5 stars

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Forty-two students are left on an island to fight to the death in this intense dystopian thriller.

I woke up out of the blue a couple of weeks ago and thought “Man, I really need to read Battle Royale." As the day progressed, my obsession for reading it grew. By that evening I was ravenous to read it. Why? No clue, but there you have it. And guys, it was HARD to find a copy. It was printed in 1999, and no eBook version exists. I had to use snail mail to get the paperback delivered to me.

The first couple of chapters are utter chaos – the plot is flimsy, the world building vague, the character names too similar to distinguish between them. And yet, once the games begin, it’s satisfyingly intense. The greatest strength of this novel is the ability to create dynamic characters in a very short span of time. Told through third person omniscient, you see most of the characters perspectives first hand. The ability to make me care about any of them, let alone all of them, is impressive.

It’s visceral and gory – not for the feint of heart to say the least. It’s a smorgasbord of violence with tons of graphic descriptions of maiming and killing. However, I found the death scenes (and there are a LOT of death scenes) to be rather poetic. The characters were scared or in pain or plotting and then…nothing. Silence. Their part of the story was complete even if they (or you) did not want it to be. And, in some ways, isn’t that life for most of us?

tl;dr Gory violence paired with excellent characterizations made it a cinematic and satisfying read for me.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 19 July, 2020: Finished reading
  • 19 July, 2020: Reviewed