[Pyroman]

My brother and I got into this a little while ago and have fourteen out of the fifteen manga set. I can't wait to get the last one! If you haven't seen BAttle Royale, then you haven't fucking lived.

The series revolves around something called, "The Program", which is a government run competition. In it, a class of forty-two students are put on an island, get explosive radio collars stuck on them, are given a weapon, and are told to kill each other until only one remains or else they all die.

Sounds fun, huh? There's also a lot of plot stuff and everything, but let's face it, you really just want to see a WAY better show about people on an island than Survivor.

It has everything we like to see; sex, drugs, rock N' roll, and ultra-violence. I am a fanboy of the Manga, so maybe I'm biased about it. Even so, if you answered the question above with the last answer, go out and pick up this series. If you don't have the money, sell your possesions on Ebay until you do.

[Master of AFTER]

I've read a bit of the manga... It was pretty good. When I first heard the concept for the series, I thought that it sounded too thin to survive for as many volumes as it did, but based on what I read, it seemed to have a lot more substance than I would have guessed. It's a very character-driven series, and thankfully the characters seemed interesting enough to be able to carry the entire manga and make up for the lack of depth in the plot itself. It definitely wouldn't have hurt anything if the basic structure of the story wasn't so straightforward, though.

My problem with the series, and what really kept me from getting into it, is that the violence just seemed to go too far too often. Generally, I hate it when manga authors pull their punches and water everything down for the sake of keeping their work as mainstream as possible, so in one sense Battle Royale's willingness to show every gritty detail was refreshing, but after awhile, it felt like the authors were just throwing stuff in purely for the shock value. I sat through 300 and didn't even flinch, but some of the stuff that made its way into BR came off to me as almost sickening. A lot of the violence transcended brutal and went straight for sadistic, which is a trick you can pull to up the stakes once, twice, even a few times... But not every single chapter.

For me, Battle Royale is an example of an interesting concept with substandard execution. I can't help but feel that stylizing some of the violence would have actually made for a more compelling read, as the excessive gore became desensitizing too quickly. Beyond that, it's a decent enough series, just not my cup of tea.

[???????]

I've never read it, but I might read a few scanlations of it.

[KennEH!]

It thought the Manga was pretty cool.

The only thing that I found weird was it had no realism. Teenagers killing random people? i get some of them went psycho, but others were just already like that. Plus the fact that all of that went on and none of the country tried to do anything, that I could overlook though. a little too gratuitous in violence.

That aside I thought the characters were really interesting. The fight scenes were pretty awesome too (though sometimes excessive). Overall I enjoyed it.

[EnigmaEchidna]

1. Novel...awesome

2. Manga...meh

3. the movies were okay, the squel was just stupid funny

[Kvitne]

Haven't looked at it because I thought it looked dumb. I'll have to check it out though.

[Pyroman]

KennEH!, on Jun 3 2007, 05:03 PM, said:

It thought the Manga was pretty cool.

The only thing that I found weird was it had no realism. Teenagers killing random people? i get some of them went psycho, but others were just already like that. Plus the fact that all of that went on and none of the country tried to do anything, that I could overlook though. a little too gratuitous in violence.

That aside I thought the characters were really interesting. The fight scenes were pretty awesome too (though sometimes excessive). Overall I enjoyed it.

If you paid attention to the story, you'd know why they were killing each other and how it wasn't random. Other than that, I agree with you. It's definitely worth checking out.

I get volume fifteen in a week! The final chapter! The suspense is killing me faster than the program could.