Battle Royale (Katakana: バトル・ロワイアル or Batoru rowaiaru) is a controversial Japanese film directed by longtime Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku and adapted from the novel by Koushun Takami.

Battle Royale was released in 2000. Takeshi Kitano stars in the film, along with a cast including Tatsuya Fujiwara, Kō Shibasaki, Chiaki Kuriyama, Masanobu Ando, and Maeda Aki. A sequel, Battle Royale II: Requiem was released in 2003.

The Battle Royale novel is published in English by Viz.

The Battle Royale manga adaptation, made by Takami and Masayuki Taguchi, was published in Japan by Akita Publishing. The manga is published in English by TokyoPop.

Contents

1 Battle Royale 2 Status of distribution in USA 3 Issues in translation 4 External links

Battle Royale

Battle Royale is set in a dystopian future Japan in which a group of middle school students are chosen to participate in a death game after the Japanese government has passed an act to deal with overpopulation and unmotivated students.

A class of ninth-grade students and two outsiders are taken unwillingly to a small isolated island. Each student is given a map, water and a randomly allocated weapon. Some students get "weapons" such as binoculars and frying pans, but others get swords, guns and grenades. The students are forced to fight each other to the death for three days (however, in the book, they were allocated as long as they want, as long as one at least student has been killed each day) until the last one remains. Each is forced to wear a special collar which will explode when they break a rule. Friends and lovers are forced to set their emotions aside as the bloody battle ensues.

Kenta Fukasaku adapted Battle Royale from the novel by Koushun Takami. The book and film bear some parallels to the story The Most Dangerous Game, as well as the William G. Golding novel Lord of the Flies and Stephen King novels The Long Walk and Rage. Takami was an admirer of King, and named the students' home town and school "Shiroiwa," which translates to "Castle Rock," the name of a town frequently used by King as a setting for his stories. King, in turn, had borrowed the name from a location in Golding's novel. (One might also find weak similarities to Robert Heinlein's novel Tunnel in the Sky.)

Battle Royale was generally well received among critics who appreciated it as a satire of the Japanese education system and a metaphor for the perpetuation of violence in today's teenage generation. The film also aroused much controversy. Some educators and politicians objected to the violence depicted in the film because of the large number of children involved. Attempts by these politicans to have the film banned in Japan failed, however, and it was released with an R-15 rating to tremendous box office success. A Special Version later released was actually more gory than the original, contrary to it being advertised as more "toned down" to suit the general public's taste. CGI blood enhancement and additional close-ups and extra sound effects emphasized the violence. This version also includes more character development, with a fragmented basketball scene showing the unity of the class and a flashback sequence involving a pedophile revealing the motives behind Mitsuko Souma's action in the game. Also featured is an additional ending sequence which highlights some of the key features of the film.

The soundtrack, composed by Masamichi Amano and performed by the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, features several pieces of classical music. The end credits are accompanied by Dragon Ash's "Shizuka na Hibi no Kaidan Wo" (静かな日々の階段を Climb the Stairs of Quiet Days), which does not appear on the soundtrack.

The movie follows the plot and circumstances of the novel fairly closely, with a few notable differences. In the movie, the man in charge of the program (and who kills two students at the beginning) is actually one of the class' teachers. In the book and manga versions, the character has no prior connection with the class. The movie also establishes a connection between the teacher and Noriko, one of the students, which would carry over into the second film; this element is absent from the novel. Another major change is that, in the film, the class is apparently chosen because it is filled with troublemakers. In the book, the class is seemingly chosen at random.

Status of distribution in USA

Despite rumors to the contrary, this film is not banned within the USA. Rather, there had never been a distribution agreement released due to the controversial nature of the film and supposedly unreasonable distribution terms specified by Toei, specifically the price of distribution being somewhere between 1-2 million dollars and that it must be a CTHD-size wide release. These two stipulations put it outside of the range of most smaller movie ditributors, and the larger distributors wouldn't handle the film. Therefore, technically the film is not banned within the USA, but neither does a local distributor for it exist.

A detailed explanation (http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/movie/banned.html) can be found at BattleRoyaleFilm.com (http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/).

Issues in translation

There are some minor issues in subtitling in the movie. Perhaps the most apparent to most people is that the subtitles are often grainy and difficult to see on some editions of the film, particulary VHS and VCD versions. The situation is slightly better on some DVD copies, where the subtitles are programmed in rather than burned in, although the translations on the Special Edition DVDs varies greatly, for instance between the UK Tartan release and the Korean Starmax release. One place where the subtitles lose some of the meaning of the original is an important scene in the movie (with the 7 girls at the lighthouse) where the breakdown of civility is conveyed using uniquely Japanese features (concerning levels of politeness) of the Japanese language.

External links

• Fan site (http://www.battleroyalefilm.net/)
• Battle Royale (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0266308/) at the Internet Movie Database

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