Battle Royale - A Response

This post is in response to the review of the manga, film and novel versions of Battle Royale, a book I love, a film I think is very good, and a manga I hate. This post is just about my thoughts on the manga, expanding upon the thoughts of the review. You can find the review at Fucking Zombies! Check it out, it's a good blog.

You feel almost exactly the way I did about all three of these. Thought, I have to say I have an uncontrollable hatred of the manga.

See, the manga changed characters too much. As you said, things are over sexualised, but I don't think you've even covered the extent of it. These two sentences come hand in hand as Mitsuko Souka such a massive amount that her entire motivation in the manga is sexual thrills. Which pisses me off. Oh, and having her backstory seemed like a cop out to make her sympathetic, when really she's just a terrible person.

On top of this, the big change with Shuya Nanahara with his "I refuse to kill" atttitude just irritated me as it completely missed the point of the novel (having to kill to survive, even though you don't like it) and would have just caused too many issues throughout the book.

But the biggest betrayal in the manga is probably my favourite storyline in the novel: that of the journey of Hiroki Sugimura. They made him out to be an ultimate badass, when really he was just a normal guy driven by love. On top of that, the fact he doesn't die at the correct time just ruins the importance of his story. His love powers him on, in the novel, but he dies because of the island, but also is able to express his love because of it. Kind of a double edged sword kinda place.

And then he does a Kamehameha. I mean REALLY?! This is meant to be set in REALITY, and not some fucking fantasy world.

There are lots of other issues with the manga besides character change, though. One of the biggest issues I have, as you said, is the art. Yes, everyone is quite 'bishi', but that wasn't really my issue. My issue was that everyone was drawn as a certain category, which, to me, felt like the artist was a lazy bastard. Now to give each one names.

First we have the 'Frog'. This is reserved for your "ugly on the outside, ugly on the inside" types. So many lines on the face, drool and maybe even attempts at being creepily sexual. Kinda reminds me of the snails from Uzumaki.

 After that we have the 'Nutter', which is what I like to call the same face and stance everyone pulls when they go insane. It usually consists of crying, weird eyes and maybe movie in a funny way.

We also have the 'Brute’. He’s basically your large-nosed big guy. The diametric opposite of this is the ‘Kid’, your type who, whilst in the same class as everyone else, seems to be about 10 years younger.

 

We finally have the ‘Hero’, your average main character type, as well as the ‘Woman’, because at least the art can be consistent there.

If you want to see a woman type, look at the original blog.

So yeah, I think that’s all of the characters. It’s only, y’know, been about 3 or 4 years since I read it. This rage sticks.

I do find you are pretty correct on everything, though. I just felt that the horrifying quality of the manga needed to be expanded upon. The novel is one of my favourite books. With this you may think “Well, any changes would piss you off!” No, actually. The film is so different to the book but the film does something good: it tells a competent story and knows where to focus to tell its own story. It captured the essence of the original novel, but does its own thing with it, and that’s only good.

This is a long post for a response (so much so I decided it would serve better as a blog post), but as I said, I felt the manga needed to be vastly expanded upon.

I just hope the video game is better than the manga.

What? This isn't to do with Battle Royale? Dammit!