Back to Battle Royale! It’s been a while, so we need to recap.

1 Yoshio Akamatsu: “the biggest kid in the class, the timid type, the kind of kid who’d always end up the target of pranks and insults.” Bowgun weapon, kills Mayumi, killed by Kazushi.
2 Keita Iijima
3 Tatsumichi Oki: jock, handball.
4 Toshinori Oda
5 Shogo Kawada: Looks older than the rest, has facial hair already, transferred in, scarred.
6 Kazuo Kiriyama: Awesome. A sociopath who decides to play the game by flipping a coin. Current kill count: 4.
7 Yoshitoki Kuninobu: Shuya’s friend since childhood, they grew up in the orphanage together. Killed for threatening Sakamochi.
8 Yoji Kuramoto: Seen briefly by Mitsuru.
9 Hiroshi Kuronaga: Part of Kazou’s gang. Killed by Kazuo.
10 Ryuhei Sasagawa: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang. Bullied Yoshio. Had a younger brother. Killed by Kazuo.
11 Hiroki Sugimura: Tall and knows martial arts. Seems tough but is actually shy, likes Chinese poetry. Shuya’s friend.
12 Yutaka Seto: Class clown.
13 Yuichiro Takiguchi
14 Sho Tsukioka: Part of Kazou’s gang. Escaped Kazuo’s massacre.
15 Shuya Nanahara: Main character? Minor but utterly harmless teenage rebelliousness.
16 Kazushi Nüda: jock, soccer. Killed Yoshio by accident.
17 Mitsuru Numai: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang, pistol weapon, tried to keep Ryuhei from bullying Yoshio, believed himself Kazuo’s adviser. Killed by Kazuo.
18 Tadakatsu Hatagami: jock, Shuya’s friend when they were younger. ‘Shuya had started playing electric guitar, which was considered an “unpatriotic” activity. Tadakatsu’s mother was uptight about that sort of thing.”
19 Shinji Mimura: Shuya’s current friend. ‘short hair and wore an intricately designed ring on his left ear’, highly athletic, knows a lot of information, particularly about the outside world. Extremely cool under pressure.
20 Kyoichi Motobuchi: Class representative, dad’s a government official.
21 Kazuhiko Yamamoto: Sakura’s boyfriend.
Females
1 Mizuho Inada
2 Yukie Utsumi: class representative, braided hair, Haruka’s volleyball teammate. The first one to speak after their abduction. Noriko’s friend.
3 Megumi Eto
4 Sakura Ogawa: Kazuhiko’s girlfriend.
5 Izumi Kanai: ‘the preppy whose father was a town representative’. Killed by Kazuo.
6 Yukiko Kitano
7 Yumiko Kusaka
8 Kayoko Kotohiki
9 Yuko Sakaki
10 Hirono Shimizu: Part of Mitsuko’s group.
11 Mitsuko Souma: Delinquent group leader. “Even though Mitsuko had the gorgeous looks of a pop idol, she always wore a strange, listless expression on her face.”
12 Haruka Tanizawa: Yukie’s volleyball teammate, exceptionally tall.
13 Takako Chigusa
14 Mayumi Tendo: The first death in the game, killed outside the school.
15 Noriko Nakagawa: She has a crush on Shuya he’s unaware of and Yoshitoki has a crush on her she may be unaware of. She’s nice and likes literature. Suffering a leg injury.
16 Yuka Nakagawa: Yoshitoki says she’s fat. Class clown.
17 Satomi Noda : “model student who wore wire-rimmed glasses which suited her calm, intelligent face”
18 Fumiyo Fujiyoshi: Killed for whispering to Yukie. “She was the nurse’s aide. She was quiet but very caring.”
19 Chisato Matsui: always quiet and withdrawn
20 Kaori Minami
21 Yoshimi Yahagi: Part of Mitsuko’s group.

So. Currently 34 of the original 42 are alive. So far, the killers are Yoshio, who panicked and assumed he would be first, Kazushi, who killed Yoshio by accident, and Kazuo, who turns out to be a super competent serial killer. Of them, Kazuo is the only one with multiple kills.

I mentioned during the Hunger Games that by appearances most of the kids there weren’t actually killing each other but just hiding. The deaths are so spread out that if the trained kids were having any luck hunting, almost none of the other kids must have killed anyone. I find it interesting that this book both acknowledges that most people would want to hide even as it shows that ordinary people with their backs to a wall will kill. But that makes sense given this book has a much greater focus on the larger cast and the idea that all of this is a tragedy, while Hunger Games is about Katniss and the personal unfairness of her own life.

On to the twelfth chapter.

We’re jumping to another set of characters.

Sakura Ogawa (Female Student No. 4) and Kazuhiko Yamamoto(Male Student No. 21) sat together at the edge of this cliff.

These are the ones whose description so far is that they’re in love with each other – and in a rare show of equality, both genders get the same treatment there.

Sakura had scribbled “at the northern tip” on the piece of paper (right beside “We shall kill each other”) she passed on to Kazuhiko.

I really like how this is put. “We shall kill each other at the northern tip” is now one way of reading it. Did they include this in the movie? They should, disturbing notes are great.

Anyway, luckily they picked north rather than south so they didn’t end up running across Kazuo.

Kazuhiko’s actually lucky enough to have another gun, a Colt .357 Magnum. Always got to be one of those showing up, it’s a law or something. But it doesn’t matter. They’re not going to play.

Beneath her hair, which was cut short for a girl, her pretty profile, beginning with her wide forehead, seemed to be forming a smile. She was tall, so she looked slim, and as always, she sat up straight.
…
Aside from the bridge of his nose, which was slightly wide, he was good looking.

I still really like the descriptions. I mean, you read fanfic and all it is is an endless wall of eye color hair color exact height meticulous details of clothing. And everyone just looks beautiful or muscular. The descriptions here aren’t exactly the same thing you always see and they do a much better job to make it seem like these are a random selection of real kids. The book’s very fond otherwise of mundane details and mundane life to contrast with the situation they’re in. There’s definitely unrealistic elements here (sociopath boy!) but at least the book’s restricting the unrealism to things directly conductive to plot so far.

Anyway, they sit and stare at the view.

The dark sea spread out under the moonlight, the black outlines of the islands scattered, and beyond them there was land. The lights were shining brightly on the islands and what appeared to be the Honshu mainland in the distance. It was a little before 3:30 a.m. In between those lights floating in the dark most people were sleeping peacefully. Or maybe there were kids like him studying late into the night for their high school entrance exams. It didn’t look terribly far, but it was a world beyond their reach now.

Really, fond of all the description. It’s probably more than is strictly needed, given how long the book is, but what’s the point of writing teenagers murdering each other if you don’t make it clear it shouldn’t be happening?

Of course, the view isn’t all nice. He can see something dark between them and the islands, a boat there to prevent escape. Normally, there’d be lots of lit up boats traveling around, but the government has blocked them off. One wonders how expensive all of this is. This isn’t the only island they use for their childmurder games. It must be colossally destructive to evacuate everyone, warehouse them somewhere else for a little while so they can’t talk and tell anyone where this area’s crime against humanity takes place, secure the whole area to make sure no one gets in, reroute everything that normally goes through there… And those displaced people presumably aren’t doing whatever their job is while this happens.

I doubt it’s enough to make it unsustainable but I wonder how much it’s stuff like this that screws up their economy? They seem functional but not really prosperous.

He also says he knows the killing’s started – he saw the dead bodies outside the school and heard gunshots.

“Thank you so much for this.” Sakura was looking at the tiny bouquet of flowers in her left hand. On his way over here Kazuhiko had found several clover-like flowers which he then bundled together. At the top of the long, thin stems, the small petals were bunched together like a cheerleader’s pom poms.

Another nice little grounding detail. This triggers her to talk about how they’ll never be able to do normal things together again. She says there’s nothing anyone can do about it. When she was little, government men came in and shot her father in their kitchen.

Then I grew up and ate my meals at the same table.” Sakura turned to Kazuhiko “It’s no use resisting.”

While the game itself seems pointless and a waste of resources, the government otherwise seems to know exactly what they’re doing. Technically, Sakura doesn’t even know if her father actually opposed the government, only that she heard he didn’t like them.

See, it’s impossible to actually police everyone, at least until we invent robots to do it for us. But what you can do is make people think you can police everyone, and one way of doing that is to arrest or kill people periodically for crimes. It doesn’t matter if they get it wrong wrong – if your neighbor is arrested for anti-government activities, and as far as you know your neighbor never did anything like that, that just proves how incredibly good the government is of finding this stuff out. If they could catch someone like that, of course they’ll find out if you step out of line.

Now, there’s obvious drawbacks. Doing this makes people unhappy and unhappy people decide they don’t care if you kill them, they’re still going to build a bomb to kill you first. And scaring people only works up to a point, past which they assume you’re going to kill them no matter what they do so they might as well try to overthrow the government anyway. And, of course, you can’t kill too many people for anti-government activities or people might realize that basically everyone hates you and they should start rioting.

But sudden out of the blue violence explained as someone stepping out of line? That’s how you keep people demoralized and scared. It’s what makes them say that it’s no use resisting.

They started having sex a month ago, which the book mentions without any recrimination, but this bit she kept secret until now. Kazuhiko can’t think of any response but that it must have been hard, but Sakura’s pleased by his kindness. She says that’s why she likes him, and he says he loves her too. He wants to say something more articulate about how she’s so pure and wonderful but can’t find the words.

While he’s fumbling, Sakura continues. She says she just wanted to see him before the end.

“Horrible things are going to happen. No according to what you said, they’ve already begun. Just yesterday we were all friends and now we’re going to kill each other.”

While that already seems like a good reason for suicide, she goes on to say there’s no chance that they could both make it out. Only one person is allowed to leave. I would really have preferred just saying that this is horrible so let’s die now instead. She says she doesn’t want to live like that, but she wants him to try to survive. He says that no, he feels the same.

I feel always intending to commit a double suicide would be stronger here. The focus is now on not wanting to live without each other, rather than wanting to escape the horrible murders in general.

She starts crying and then all of a sudden she blurted out, “Did you see the final episode of Tonight, at the Same Place, which airs every Thursday night at nine?”

Oh, translator, you really were sleeping on the job. The author may also be to blame for this clunker.

But aside from the fact she sounds like a commercial for the show, this is all cute. Kazuhiko explains it’s a popular love story and she asked him to watch it. He thinks how much he loves talking to her and how she wants things to stay the way they are and he wants to cry.

“Well, I was all right about the two main characters ending up together. That’s how it’s supposed to be. But I don’t know about Miki’s friend Mizue, the one played by Anna Kitagawa. How could Mizue have given up on the guy she loved? I know I would have gone after him.”
Kazuhiko grinned. “I knew you’d say that.”
Sakura laughed bashfully. “I can’t hide anything from you.”

She says that when she first met him, he looked handsome but what was more important was she knew he would understand her. He says he feels the same. I do like the relationship here, it seems positive and doesn’t feel as unbalanced as the others I’ve been reading.

They hug.

The bushes rustle.

He could have taken his gun and aimed it at the person behind them. But she wouldn’t want that. What she wanted was to leave this world quietly before they got sucked into this horrible massacre. Nothing was more important to him than her. There was no room for compromise. If this was what her trembling soul wanted, then he would follow her.

They jump.

I’m dissatisfied by the degree of the romance naturally making things self-centered here – Sakura seems at points to be suggesting suicide because what’s going on is horrible, but she also says it’s because there’s no chance of making it out with him. And he’s going along with it because he loves her, rather than because he actually feels the same about the murder being horrible thing. I think their being of one mind here would have been a stronger statement than him being willing to die for her happiness.

But still, we have our first suicides already and the idea that it might be better to die than murder your classmates. If it were simply a matter of not wanting to live without each other, they could have waited a while but she wanted to die to stay out of the killing entirely.

Yukie Utsumi (Female Student No. 2) poked her head out from the bushes a little. She held her breath and watched them. She had no intention whatsoever of harming anyone, so she had no idea that the noise she made signaled their departure. She was simply stunned by the sight of the No. 1 couple in class vanishing beyond the grassy cliff. The sound of waves quietly brushing up against the sheer rock face continued and the small clovers Sakura dropped remained lying on the grass. Even when Haruka Tanizawa (Female Student No. 12) approached her from behind and asked her, “What’s wrong, Yukie?” Yukie just stood there trembling.

And so even here, we see that the true enemy is fear. Most of the kids don’t want to hurt each other, but they assume the worst of others. At this point, counting the suicides, we have six people who aren’t willing to play. In constast, there’s Yoshio and Kazuo’s gang so far that seemed willing to kill, and even that’s ambiguous – Yoshio was acting in perceived self-defense, subtly different than killing people just to leave, and Mitsuru at least seemed to assume they would be escaping – likely, he’d have killed if it came down to it, but it wasn’t what he wanted to do.

Most of the people probably hate the government as well, but they don’t realize their numbers.

32 students remaining. That’s 1/4 of the cast already dead.

Hunger Games killed off their cast even faster, with about half dying in the first fight. But so far, we know the name and at least a bit about everyone who died, and often got to spend the a chapter in their head. The most feeling you can muster in the Hunger Games is confusion about why it’s considered good TV pacing to lose half the cast immediately.

1 Yoshio Akamatsu: “the biggest kid in the class, the timid type, the kind of kid who’d always end up the target of pranks and insults.” Bowgun weapon, kills Mayumi, killed by Kazushi.
2 Keita Iijima
3 Tatsumichi Oki: jock, handball.
4 Toshinori Oda
5 Shogo Kawada: Looks older than the rest, has facial hair already, transferred in, scarred.
6 Kazuo Kiriyama: Awesome. A sociopath who decides to play the game by flipping a coin. Current kill count: 4.
7 Yoshitoki Kuninobu: Shuya’s friend since childhood, they grew up in the orphanage together. Killed for threatening Sakamochi.
8 Yoji Kuramoto: Seen briefly by Mitsuru.
9 Hiroshi Kuronaga: Part of Kazou’s gang. Killed by Kazuo.
10 Ryuhei Sasagawa: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang. Bullied Yoshio. Had a younger brother. Killed by Kazuo.
11 Hiroki Sugimura: Tall and knows martial arts. Seems tough but is actually shy, likes Chinese poetry. Shuya’s friend.
12 Yutaka Seto: Class clown.
13 Yuichiro Takiguchi
14 Sho Tsukioka: Part of Kazou’s gang. Escaped Kazuo’s massacre.
15 Shuya Nanahara: Main character? Minor but utterly harmless teenage rebelliousness.
16 Kazushi Nüda: jock, soccer. Killed Yoshio by accident.
17 Mitsuru Numai: Delinquent. Part of Kazou’s gang, pistol weapon, tried to keep Ryuhei from bullying Yoshio, believed himself Kazuo’s adviser. Killed by Kazuo.
18 Tadakatsu Hatagami: jock, Shuya’s friend when they were younger. ‘Shuya had started playing electric guitar, which was considered an “unpatriotic” activity. Tadakatsu’s mother was uptight about that sort of thing.”
19 Shinji Mimura: Shuya’s current friend. ‘short hair and wore an intricately designed ring on his left ear’, highly athletic, knows a lot of information, particularly about the outside world. Extremely cool under pressure.
20 Kyoichi Motobuchi: Class representative, dad’s a government official.
21 Kazuhiko Yamamoto: Sakura’s boyfriend. Gun. Commits suicide.
Females
1 Mizuho Inada
2 Yukie Utsumi: class representative, braided hair, Haruka’s volleyball teammate. The first one to speak after their abduction. Noriko’s friend. Not playing, joined up with Haruka, sees Kazuhiko and Sakura’s suicide.
3 Megumi Eto
4 Sakura Ogawa: Kazuhiko’s girlfriend. When she was young, she saw her father killed by the government. Commits suicide.
5 Izumi Kanai: ‘the preppy whose father was a town representative’. Killed by Kazuo.
6 Yukiko Kitano
7 Yumiko Kusaka
8 Kayoko Kotohiki
9 Yuko Sakaki
10 Hirono Shimizu: Part of Mitsuko’s group.
11 Mitsuko Souma: Delinquent group leader. “Even though Mitsuko had the gorgeous looks of a pop idol, she always wore a strange, listless expression on her face.”
12 Haruka Tanizawa: Yukie’s volleyball teammate, exceptionally tall. Not playing, joined up with Yuki.
13 Takako Chigusa
14 Mayumi Tendo: The first death in the game, killed outside the school.
15 Noriko Nakagawa: She has a crush on Shuya he’s unaware of and Yoshitoki has a crush on her she may be unaware of. She’s nice and likes literature. Suffering a leg injury.
16 Yuka Nakagawa: Yoshitoki says she’s fat. Class clown.
17 Satomi Noda : “model student who wore wire-rimmed glasses which suited her calm, intelligent face”
18 Fumiyo Fujiyoshi: Killed for whispering to Yukie. “She was the nurse’s aide. She was quiet but very caring.”
19 Chisato Matsui: always quiet and withdrawn
20 Kaori Minami
21 Yoshimi Yahagi: Part of Mitsuko’s group.