[Current Mood: blah...]
[Currently Listening To: Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Theme Song]
Credit.
As the topic states, I've decided to review the phenomenon that is Battle Royale. Both the novel and the movie, but I'll start with the novel first, which I finished reading sometime last week but was too lazy to type this out until today.
Enjoy.

Battle Royale Novel

Book Stats: Author - Koushun Takami 
                 Published - 1999 in Japan; 2003 in North America (by Viz Media)
                 Page Count - 624; according to Amazon.
                 Controversial? - Yes. Very much so.
                 Popular? - Anything with controversy surrounding it is popular.

The Story: Not to bore you with a bunch of details that you'd be able to find anywhere from Wikipedia to Amazon, I'll make it short.
Basically, The government of a place called Greater Eastern Asia implements something called the "Program."
And what exactly is this "Program"? Each year, a class of 15 year olds is selected, drugged, taken somewhere deserted (an island, in the novel's case,) and given weapons and an instruction forcing them to kill their fellow classmates. Better yet, if one person doesn't die every 24 hours, collars that are placed around each student's neck will explode, thus resulting in everyone's death. Yum.

Moral: When on a school bus going on a class trip, always, A-L-W-A-Y-S open the window. Did I stress the always enough? Even if your trip is in the winter and its -20 C outside, open the damn window. Ignore your classmates' shouts of disapproval. They obviously don't know what you know...
Oh, and if the windows don't open, get the hell out of that bus. Fast.

My Opinion: Personally, I loved it. It was a great read. While the ending (as to which student(s) survive) was predictable, what I felt made it awesome was that the author avoiding making the novel into just a gore-fest where the rest of the 40 students besides the main two (they're on the cover for God's sake) simply die gruesomely for nothing but the reader's sadistic enjoyment.
No, each and every one of the 42 students are given back story. You learn details about everyone, and obviously, this works to make you, the reader, get depressed when a character you've just started to like dies a page or so later. (But I'll get to that in a second.) Sure, there's plenty of blood to go around, and the method of "See narration from character X's point of view / Learn details about character X's life that differs him/her from others / Character X DIES" might get old to some as they read through it, but I enjoyed it. While none of the deaths are overly awkward (most of the students get shot or stabbed) the author still manages to make it an immensely interesting novel.
In addition to the deaths, there's also the point that deals with the corruption of the government (the reason Class B is being forced to play the game in the first place,) which deters the novel even farther from the average teen-slaughter-fest.
But, to sum it up: This is definitely going down as one of my favourite novels.

Comparison to Lord of the Flies: The back of the novel (and various other places on the Web) boasts that Battle Royale is a "modern day version of Lord of the Flies" I disagree with this. Why?
I've read both novels, and while they both have isolated islands and children killing themselves in common - I don't think that's enough to make a strong comparison between the two. Lord of the Flies deals primarily with what happens when you put innocent children on an island with no social structure or rules and force them to fend for themselves. For the most part, the children go psychotic and kill each other.
Battle Royale, on the other hand, deals with what happens when you put slightly older children on an island, give them dangerous weapons and pose the ultimatum, kill everyone else or you'll get killed. For the most part, the teens kill each other because they're afraid they can't trust anyone (Hirokiiiii =[). 
Totally different situations.

However, another thing that both novels have in common is that my favourite character dies and both characters' names starts with the letter S. Shinji in Battle Royale and Simon in Lord of the Flies. Poor bastards.
But that brings me to the next section: Deaths, and its subsections:

Most Depressing/Disappointing Death(s): I've already mentioned two of the names above, but to go into detail about it...
Yes, poor Shinji, the computer hacker genius. So disappointing. The reason I went all "nooooo, Shinjiiii" internally when he died was because I liked his character. He was sarcastic. He was smart. He built a bomb and attempted to crash the government's computer system so that he could escape the island for God's sake. I mean, obviously he was going to die, that's not exactly a spoiler, but I at least wanted him to survive longer then he did. Like after the Lighthouse Girls died or something.
Then there was Hiroki. It wasn't only the fact that I liked his character though, that made his death depressing; it was the way he died. I mean, he spent the whole duration of the game looking for this girl - even getting shot by others (like Kazuo) while searching for her in order to help her escape the island - only to have her be the one who kills him. And still, while he's dying, he tells her how to escape. Sad stuff.
And now for the girls: easily Takako. From right after she kicks Kazushi's ass and gets shot by Mitsuko. The whole Hiroki-showing-up-while-she's-dying-and-them-sharing-a-moment may be cheap to some, but it was sad. It was depressing.
And last, Mitsuko's own death. This one falls more under the disappointing category for me because it seemed that she died too easily. Her and Kazuo were the only two playing "the game" for fun, and yet, she just got shot. From behind. She didn't even know Kazuo was behind her. Poor, poor misunderstood Mitsuko.

Most Graphic Death(s): Kazushi, at the hands of Takako. While he seemed to have deserved it, still. He was stepped on, had his eyes gouged out, stabbed in the throat with an ice pick...
Ew. Just ew.

Battle Royale Movie

Movie Stats: Director - Kinji Fukasku
                   Released - 2000

My Opinion: I'll spare you the plot details, as they're more or less the same as the novel. And, surprise, surprise, I enjoyed the movie as well. The plot progressed rather quickly - it didn't feel like 114 minutes went by - so obviously, not as much attention was given to the back story of every character. However, this doesn't really affect the movie at all because if you were to include character back stories for all 42 of them, the movie would be a lot longer and probably quite boring.
No, instead the movie relies on action and gives back story and flashbacks only when it's needed, which works rather well.
The music is a rather interesting choice, as it's opera-ish. Yet, it works well and fits. Then, of course, there's the cast, who I think were awesome - especially the ones that really needed to be. Kou Shibasaki, for instance, played the role of Mitsuko really well. Taro Yamamoto did well as Shogo, and the rest were also good. Who really owned though, in my opinion, was Masanobu Ando as Kazuo. The dude didn't say a word throughout the whole movie and yet he owned the role.
My favourite line in the whole movie occurred between Tatsumichi and Shuya, RIGHT after Tatsumichi gets the axe in his head, and this dialogue takes place:
Shuya: Oki...are you OK?
Tatsumichi: Yeah...I'm sorry...I'm fine... *falls over*
-caption informs audience of Tatsumichi's death-
Somehow, it was comical.

Overall

I love it. Both the novel and the movie. I also liked how, in the movie, they let Shinji live longer. And let him actually hack into the government's computers with his little animated person named The Third Man. Oh, AND let his bomb actually affect Kazuo, causing him to look even more psycho. Ah, a great scene.

Now that the actual review's done, off to a BR side-topic: The Remake.
Yes, good old US Hollywood got the rights to remake Battle Royale and americanize it. However, production was halted before it even started because of the tragedy that happened at Virginia Tech. Because of this, the producer has apparently said that if the remake does happen now, it'll be "sensitive to the issues."
And a sensitive BR is a watered-down BR.
Now, even if Virginia Tech never happened, it's important to note that all the Christian Fundamentalist groups would be all over it.

So there's one of two options that I see for this remake (well, actually, three, but the percentage of the third one happening is quite slim at this point) these options are:

1) There will be no remake.
2) The remake of BR will be turned into just another run-of-the-mill teen slasher flick, with a cast that includes (if they stick with the characters being teenagers) Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, and MORE.
Honestly, imagine that scene between Hirono and Mitsuko being acted out by Lindsay Lohan as Mitsuko and Hillary Duff as Hirono. Would anyone take that seriously? At all? Ever? Anyone?
Thought not.

The third is that they get a decent cast (I don't think one that beats the original is possible by my current standards so I won't get my hopes up) stay true to the plot and make it awesome.  

But that's not likely anytime soon...
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