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High school students battle each other to the death in the original survival game!
About the author
Koushun Takami was born in 1969 in Amagasaki near Osaka and grew up in Kagawa Prefecture of Shikoku (the fourth largest island in Japan), where he currently resides. After graduating from Osaka University with a degree in literature, he worked for a newspaper company, Shikoku Shinbun, for five years, reporting on politics, police reports, and economics.
Battle Royale, completed after Takami left the newspaper company, was his debut work and is his only novel published so far. With its publication in Japan in 1999, it received widespread support and became a bestseller.
Battle Royale was serialized as a comic, made into a feature film in 2000, and has been translated into more than ten languages. Since its initial release,
Battle Royale continues to be a cult favorite in Japan and internationally.
In 2012,
Battle Royale: Angels' Border, a spin-off manga scripted by Koushun Takami, was released.
Yukai Asada is from Shunan City, Yamaguchi Prefecture. He moved to Tokyo and formed a punk band while also working as a manga assistant. In 2006, he teamed up with Mai Tsurugina for his first serialized work,
M.C.☆
LAW. Among his other noteworthy works are the band-themed manga
Woodstock and
Koori no Buta (Ice Pig), as well as
Sengoku Basara, based on the popular video game. His most recent works include
Butsumetsu Kekkon and
Battle Royale: Enforcers.
Summary
Twenty years ago, the fascist government of the Republic of Greater East Asia seized control of Japan. In order to terrorize the citizens and crush any possibility of rebellion, the government set up Program 68, a savage military program where Japanese high school students were sent to a remote island and forced to kill each other—the Battle Royale.
