Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale, vol. 1 (2005)
Written/Drawn by: Hitoshi Tomizawa
Original Placement: 1/1
Read before: I think I read, like, a couple pages of this when I was twelve because I thought I was reading the original manga? E
So I’ll state that I didn’t like the first Battle Royale manga for… quite a few reasons. While I get the idea of expanding on aspects of the original series, and fleshing out characters who weren’t quite fleshed out in the original, the core issue is that I find it to be an ugly, poorly paced slog of a story that seeks, more than anything, to lean in on what made the original novel controversial and make it so much worse. Fights and death scenes are poorly choreographed and run stupidly long in an attempt to “expand” on the original and draw pathos out of [insert redshirt #403’s] death. The character design in general is… really ugly — in addition to nearly everyone looking like gremlins, this is supposed to be a cast full of 14-year-olds and everybody looks like they’re either seven or in their thirties. In addition to all that, it's just… really gross? It’s a manga that really leans into the leery — corpses are depicted in loving detail, sex and sexual assault are constantly referenced in an attempt to be edgy and shocking, and one of the main characters is a (supposedly) teenage sex victim who’s depicted continuously as a titillating sex object. I’m not averse to dark content — I love the original novel and its movie adaptation — but while these never went too far off the deep end, and often had something to say regarding its graphic elements, the manga goes wayyy further mostly just for the sake of having it, which really helps the manga to leave a bad taste in my mouth.
So you can imagine, when even the people who like the Battle Royale manga hate Blitz Royale, that this preemptively cancelled series would somehow be just as bad, right? It was the preconception I held going in, and the fact that the series got cancelled and hastily ended at least gives the impression that I’m not going to get a satisfying ending out of this, but honestly…
…it’s not that bad?
It’s not that good, either, but I’d happily take “mid” over the general grossness that’s the Battle Royale manga. The story follows a girl named Makoto Hashimoto who lives in a dystopic Japan and who, along with the rest of her eighth-grade class, gets kidnapped and placed in a special version of The Program run by the Navy. They’re forcibly separated into corps groups, have explosive collars placed on their necks, and — after the navy gets bored of having them dispose of corpses I guess — forced into military exercises in hopes of surviving and returning home. Almost immediately, though, one of these exercises goes wrong, and it suddenly becomes up to Makoto and her group of supporting characters to learn how to fight, figure their way through the battlefield, and potentially buy their chance at freedom.
The first thing I’d like to mention is the art… which is a mixed bag. Hitoshi Tomizawa, the artist/writer of a previous series named Alien Nine, decided to touch on the totalitarian horror of Battle Royale with a style that looks like something out of a gag manga. On one hand, it’s effective in some places — there’s one panel in particular that shows bloody footprints around a corpse the entire class had converged on, which is a nice bit of detail — and there’s definitely something thematic in how young all the kids look. I also appreciate some of the cognitive dissonances with the art — the guns the soldiers have been drawn in a way different and more realistic artstyle than most other things seen, which really helps sell, like, the idea of innocence ending as the class is forced to grapple with the reality of war.
Because, surprisingly, compared to its predecessor… there are actually some deeper themes here! Maybe I’m being influenced by the author of the original Battle Royale novel appearing in the last couple of pages and talking about the story and the real world context, but… I’m kind of into the vibes it has of exposing children to the horrors of war, and forcing them to leave their old lives behind and try to fight for themselves where they can. It’s absolutely derivative of Battle Royale the novel, yeah, but I dunno, after the first manga’s sole purpose was “just how much blood and anime tiddy can we show?” it’s nice to be reading something with a clear mission statement behind it. I’m also fond of some of the culture-centric stuff — it was pointed out to me that the idea of the navy creating their own, much more different Battle Royale Program plays off of the historical tension between the army and the navy of Japan, which is neat.
I think that’s where my compliments end, though, because while I did note that the artstyle could be effective at points… by far and large it's rather unfitting, and at some points outright bad. The characters, in general, look rather cartoony, with their penis noses and off-model heads and ears half the size of their faces, and while it’d probably work with, say, a slice of life or a gag manga... within a dystopian horror like Battle Royale it's hard to reconcile a lot of what’s going on when, say, the main character you’re following only has her eyes 2/3rds drawn. I get that this could be leaning into the themes of loss of innocence and such, but… this is a dissonance that I don’t think works quite as well. And while I can get the idea behind all the soldiers looking identically indistinct, having all the class look incredibly similar to one another… doesn’t, assuming we’re meant to care about whether the class can make it out or not.
This leads to my other issue: the characters are… not exactly distinct. I can maybe forgive most of Makoto’s classmates because my impression is that they’re meant to be redshirts but even among the apparently important people so far, in terms of character traits… we know Makoto’s unlucky? Mostly because she keeps harping on about it? There’s this blond kid who was going to be Makoto’s love interest but then the soldiers beat the shit out of him for “idle talk” so now he’s evil? That’s it. Everybody else is… kind of a blank slate. This is, evidently, meant to be a story that hinges upon you caring about the characters — hoping they persevere, being impacted by their deaths — so the fact that there’s so little to really latch onto makes things… rough, especially knowing that this is only a two-volume story.
So… yeah. A mixed bag, definitely leaning more towards the “bad” end than good, but… I dunno. I kind of expected something eh going in, and I got that, but I feel like there’s at least enough promise for me to actually be kind of interested in how it goes? Even if the cancellation/the fact this story ends next volume kind of puts a damper on things.
Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale, vol. 2 (2005)
Written/Drawn by: Hitoshi Tomizawa
Original Position: 2/2
Read Before? No.
So knowing that Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale was prematurely cancelled and forced to end after just two volumes made me curious to know how on earth it was going to conclude. The series was clearly built to be a bit of a slow burn — what with a mentioned time period of “two years” and the rate at which members of the cast were being introduced — so the question came down to whether the manga would do its best to speed through all its major plot beats or whether it’d all just suddenly end. Would the resultant conclusion have a chance of coming off as anything other than abrupt? Would the genuine potential shown in the first volume of the series be realized, or ultimately squandered?
The answer to the first question is a little bit of both — it does its best to rush through all the remaining plot points I’m sure were initially meant to be spread out and oh my god does the result come off as super abrupt and kind of turns the whole thing into a joke.
Which is a shame, because I was genuinely kind of into the first part of this volume, even more so than the first. After the end of the military exercise that formed the majority of the last volume’s plot, Makoto wakes up after four days and finds herself trapped in a haves vs. have-nots situation. As it turns out, performing well in exercises and tests grants teams points, and while those with high points — like Makoto’s group — get to live in a mansion and eat food cooked by the soldiers, those with low or no points have to sleep outside and live with meagre supplies. The have-nots absolutely despise Makoto’s group for their current situation, and watching the class actively turn on itself because of the restrictions placed upon them by the ones running the show? That’s the kind of socio-political theming I was really surprised to see in volume one.
And then I guess at this point the author got the order to finish the story in five chapters because then everything just suddenly goes super fast. This Battle Royale’s Shogo equivalent literally just appears, walks up, and deadass just goes “I’m [person]! I survived this game — twice!” So then they team up with not!Shogo but then it turns out she’s actually EVILLLLLLLLL and a mole for the military so then she just starts murdering everyone because she’s incompetent at covering her tracks and also these big moments which were supposed to be dispersed throughout the series now have to be quickfired one after the other. Makoto is also a victim of this. Throughout the series, she’s been primarily characterized as… both scared of everything and overtly trusting to the point that she kinda comes off as an idiot, but then, when everybody else dies in the space of two pages, she’s suddenly brave and resourceful and the one person in the class not!Shogo respects? I guess it was meant to be a slow-burn of the game-changing who Makoto is as a person but then suddenly there wasn’t any more fire to burn so the night before the final battle she’s a scaredy-cat and the next she’s a battle-hardened warrior who manages to outsmart the villains.
And it really kinda becomes kinda comical. Like legitimately so much of this volume is full-on ridiculous in the wake of it having to rush towards an ending. Makoto comes off as a massive idiot — falling on absolutely outlandish conclusions for the sake of the story that any sane person would immediately realize the issues with. The translation… is kind of weak in general, but it sticks out here, with constant tense conflicts and really bad expository dialogue. There’s this recurring story element of these drugs the soldiers take that are implied to be slowly turning them into mindless killing machines, and by the end of this volume a bunch of students (including Makoto) are just guzzling through them, sometimes taking upwards of ten of them at a time. The whole cast is just massacred in a sweep, and yet at the same time the manga tries to draw out a little bit of pathos in showing the reactions to all their deaths as if we ever actually got to know them as audience members in the first place.
And ultimately, I… kinda wish this series hadn’t been cancelled, honestly? There were always things that were going to be a little rough — the art has moments but it's ultimately hit-or-miss, and none of the characters, including Makoto, ever felt all that distinct to me — but there was genuine promise in the premise and the theming and I would’ve been fascinated to know where it was all going to go. Sadly a lot of its potential got squandered, and… I honestly don’t really have it in me to give this volume more than a 1.5/5, but honestly, hot take on Battle Royale II: Blitz Royale? I’d… really hesitate to call it “good,” by any means, but it’s almost certainly a better read than the first manga.
