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Reviewed by Tom Rosin Whew, high octane. Take the story you (might) know from the film, add extra character background, including plenty of school memories, change a few things around and you've got an amazing read. For those who haven't seen the film the idea is a reality show taken to extremes. A class of Japanese school children are forced to whittle their numbers down from 42 to one over the space of a few days. They're set down on an island, given a random weapon each, a collar packed with explosives and told to get to it. Japan is disappointed with its youth, the traditional values are disintegrating rapidly so the lesson is shape up or we disown you. Different factions in the class react in different ways. Some band together and try to ignore the rule that it there's more than one left at the end of the game all the collars explode. Some take to it naturally. The tagline for the film was something like 'could you kill your best friend'. It'll be interesting to see how the manga tackles the lighthouse scene, one of the most intense pieces of celluloid I've witnessed. Not sure if this is adapted from the original novel or taken from the film but Giffen does an excellent job with the English language version, well done to Tokyopop for drafting him in. Often in manga, an artist has a few different stock faces and he merely piles different hair and clothes around them. The kids all have the same uniform so Taguchi (I'm guessing) has made an almost Gilbert Hernandez-like stretch of keeping everyone seperate. He manages to keep everything sharp and clear while still exaggerating the pupils' faces so the sweet and innocent are distinct from the dangerous or damaged. His art is glossy and shiny and almost hyperreal, particularly during the - rather messy and close up - killings. Also, this is quite a change from Western adaptations. If Dark Horse are doing an Aliens book it's a four issue mini series, probably coming out at under a hundred pages. If DC do a Batman, it's less than that, got all the big fight scenes and you go away thinking 'well it looked like Michael Keaton' but that's about it. Here we have the first two hundred page book of a series (eight parts? more?) and it's giving you more than the film, not less. Much more. Comment on this review of Battle Royale v1 on the Manga Life Forums. |
7 May 2008
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