Battle Royale | Teen Ink

Battle Royale

September 18, 2014
By CatSword SILVER, Leavenworth, Kansas
CatSword SILVER, Leavenworth, Kansas
8 articles 0 photos 0 comments

Battle Royale is an interesting film, right from its concept; teens being forced to kill each other due to a law is likely to raise an eyebrow and a "Wait, I remember that..."

Yes, The Hunger Games, the more mainstream film, also covered teens killing each other by order of a higher authority. However, did you know that Battle Royale actually came first, as a novel first published in Japan in 1999?

It's obvious why Hunger Games became more in the mainstream: Battle Royale does not have an English dub, though most platforms you can watch it have an option for English subtitles. It is also the fact that Battle Royale is much more unflinching with its violence; so much so that it was banned in Germany in 2013 for its supposed "glorification of violence".

However, beneath the film's shocking violence is a subject matter that could spark a very interesting conversation about morality. Is it okay to have troubled youth kill each other? On one hand, they're not supporting society; on the other hand, they're killing each other. It's also briefly hinted that the whole purpose of this is to scare the population into avoiding rebellion; could this film be very well be predicting the future of society, where people need to be scared in order to maintain order?


The author's comments:

Battle Royale is available streaming on Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, and is available on DVD and Blu-Ray. The original novel has also recently been rereleased in a new and improved English translation, though the manga series is out-of-print at the moment.


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