Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

I will rarely suggest to anyone to watch a film adaptation prior to reading a novel, but in the case of Battle Royale, I actually think most people would benefit from it, and here's why. There are more than forty-two characters in this novel, and while each character gets some face time in the novel, Japanese names can be very similar and therefore hard to differentiate. I found that having watched the movie first, I was able to remember characters better because I had a visual reference already in place. This also eliminates the need for note-taking (which I find tedious and made novels such as The Lord of the Rings trilogy somewhat unenjoyable for me). There are also certain scenes in the book that (I don't want to give away anything) kind of fell flat but the director of the movie, Kinji Fukasaku really brough to life. Sure, there was tension and high drama in some of the scenes in the book, but being a translation, the impact, the original author's intent, may not come across as effectively. So, my recommendation: watch the movie, it's fantastic. Watch it before reading the book or just after if you just can't bring yourself to watch a movie before reading the book, but watch it. You can stream it on Netflix.

What initially drove me to read Battle Royale (aside from enjoying the movie) were the constant lamentations by people that The Hunger Games was just a ripoff of Battle Royale. I honestly don't find this to be the case. There are similarities. Of course there are. The idea of children fighting each other is actually a pretty common theme in dystopian novels. However, in Battle Royale, the characters are living in a society with a possible shadow-puppet dictator (as theorized by one of the characters) and while the youth population is on the decline, the "games" are still held for purported scientific reasons that hold no social benefit (unlike The Hunger Games, where the objective  was winning food for the district). To say that one is wholly based off the other is really a very shallow comparison at best.

While the primary characters that you follow are Shuya, Noriko, and Shogo, each student (or group of students) gets at least one chapter told from their point of view, which I appreciated. This is not just a book about killing, but rather a book about the human condition, and what shapes us as an individual and how we make the choices we make. The personalization of each chapter also gives the reader more insight into the government and the state of society as it exists in the timeframe of the novel. This type of effective storytelling makes a dauntingly thick novel an easy, enjoyable, and quick read.

Rated 5 stars on Goodreads