A movie about a bunch of high school kids killing each other. Too bad this stuff doesn’t happen in real life… oh wai…

Battle Royale [repost] A movie about a bunch of high school kids killing each other. Too bad this stuff doesn’t happen in real life… oh wai…

Battle Royale is one of those movies that everyone has heard about, but not everyone has seen. I did my part to promote this movie as best as I could by writing a shitty little review, but to this day, there are those that haven’t seen it. So yeah, what I am trying to say is go see it.

I rewatched Battle Royale for the first time in about 2 years, and it is surprisingly still good even after the shock value wears off. Another thing is that there are so many details that I missed the first time… but when it comes down to it, HOLY FUCK THESE HIGH SCHOOL KIDS ARE KILLING EACH OTHER! On to the article shall we…

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Battle Royale

I’ve seen a lot of fucked up shit in my life, and rarely does anything shock me anymore. I mean, like alot of you probably are, I am desensitized to almost everything. Well almost everything…

Battle Royale is without a doubt, the most craziest, most fucked up, whamtasical, shizadiziest shit that I have ever seen in my life, and that is saying a lot, because I’ve seen German porn before.

I first heard about Battle Royale from a friend who gave me a copy of it. He tried to explain the details, but even then it was kinda hard to believe, so I had to watch it for myself.

By the way, this is the first time that I’ve ever attempted to review a whole movie, so bear with me. I will break this up into two parts to keep the length down, and I will just gloss over the basic stuff.

So if you want to catch all the subtleties and feel of the film, I highly recommend you try to find a copy of it. At any rate, let’s move on to the review…

The movie starts off simply enough, with a bunch of students on a bus for a class trip. The kids are enjoying themselves, doing what normal kids do on school buses.

Well that ends the normal part of the movie, even though I only wrote one paragraph so far. Now things start to get weird. The students are gassed and knocked out. Only our hero, Nanahara, stays awake, but is quickly put to sleep once the busdrivers noticed him…

The students awake from their drugged induced slumber and find themselves in a classroom with one of their old teachers, Kitano. I like to call him the Coach though, because he reminds me of the coach type.

At any rate, he begins to tell them why they were brought to this island. You see, in future Japan, things are so bad, that a law is passed, titled Battle Royale, in which one class of students is selected at random, and forced to kill each other until only one remains. He then puts on a video to better explain…

You gotta leave it up to the Japanese to make everything they do cute. Even this harbinger of doom is decked out in like short military shorts and has one of these really high pitched voices. It is kinda hot though…

In Battle Royale, as stated before, the students are supposed to kill each other until only one is left. Kinda like the Highlander. They are on an island in the middle of nowhere, so there is no chance of escape. They each also have an unremovable collar around their necks, and if at the end of three days, more than one remains, it will explode and everybody will die.

Each student will receive a survival packet, which includes a random weapon inside. Also, there are danger zones. If the students are caught in these danger zones when they are active, the students will die.

Man, I just thought about it, but this movie is kind of a play on all those gameshows. If you don’t know, Japan has some really crazy gameshows where they make their contestants do all sorts of shit. For perspective, they make you do stuff like on Survivor or Fear Factor as a warm up.

Oh, and before I move on, I’d like to introduce the two transfers, Kawada and Kiriyama, whose name means foggy mountain or something I think. These two aren’t a part of the class, but they were introduced into the game. Kawada because he had no choice, Kiriyama because he’s a sick fuck and volunteered.

And then there’s this psycho bitch, Mitsuko. I swear to God she was so freakin’ hot throughout the whole movie. She had serious abandonment issues, so she really gets into this game…

Ah… her first kill. Mitsuko wastes no time, and immediately kills another girl to obtain another weapon. See, Mitsuko originally just had a crappy sickle, but then she got a taser. Right on Mitsuko!!!

Here’s the main two protagonist, Noriko and Nanahara. While everybody recieved like guns and grenades, they recieved a pot lid and binoculars. Not the best weapons in the world if you ask me.

The two decide to team up, because Nanahara’s old roommate use to be in love with Noriko. Yeah, I know, it doesn’t make any sense to me either. The two accidently kill one of their classmates, before bumping into Kawada.

Kawada’s kinda like the cool silent type who can kick some serious ass. He’s about to kill the two for their weapons, but then he realizes that all they have are a pot lid and binoculars.

He feels kinda sorry for them, and doesn’t think that they are a real threat, so he decides to let them go. This won’t be last time they meet though…

Back to Mitsuko. Apparently, she’s somewhat of a slut, and she apparently fucked with Hirono’s guy. Hirono tracks Mitsuko down, and holds her at gunpoint. Things sure don’t look good for our hottie serial killer. But of course, you can’t keep my girl down…

A wild melee ensued, which I found strangely exciting, in which Mitsuko uses her taser to shock the fuck out of Hirono and grabs her gun. How quickly the roles are reversed. She wastes no time, and quickly regulates Hirono’s ass.

Here are the guys which I like to call the Nerd Herd. Instead of playing the game and killing each other like they are supposed to, they decide to go online and look at scat.

Okay well maybe they didn’t do that. These guys actually had good ideas. The Nerd Herd found like alot of old electronic equipment and got it running. Now all they needed was to come up with a plan…

On another side of the island, Chigusa, the girl in yellow, encounters one of her “admirers”. Of course she is flattered, but she says no to him, because her hearts belong to another. Well the punk is very persistant, and threatens to kill her if she doesn’t give it up.

Now Chigusa, like Mitsuko, is not one of those girls you would like to mess with. I mean, she’ll only take so much before she will seriously whup your ass. The guy holds a crossbow up to her face and accidently shoots an arrow. Chigusa narrowly dodges it, but it scratches her face.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!! Chigusa whips out her weapon, a pocket knife, and REPEATEDLY STABS HIM IN THE GROIN!!! And the noise, the sick “swish” “swish” noise, I will never be able to get out of my head.

I swear to God, at this point, I was jumping around holding my crotch due to phantom pains. This is easily the most horrific scene in the whole entire movie. Ugh.

Meanwhile, Nanahara and Noriko bump into Kawada again, but this time, they decide to team up. He even tends to Noriko’s wounds and cooks them dinner. What a cool guy.

But their moment of bliss doesn’t last long. For this comes flying through the window…

Some fat dudes head with a grenade in it. Kiriyama had discovered were they are hiding and tries to flush them out. At this point, Kiriyama has a submachine gun and grenades and a bullet proof vest, so he’s pretty well stocked.

Our heroes manage to hold him off for a bit, but then Nanahara decides to be a decoy and lead Kiriyama away from Noriko. He makes Kiriyama chase him, and then leaps into the ocean, apparently dying in the process.

What happens next? Well since this thing is getting too long, and my fingers too tired. Plus everybody left my house, so I am all alone now and kinda too scared to watch the movie.. You are just gonna have to check back next time. But believe me, you will certainly want to. There’s more crazy schoolgirls, the Crow, and the hugest erection ever. I know that you want to see those…

Welcome to part 2 of my Battle Royale review. For those of you who have no clue what this is all about, I highly recommend you go and read part one of this review. Things will make alot more sense. Okay well maybe not.

When we last left off, Mistuko was on a killing rampage, some guy had gotten stabbed in the groin, and Nanahara jumped to his death to save Noriko from the psychotic Kiriyama. All that is great, but it can’t even come close with what happens in the second half…

Well it seems that Nanahara didn’t die after all. After plunging into the sea, a bunch of girls find and rescue him. One of the girls even strips him down and bandages him in what has to be one of the raunchiest sex scenes ever. But of course, you will see no pictures here.

Nanahara’s rescuers are a bunch of girls who decided to team up and wait it out in a lighthouse. It’s kinda like the boxcar children with girls and AK-47s. They actually seem to have a good thing going, and get along quite well.

But one of the girls doesn’t trust Nanahara, and decides to slip some poison in his food. Only thing is, that one of the girls accidently eats the poisoned food. This can only lead to:

SCHOOLGIRL GUNFIGHT

You cannot believe how cool this one scene was to me. I probably watched it like 4 or 5 times before I even began writing this thing. Plus, the phrase schoolgirl gunfight alone is gonna attract like a shitload of freaks from google.

The girls manage to off one another, leaving only one left. She feels guilty, because she was the one who poisoned the food in the first place and decides to kill herself. Nanahara, who is really badly wounded, has no choice, but to go and try to find Noriko and Kawada.

Meanwhile, Noriko feels the urge to go find Nanahara. Doesn’t she know anything? It’s kinda like if your at the mall and you lose somebody, just stay in one place. If both people are looking, the probabilities of the two of you running into each other decrease. Oh well. I guess this isn’t a mall, but a deserted island with a bunch of angry teens.

Oh shit. While Noriko is stumbling about in the forests, guess who she runs into? That’s right, it’s resident crazy bitch and my future girlfriend, Mitsuko. She’s about to off Noriko, but then is interrupted by the appearance of the Coach.

Now I know I haven’t said much about it, but the Coach has some kinda weird fascination with Noriko. He tells her that he thinks she’s special and all that other mess. You know, the normal stuff guys say when they want to get into a girls pants. Of course she’s not interested, and keeps on going.

She finally finds Nanahara, but he’s a complete and total wreck. He’s really hurt, and can’t walk without assistance. Kawada arrives though, and they three move on.

Ah yes, the showdown between Kiriyama and Mitsuko. It’s about time. At first, it appears that Kiriyama has the advantage due to his superior weaponry, but Miszi (my new pet-name for her) puts up a good fight with her sickle.

But alas, all of this is in vain, because Kiriyama is armed to the teeth. He has to shoot her like 20 times before she finally goes down though, in what has to be one of the most dramatic death scenes of all time. It ranks right up there with when Bambi’s mom died, or when Apollo Creed got killed by the big Russian.

Man, I have to take a breather. I can’t believe my Mistzi is really dead… or is she? When a person in this movie dies, they normally display their name and number and a countdown of how many people are left. In her case, they put up her name, and a question mark beside it…

Moving on, the Nerd Herd finally finish their plan: to hack into their captors computer system and upload a virus, and to make a big ass bomb to blow everything up.

You know, nerds never get enough credit. I should know, because I am king nerd. When are we gonna get our due? Oh well, there’s no use whining… If I want something to change the only person I can rely on doing it is me.

Just as it appears that the Nerd Herd is about to succeed, Kiriyama appears and kills all of them. He manages to accidently shoot one of the bombs however, causing everything to explode into a fiery inferno.

Wow! Look it’s the Crow. Noticed how two black lines form perfectly on his face to turn him into the avatar of evil. At this point, Kiriyama has become the archetypical Japanese badguy. Tall, scraggily, weird hair, and black face paint. It never fails. He even had the church chorus music deal going in the background.

Hmmm… this reminds me of this one time when one of my friends passed out from drinking, and everybody drew on his face. Of course I didn’t have anything to do with it, because it is foul, but they had a time doing so. There were even pix to prove it. It was funny because he gave up drinking afterwards.

Well he and Kawada get into it, and it goes back and forth. Kawada manages to blast Kiriyama though, but not before getting a couple of shots fired into him. And then there was three…

Kawada takes Nanahara and Noriko to the sea with the promise that he knows a way to get off the island. But then, he betrays them and tells them he had been stringing them all along. That bastard!

Of course Noriko and Nanahara are shocked and angry that they had been crossed, but they can’t really do anything since all they have are potlids and binoculars.

Victorious, Kawada returns to the Coach to be rewarded for being the last to remain. The Coach sees it differently however and accuses Kawada of trying to hack into the system. But then Kawada reveals something…

Noriko and Nanahara aren’t really dead. The Coach has been double-crossed! All of his army buddies have been sent back home since they thought the game was over, so it seems the Coach is at his end.

The Coach then shows them his painting he made. I don’t know why, but I’m sure it was significant to plot, because there was some holy angelic music playing in the background, and that the camer focused on it for like 5 minutes. I’m still trying to figure out what it means, but it just seems that I will never know…

The three manage to find a boat and escape. It was a long, hard battle, but they have finally made it, and things appear to be for the better. thirty-something other students are worm food, and I am still in shock, but everything is fine.

Almost. It seems that the injuries Kawada obtained were too serious. On his deathbed, he thanks Nanahara and Noriko for everything they’ve done, which is absolutely nothing, and passes away.

Normally, this would have been a sad and touching scene, but at least he died happy. How can I tell?

…

Battle Royale has to be one of the most messed up things that I’ve ever seen in my life. Yet, it’s analysis of human behavior and psychology reveal more than just a straight out blood bath. It really is an intellectual film… er… sorta.

I did not even come close to doing this film justice with my short review, and I voluntarily left out a bunch of little details. I cannot stress this enough, but if you ever get the chance to get your hands on this movie, do it. It is well worth your time.

Score: 8.9