So…Battle Royale.

I read maybe half of the manga, the official English translation that rewrote the story to be about a TV show. I made many comparisons to it while reading the Hunger Games, mostly to the effect of how kids in the latter were emotionless drones compared to kids in the former. That said, the manga was hardly without its own issues, and I’m interested to see how the book compares.

The book opens with a number of quotes.

“A student is not a tangerine.”
———Kinpachi Sakamoto, Third Year Class B, Kinpachi Sensei
“But tramps like us, baby we were born to run”
———Bruce Springsteen, “Born to Run”
“It’s so hard to love”
———Motoharu Sano, “It’s So Hard to Love”
“During all those last weeks I spent there, there was a peculiar evil feeling in the air———an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, uncertainty, and veiled hatred. You seemed to spend all your time holding whispered conversations in corners of cafes and wondering whether that person at the next table was a police spy.
“I do not know if I can bring home to you how deeply that action touched me. It sounds a small thing, but it was not. You have got to realize what was the feeling of the time———the horrible atmosphere of suspicion and hatred.”
———George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia

Only the last one seems to have an obvious connection to the story. In the manga, it’s clear they live under some flavor of fascism, with everyone afraid of the government’s displeasure.

Next up is a student list.

Third Year Class B, Shiroiwa Junior High School Student List:
Males
1 Yoshio Akamatsu
2 Keita Iijima
3 Tatsumichi Oki
4 Toshinori Oda
5 Shogo Kawada
6 Kazuo Kiriyama
7 Yoshitoki Kuninobu
8 Yoji Kuramoto
9 Hiroshi Kuronaga
10 Ryuhei Sasagawa
11 Hiroki Sugimura
12 Yutaka Seto
13 Yuichiro Takiguchi
14 Sho Tsukioka
15- Shuya Nanahara
16 Kazushi Nüda
17 Mitsuru Numai
18 Tadakatsu Hatagami
19 Shinji Mimura
20 Kyoichi Motobuchi
21 Kazuhiko Yamamoto
Females
1 Mizuho Inada
2 Yukie Utsumi
3 Megumi Eto
4 Sakura Ogawa
5 Izumi Kanai
6 Yukiko Kitano
7 Yumiko Kusaka
8 Kayoko Kotohiki
9 Yuko Sakaki
10 Hirono Shimizu
11 Mitsuko Souma
12 Haruka Tanizawa
13 Takako Chigusa
14 Mayumi Tendo
15- Noriko Nakagawa
16 Yuka Nakagawa
17 Satomi Noda
18 Fumiyo Fujiyoshi
19 Chisato Matsui
20 Kaori Minami
21 Yoshimi Yahagi

That’s forty-two kids total, all named. Already this is looking far superior to Hunger Games, which had a cast of twenty-four and only bothered giving names to seven and faces to another three. If you’re writing a story about senseless death, you have to have it happen to people. Hunger Games was a story about Katniss being in danger rather than a story about children being killed, and that’s one of its biggest failings. Of course, too many characters does have its own problems.

Then it goes on to the introduction, [A pro wrestling fan’s rant in an alternate world] which is about how battle royales work.

ten or twenty wrestlers all jump into the ring. And then you’re free to attack anyone, one on one, or ten against one, it doesn’t matter.
…
Fewer and fewer players remain in the game. There’re only two left in the end. One on one, a very serious match. One out of those two will eventually take a fall. Then there’s only one player left in the ring, and he’s the winner.
…
Huh? What about players who’ve been friends? Well, at first, of course they help each other out. But in the end they have to fight each other. You have to follow the rules.
…
In that match though I don’t remember which one, but the guy intentionally went for a count out letting his partner win, a display of camaraderie which was kind of a letdown. Oh, you can also team up with players who used to be your enemies.
But the moment you think you’re teaming up to get rid of someone else, this sneaky friend can suddenly betray and beat you.

And that’s what this book is about!

Then it goes on to the prologue. It’s a long opening, but then, this is a long book.

Government Internal Memo 1997, No. 00387461 (Top Secret)
Dispatched by Central Authority Secretariat Special Task Force Defense Supervisor and Battle
Experiment Advisor of the Special Defense Army
To: Supervisor in Charge of No. 12 1997 Battle Experiment No. 68 Program (May 20, 18:15)

So, from this – whatever’s in the memo is a secret from people, and therefore most of the characters. Long titles as well.

As you can see, this is an alternate timeline, not something set nebulously in the future. The book takes place in 1997 and the games in it have been going on for some time.

As to the memo itself, seems that someone hacked into the government’s computers, but they haven’t found out who yet.

data from Program No. 68 may have been corrupted, and as a result we immediately considered the postponement of Program No. 12 for 1997.
However, because preparations for No. 12 are complete, and because there is no indication that the above data has been leaked into the civilian population, we have concluded the program should proceed as scheduled

The guy in charge is told to be extremely cautious, however.

So from this, something unusual is brewing. I remember that not really factoring into the manga, though, so it won’t be coming up too early, and generally Japanese stuff doesn’t lead to people suddenly coming in for a rescue, so whatever it is presumably won’t have too great an impact on the childmurder part.

Edit: Don’t post spoilers, guys.