I was surprised to find, in the novel, that he actually has no prior attachment in any way to these students while there’s an interesting link in the film. This was especially true of the changes to the man in charge of the group, Kinpatsu Sakamochi. And what did get changed for the film actually worked for the better, I think. However, the film is quite faithful to the book & I didn’t learn much more than I did from the movie. It was also cool to get a good few pages or sometimes even several chapters (mostly on the best friends of our main character) devoted to each and every one of the 42 students in the Battle Royale program. I did get to know the characters better, especially the main three that are followed (Shuya Nanahara, Noriko Nakagawa & Shogo Kawada).

I now have to say that reading the book if you’ve already seen the movie isn’t necessarily needed…ĭon’t get me wrong – I liked the book a lot so I don’t feel like I wasted my time on this (very thick!) novel. So I picked up the (very thick!) book in the hopes that I’d get more of an in-depth look into why these children are being forced to fight to the death and to also get to know the characters and their motivations a bit better. I really liked it but my one complaint was that it felt a bit more “shallow” than I’d been expecting. I watched the Battle Royale movie as one of my Blind Spot choices this year (review HERE). The story tells of junior high school students who are forced to fight each other to the death in a program run by the authoritarian Japanese government, now known as the Republic of Greater East Asia.

Battle royale takami