Battle Royale

By: Koushun Takami, Yuji Oniki - translator

Narrated by: Mark Dacascos

Length: 19 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Battle Royale, a high-octane thriller about senseless youth violence in a dystopian world, it is one of Japan's best-selling - and most controversial - novels. As part of a ruthless program by the totalitarian government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to wear special collars that explode when they break a rule, they must fight each other for three days until only one "winner" remains. The elimination contest becomes the ultimate in must-see reality television.

A Japanese pulp classic available in English-language audio for the first time, Battle Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world. The first novel by small-town journalist Koushun Takami, it went on to become an even more notorious film by 70-year-old director Kinji Fukusaku.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©1999 Koushun Takami; Translation copyright 2009, Yuji Oniki (P)2012 Simon & Schuster

Twisted Anime plot held within a full length novel

This is an incredible story that kept me going through to the end. Highly recommend.

bad reader

no emotion in any of the dialogue. I would rather just watch the movie anyway.

Grand Daddy of the Hunger Games

Great book, with solid translation.

This book was obviously edited poorly, but aside from some awkward mid-sentence splicing it's all good.
The narrator is pretty gripping, but on occasion sounds like two different people due to the editing, which mostly subsides halfway through.

The Hunger Games wishes it could be this good. It's just a pale reflection of this book.

#Love Check it out.

Great book, bad narrator

This was a great book. I enjoyed it more than hunger games. The narrator was just bad though. This is a book about kids having to kill each other and he puts absolutely no emotion into the telling of the story. Still worth a read though.

A million times better than the movie

I've seen the movie a few times, I never thought it was anything special, mainly not enough character development and it wasn't nearly as violent as it was hyped up to be. Eventually, I'd read the manga, and it was a way better version.

I finally listened to the audiobook, and while it's been several years since I've read the manga (same author) the original book is really close to that adaptation. I think the manga had more flash backs, and being a visual medium it's a matter of preference. The novel is phenomenal.

With the book, they had all the time to tell this whole story, so most of the 42 students have a story and personalities, while in the movie, nearly everyone is a number and a corpse. The audiobook in English is around 20 hours long, so no detail is glossed over, like trying to cut it down into a 2 hour movie.

There's a lot of interesting things you will only learn about from the book. Like the history of the program, which goes back to post WWII, and to explain things that didn't make sense in the movie, like how everything works with the collars and tracking the students without having cameras on the island. It's also quite political in the sense that it's about angry teens looking to fight back against a fascist regime that has teens fight to the death.

It's also pretty crazy how the rules of Battle Royale would end up being very much adhered to in the modern trend of online video games like PUBG and Fortnite, even with restricted zones that close in the map as it goes on. The big difference is here, most people don't want to be here, and it isn't fun for the kids.

I can see where some things probably were influential to this novel, like The Running Man or the Suicide Squad comics, but the author had a lot of new ideas, and the cruelty of the government forcing 15 year olds to kill their class mates for no reason.

bloody brilliant

only thing is you may get confused by the names but beyond that everything is enjoyable

The OG modern dystopian!

Fantastic must listen for fans of modern dystopian! If you love the gene definitely check this one out.

Very good book

Had some trouble remembering the names, but that's not really a fault of the book. I didn't appreciate the slight sexual themes that appear from time to time, considering these are middle schoolers. Other than that it was a very good book and I enjoyed it.

My new favorite book

This is my favorite book I have ever read. It had all my favorite parts, mystery, thrill, and twists.

A cult classic

I have been hearing about Battle Royale since I first got into the dystopian society genre and now I'm kicking myself for not adding it to my collection sooner. This story completely blew me away. What I loved about it was that all of the children involved had preexisting relationships and perceptions of one another giving the story emotional depth. If you're not into violence, I would skip this one. It was incredibly graphic.

The only thing I would change about this is the narrator. This was such an exciting and emotional journey and his narration lacked the passion I was looking for.