A Story that was Just too Familiar.

Battle Royale.

As a white American male between the ages of 14 and 28 who was overweight for a good portion of my life, I belong to a certain group of people within my generation that appreciates Japanese culture and doesn't see it as alien to American culture, but merely an extension that occasionally gets a little strange. Upon reading the first half (or so) of "Battle Royale", I found nothing to be new from my normal experiences with the "Japanese High School Students with Problems Genre", albeit they were trying to kill each other. I guess I just figured that the character archetypes would have advanced beyond the standard "guy who's too cool to care and his doting protege constantly whining 'senpai this!' and 'senpai that!'", or "the two characters who are totally interested in each other but both are too beta to do anything about it" because, you know... life and death struggle should bring some CRAZY characters to the floor. Moving on to the actual story, though, I loved the introduction of the book and how the author set everything up; the totalitarian regime, the unannounced class trip, gassing the bus -- all things that I felt really fit in the universe that had been laid out in front of me. It was after the briefing, though, that my brow frequently began to furrow. I mean really, the weapon that each student receives is totally random? I thought it was a bit ridiculous that there was no drawing of a line at the minimum quality that a weapon could be (I'm talking, of course, about the paper fan). That's just... not fair. Funny, but not fair.

 --William Avery