Battle Royale

You may be wondering, "What is a Battle Royale exactly?" If you are asking yourself that, then you are asking a great question. A Battle Royale is a mess. In it's simplest form, it's a whole bunch of people duking it out at the same time in some sort of cage match type thing in wrestling. It's not a tag team event, or a 2-on-1-- instead, it's survival of the fittest. Only one fighter will remain standing.

So, now you have an idea of what the book Battle Royale is going to be about. In this book, randomly selected classes of students are chosen to participate in the government's special "program." They are shipped off to a remote island, tagged with explosive collars, and told only one of them can remain alive. To survive, you have to kill your classmates.

Sound familiar? You bet it does. Can we say Hunger Games?

I'm about to piss a lot of people off, so if you are a die hard Hunger Games fan-- stop reading.

Now, don't get me wrong-- I really liked the Hunger Games books. I saw the movie and plan to see Catching Fire. But I am disgruntled now. When I read The Hunger Games, I was blown away by how original I thought the books were. I just ranted and raved to everyone I saw about it. Now I feel foolish, because Battle Royale first hit the scenes in 1999. That's an entire decade before HG! So, was HG really that innovative? Nope. Not at all. It was a complete rip off of Battle Royale.

Don't believe me? Still hung up on Peeta? Fine. But take a gander at this:

In Battle Royale, the government heads up the program and no one really understands its purpose. There is also an evil dictator running the show behind the scenes while over paid government officials place bets on who will survive. Kids are being supplied with mystery packs to help or hinder their survival. But some kids are brutal and more willing to kill, while others just want to survive. There are also kids stuck on an island that has forbiddon zones that change by the hour. The officials monitor every conversation and location throughout the event, while multiple survivors in the end are ready to stick it to the government. Oh, and don't forget the relationship between the male and female protagonists. That's important too. (This relationship also wouldn't be nearly as potent if there weren't a few near death experiences added in.)

So, which book did I just describe? Hard to tell, right?

So now you see why I feel a bit cheated by the shinyness of The Hunger Games. It really wasn't all that original. Yes, the writing style was different and seemed to focus on different elements with a great intensity, but it was not as unique as I thought. Battle Royale was more about survival and the inner darkness we all have, and less about the political overthrow we saw in Mockingjay. Also, I really liked how the author of Battle Royale gave multiple perspectives. You got a true understanding of why so many of the kids were willing to kill (or not). The irony of some of the situations were not lost on me, either.

If you are a fan of The Hunger Games-- and you actually read all of this knowing I was going to make you upset-- then you should read Battle Royale. You may end up feeling the same way I do. Either way, you owe it to yourself to at least compare the two stories.

Before there was The Hunger Games, there was Battle Royale, published in 1999. Having read and enjoyed Suzanne Collins' series, I really wanted to read this book to see just how similar they actually were. Certainly, she must have found some inspiration in this story; it seems unlikely that elements of her story are so similar without some familiarity with Battle Royale.

The Similarities:

Dictatorship running a rather stupid Program to prevent its people from getting uppity.
A character who has been through the game before, won and had to go back.
Hesitant romance between main characters.
Zones that become unsafe to force characters into conflict, rather than just hiding.
Announcements on a regular schedule revealing who has died.
The victor receives a more comfortable life and TV coverage after the Program ends.

The Differences:

Battle Royale is perhaps even more violent. The kids here get a whole lot of guns and there are almost double the number of kids that have to die.
Since they are fighting classmates, the kids know everyone, rather than just one other person.
There is no way to volunteer to go in someone else's place. If your class is chosen, you're screwed.
Battle Royale has a less clear ending.
Battle Royale follows all of the characters, not just one, so you know what is going through everyone's minds.
In The Hunger Games, you are eligible to participate from 12-18. In Battle Royale, you are eligible only when you are in the third year of junior high (equivalent to a high school freshman in the U.S.).

Battle Royale was definitely an interesting read. And I enjoyed it, in the way one can enjoy something as grisly and macabre as books about young folks killing one another at the behest of a scary government. The story was great. Unfortunately, the writing is not. What I don't know is whether it is as poorly written (seriously grammatically incorrect and awkward sentence structure) in Japanese or if it was poorly translated. The copy of the book I have is the first American edition I believe, so maybe the newer one has been better edited? I don't really know, but definitely watch out for that.

Hunger Games fans should not miss this. Next up for me: watching the live action movie.