I got Battle Royale for Christmas (Three volumes, it's the max number out at the time) and I absolutely fell in love with it. The animation was great and the plot was superb (It's a manga, by the way). It was also released as a movie (I have yet to find it, it is incapable of being found anywhere but Ebay and foreign stores) but is not able to be released in the US because of
, quoted from the ratings after it was released, and then followed shortly by a book (Which I recently purchased).
The story is kinda hard to describe..I'll try, though. In the future, Japan's economy practically collapses. They build a government called the ''Greater Eastern Asian Republic", with a sole military leader called ''The Dictator". Over the years, the government has made up a Reality TV show-a game show, if you will. As if part of a sick joke, a class of Freshman are sent to an island, where they are provided rations, supplies, and weapons to kill each other with. Until there is only one student left standing, the game will continue. Every three hours, however, a ''zone'', or sector of the island becomes a ''danger zone'', where the collar around each student's neck will suddenly..explode..if that student is caught in the danger zone even a second after the announcement comes up, and the danger zones never go back to normal. So, after a while, eventually every zone will become a danger zone and all the collars will have to explode. An entire freshman class, dead because they wouldn't kill each other. Another alike rule, if a day passes without a single kill, all the collars exlode and every living player will die.
However, a student in one of the classes chosen from Shiroiwa High, Freshman class, Shuya Nanahara, decides to fight in opposition of the game show, called ''The Program", which is just as if he were opposing the government. After watching his friend die before the game even begins, he promises to protect his friends crush and escape with her from the island before they are killed.
Anybody seen the movie or read the book or manga? If you haven't, I
highly recommend it.