Book: Battle Royale

Book by Koushun Takami, translated by Yuji Oniki

Can I just say, this book really screwed me up for a few days! I would discourage people from reading it. A small group member left it in my apartment, and honestly, I had no desire to read it…until I happened to flip through it and read 1 chapter in the middle. One chapter, and I was emotionally invested enough that I had to read the whole thing. Bah!

Most bookworms (I’m not really one, just what I heard) would say this is a good thing for a book, but in this case, I wish I could have put it down.

The plot is basically about a class of junior high school students forced to participate in a “game”, ran by the government, where they are given different weapons (ranging from an ice pick to a machine gun) to kill each other until one sole survivor remains (and “wins the game”). There is no escape, and if no one dies within any 24 hour period, the bomb built in their collars will be detonated and all students will be killed.

There is a sense of being “stuck” and having no solutions. Inevitably, I kept thinking, “How would I respond? What would I do?” and it made me pretty distraught.. the thought of having to kill your fellow classmates, some of them your friends? Wow that really messes with your mind!

There’s also a theme of strong distrust. Can I trust this person? If I don’t kill them, they might kill me. It’s better to be safe than sorry. Gosh, the thoughts written in these chapters seem so real, and believable, that I actually wouldn’t be surprised if people do act like this in similar situations. Still, it’s just so very unpleasant.

The fight scenes are quite descriptive, a little too descriptive sometimes, that I mostly skimmed through those parts. I think it’s enough for me to know that this guy got his eyes poked out, but unfortunately I also read about how the finger went so deep into the eye sockets that things popped and fluids came out. Ugh! Do not like.

I think it’s the count down of people still alive at the end of each chapter that kept me going. I already read the ending on wikipedia by chapter 13 (79 chapters total), but something still drew me to skim the rest of the book to find out how things unfolded.

From a psychology point of view, it was pretty fascinating. Why people think and act the way that they do. Some of the smarter players were so rational. It was impressive to read their reasoning. It made me realize all the more that I would not fare well in a situation like this.. but I hope I’ll never have to..

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