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Reviewed by Craig Johnson For those of you not following the story through volumes one and two so far - or unfamiliar with the excellent film - in a near future Japan each year 42 high school students (21 boys, 21 girls), basically a whole class, are drugged on a school trip and whisked away to a remote island to play war games. These war games have a difference - there's no paint guns involved, just real weapons, and the rules of Do or Die, Kill or Be Killed are very much in evidence. Only one student can escape - the final one left alive - and much as the students (for the most part) agonise over the decision to actually kill someone, the slack is taken up by those students keen to get ahead, who glorify in the killing. It would seem that peaceniks have no place in Battle Royale. Except our hero of the tale, Shuuya, and his best friend's girl Noriko (said best friend getting the bullet before the contest even started in a shocking scene in book one) are determined not to give in. They hook up with a guy who only recently transferred into the class - Shogo - and we find out a lot more about him in this book (did I mention it's 200 pages of goodness for only ten bucks? Well, Is say goodness, more like violence, sex, gratuitous nudity, and even more violence, really) and the first stirrings of uneasiness shows its head...can Shuuya and Noriko really trust this guy? Can they even trust each other (if there is more than one student left at the end of the contest, they all get killed via the detonation of explosive collars which also act as tracking and eavesdropping devices)? The story justifies its page count and rating by veering off into the backgrounds of other students (usually just before they bite the big one in some hideous manner) but we also check in on other, pro-active characters, like Shinji Mimura, who has snaffled up a Barbie PC, a hacked mobile and some dodgy software to attempt to break-in to the overall controlling computers and shut the collars down. For every guy like Mimura, there's a player waiting to kick arse...and it's a race against time for all these guys. If you've seen the film then there have been enough significant differences so far to not rely on everything you saw in the film happening in these books - besides, the film did have an alternate ending, so who knows how the books will turn out in comparison? At the moment, they fare exceedingly well, the added depth giving you a chance to emote for the characters before they get shot, stabbed, chucked off a cliff, decapitated or otherwise kicked through death's door. The worst criticism I can perhaps make is that the nudity is completely and utterly gratuitous and out of place - remember how much it frustrates for US comics to feature near nude female characters with wisps of steam or plants or whatever covering their rude bits? Well in this book there are no such plants or steam, it's all on show, but there doesn't seem a whole lot of relevance to its appearance (that's full frontal male nudity too). Just something to be aware of. Finally, there's a detailed "story so far" section in case you (oh horror of horrors) missed the first two books, so you've really no excuse. Comment on this review of Battle Royale v3 on the Manga Life Forums. |
7 May 2008
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