Thing is, that's in turn based on Kōshun Takami's 1999 novel, and there's a manga series of Battle Royale that was published from 2000 to 2005, illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi.
But let's get back to the cinematic outing.
This violent, often wildly hilarious — and disturbing — gem is p'raps not quite so obscure now, thirteen years on, as when it was first released in Japan.
Battle Royale would've made a far more fitting obituary for its director Kinji Fukasaku rather than its lesser sequel three years later — which in fact his son Kenta polished off after the director's death at age 72.
You certainly couldn’t take style, content and inspiration any further a field from Fukasaku, Sr.'s earlier adventure schlock-romp Legend Of 8 Samurai.
So clear your frazzled Hunger Games brain.
It’s a not-too-distant future.
Japan is again a fascist state. An arbitrarily-chosen bus full of high school kids are knocked out with sleeping gas, kidnapped, then shipped on to an isolated island — where they’re informed by their embittered former teacher Kitano ('Beat' Takeshi Kitano) that the only way they will leave said island is by killing all their classmates — or by ending up in a body-bag themselves.
In order to enforce this mandate, each student is shackled with an exploding collar, à la Wedlock, and Kitano punctuates the students’ plight with a well-aimed penknife to one of the girl’s foreheads, thereby launching a battle for self-preservation.
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