Battle Royale Chapter 119 Discussion

Nice read 7/10... Fucking Game nice last line. I was hoping they beat the system though and not just fleeing away from the government

Really enjoyed the action, gore and kills in this. I honestly was not expecting it to get so over the top, My inner Shounen fanboy really loved the over the top Kiriyama stuff. Although, it's not a perfect manga but for what it's worth, it was a pretty enjoyable read tbh.



The art was really visceral at times and everything was within the realm of explanation atleast.



They did it, Beat the system but unfortunately it still continues on. Hopefully, Someday we get a sequel to this.

8/10.

Meh. I didn't enjoy the last few chapters much and I think it went from around a 7/10-8/10 to a 6. The snow panels were nice to look at though

This manga was great. It would have to be the 1st to make me feel each different emotion at some point. I have to give it a 8 because it took too long for Kiriyama to die. He lived through too much in my opinion plus he killed oof the 2 charaters I wanted to live everyone else could have died except for those 2. O well good read overall even though I hate getting MINDFUCKED like this manga loves to do.

What a bittersweet ending.  I really, really, really wanted to give this manga a 9.  However at times the action was too cheesy, the gore was too edgy, and the plot was too contrived, the flaws are too much, and the lack of quality in the last five volumes really makes me even question an 8.  



So I'll start with the negatives, Kiriyama was one of the worst villains I've ever read.  He went against everything the manga was about in execution.  The ideas fit, he was a monster created, not born, he had brain damage and was in a constant fight over filling his brain with form and function, negating all emotion.  So yes, thematically he fits, but in execution he is a boring, near invincible cyborg zombie from the future, with no emotions, a shoved in backstory to make him feel falsely sympathetic, teleportation skills and the ability to master anything in a millisecond including Judo, and whatever Sugimura's fighting style was, and hotwiring a car, and jesus, he was so lazy!  Kiriyama is literally just a killing robot, he might as well not be human, he is there to be perfect at everything and beat everyone at everything imaginable well never having a drip of what defines this manga, characterization.  This is a manga about analyzing not the what in human nature, but the how, how someone is driven to act in a way.  And it does this by respecting nearly every character, giving them complex emotions, sympathetic reasons and backstories that all make sense for what they accomplish.  A monster is not born, none of these people are evil, they are just scared and reacting and damaged.  It is masterful in how it accomplishes this in theme exploration.  But then Kiriyama defies this, he's a boring baby who's hardly explored, and not even characterized in the slightest, apart from him getting brain damage and becoming a cyborg zombie killing machine.  He would fit in Hokuto no Ken as a mini boss, a 1D boring assassin that takes some people hostage and Ken ends up blowing up within the episode.  It's just absurd that such a meticulously crafted manga would have such an awful villain.  That is my biggest complaint, and with the last 5 volumes featuring so much of him in them, including a horribly out of place dragon ball z fight, it really declined the quality of the manga overall.

To be fair, Kamon and Niida are both 1D villains who defy what this manga poses itself to be about, but they play such a small role it's negligible.  Kamon was there purely to be a symbol to hate, as the head of the Program, a big force in this oppressive government.  Niida was there to, I suppose, show the mind of someone sent on the path of gleeful murder and rape in a state of nature.  Yeah, and they don't respect him as much as the majority of the cast, but again he was hardly in it so it ends up being forgivable.  



Now, let's take a look at Mitsuko, her volume literally left me shaking, no meme.  It was so emotionally crushing, something this manga excels at, to show us the horrible childhood abuse she had to make her into who she is today.  The mangaka made her out to be, again, a 1D villain, but this time with mass sex appeal.  But it pulls a 180 and truly makes her a victim, someone you can't help but hate, but also immensely feel for.  She was an amazing villain, and a perfect example on how to do crazy right.  Kiriyama is the opposite of this.

Now, let's look at a smaller character, one of the first kills Akamatsu.  What was impressive about him to me was the fact that they made the first killer of the game, someone who was bullied and doing it out of fear.  If boys and girls alike pick on him all day everyday, of course he would be one of the first picked off.  So he reacts by pulling the metaphorical first push in what he sees is the beam of life, if he doesn't push, he will get pushed off.  And Shuuya gets to him, but it's too late, who would forgive or trust a murderer, so in a last ditch effort well crying he tries to take out Shuuya.  The first murderer is someone who is going off of their life experiences, and trying to save themselves however preemptive it is.

Now, let's look at Toshinori, aka Froggie.  He was a child raised by rich snobs, who taught him how the world is.  The rich decide it all is what he believes, which is clearly the case with the game they've been forced into, people killing each other for entertainment.  But it doesn't matter, he was lulled into the game regardless, so what does he believe, alike the class president he believes that he's someone special.  If this is dog eat dog, then he's gotta come out on top.  He's been trained, taught his whole life by the authorities in his life, to look down on the peasants so to speak.  So of course he would try to save himself, valuing his life more than others.  That is because his life is one of deciding, their lives are one of obeying, which is more important?  Well to him it's clear, and it's because of how he was raised to believe this.

And the message is, told by Shuuya at risk of sounding like a broken record, a monster isn't born, a monster is made.  Battle Royale is an analysis on WHY people act the way they do in nearly everything it does.  With that it has one of the greatest casts I've read or seen in anything thematically, and it doesn't hurt that they're characterized with such care.



To refute my own point, I would like to criticize two of the main characters, Shuuya and Noriko.  I was disappointed, not incredibly so, but I was at these characters growth.  Noriko seemed to me to act almost sole as the light in Shuuya's world, the thing to pull him through.  She was a nice, innocent damsel in distress the entire manga.  But, with this I was assuming, especially after the Lighthouse incident, Shuuya coming across Mimura's body and later Sugimura's death being announced, that she would be used as a tool to die, sending Shuuya into utter collapse.  Mimura and the lighthouse were two of Shuuya's ideals, faith and trust amongst friends, as well as doing the right thing, both of which crash down in a nihilistic fashion in his face.  In a way Sugimura and Noriko were his last lights, Sugimura dies and now what?  Well due to Noriko being one of the less important and characterized characters in the story I had assumed it was time for her to go, sending our boy into a Shinji Ikari type state. Instead, she reverses his negative development to a degree, he still holds his bases for trusting and seeing the good in everyone, but he learns to leave behind characters like Mizuho which he wouldn't of in the beginning for being a lost cause, or to shoot a mad dog like Kiriyama.  She being this shining light stops him from utter collapse, she stops him from giving up everything and cursing his fate just by being there.  And she is never used in the story on a deeper level, her character is one of the most basic in the story: nice, innocent, trusting love interest, and she's just used as a plot device to save the day via her proxy- Shuuya.  I both disagree with her reversing his emotional collapse by being there, and by Shuuya reading Mimura's last words, and her role in the story period.  Shuuya had good development but I would've really preferred it to go in another direction.



Another good thing to say is the art and page composition were some of the best action I've ever seen.  It felt like a movie, the way the artist laser focused every single intense moment, stretching them out in such detail only to place them in such an appealing way, because of it the action in this series beats any other manga or even anime I've ever seen/read.  Even if the action led to some contrivances and over the top cheese, such as the car chase out of nowhere due to a government stash being out in the open, with the keys with it, that no one found before this, and again the dragon ball z ki fight.  Not to forget the biggest contrivance of all, the existence of cyborg zombie Kiriyama from the future.  But I already spoke enough on this mysterious bomb surviving entity.



Not to get side tracked though, as I said I really truly wanted to give this a 9 when I was more than halfway through.  My opinion on the quality of this manga goes like this.

The start up until Mimura's volume are a good introduction, aka 1-5. This introduces us to our cast, the setting and premise, and it introduces us to the themes and brutal nihilistic nature of the manga and gets us started.

Volume 6 starting with Mimura's volume was fantastic and Mimura has ended up being one of my favorite character ever due to how they built him up as a main character, characterized and idolized him, only to have him die as a symbol of what the manga is all about(more about it here).  This leading to Mitsuko's crushing and subversive exploration I've already gotten so into, all the way to the Toshinori debacle and the horrifying light house scene paired with Shuuya's horrifying revelations about what he's idealized the entire manga up until now.  These stretch is my favorite part of the manga, and one of my favorite stretches of any story, it was so powerful and well made.  I've went into detail about these in past threads.  

Sadly the manga takes a dip from volume 11-15, we get a somewhat boring and slowly paced volume, one where not much happens, of the quiet Sugimura finding Kayoko.  Then we get one where he fights Kiriyama DBZ style and Kiriyama downloads him like a robot anticlimactically, killing him and Kayoko in one of my favorite scenes.  However, one amazing, depressing scene does not make up for two volumes that were fairly sub par.  Volume 13 was alright with an anticlimactic death of the best antagonist Mitsuko, and Kawada's backstory giving us an understanding of his vindictive self.  Then we get two volumes of contrived, but good visually actions segments with the most offensive stuff yet in terms of what Kiriyama accomplishes.  I would like to add that the scene where Shuuya is trying to revive Kiriyama after he's shot him is crushing, and that the ending was fairly satisfying, but nearly everything before that was superfluous and contrived in these two volumes.  

In essence to make it simple, it starts good, the middle is exceptional, and then the ending hovers from alright but disappointing to sub par until the very end.



So with all of that said, my extensive opinion on the goods and bads, sadly I have to give this manga an 8.  During the middle section, apart from Kiriyama surviving the explosion in a ridiculous moment, I really wanted to give this a 9, or even potentially a 10 if it kept up the quality.  But it didn't, in fact it actually declined so much that I had to question if a 9 was even a good decision, which in the end I think it's too much.

Battle Royale is an amazing manga despite its downfalls, it will remain in my mind for a long time, and I will not forget Mimura and Mitsuko when it comes to anime/manga characters, nor will I ever forget the page composition and art of the action scenes.  

I give Battle Royale an reluctant 8/10.  

Awesome manga!Has most of the things i like to see in manga.

10/10 from me