Slightly Biased Manga

These huge omnibus editions are AWESOME!  Unfortunately, many of the ones that are being released by various publishers are things that I have read, but I love it when I can pick one up.  Especially Battle Royale, which is something I’ve just needed a little push with for years.

There were a lot of extras included with this volume.  Unless it’s something I’m a really huge fan of (and even then not always), character prelim designs are not something I’m terribly interested in.  The updates as to what went on where in the island included between “volumes” were extremely helpful, but I don’t know if they were part of the original release or not.  There were a few character profiles included, but they didn’t add much to the story save for the fact that it mentioned what the original weapon was for the characters.  The interview with the series creator in the back wasn’t very informative, and I also didn’t really like the character analysis included either, though that was one of the most creative extras ever.  I may sound slightly disappointed, but all this stuff taken together was super great and I’ve never seen so much stuff pumped into a single volume of manga before.  There is a lot of love there, and I really appreciate it.

One of the reasons I stayed away from Battle Royale for so long was because you have to really convince me that a tournament-style manga is worth my time.  This may seem hard to believe since I read so many, but I need convincing each time I start one.  Battle Royale seemed sort of unremarkable save for its violence, the plot an excuse to have a tournament, and at 15 volumes, it wasn’t something I was excited about committing to.  But I was totally wrong.

Most people point out the violence in this series as a standout quality, like I mentioned earlier.  Now, I read a lot of violent manga, so it takes a lot to shock me when it comes to graphic violence, and it’s rare when a manga can stand out because it is grotesque.   Battle Royale does, though.  It was almost a slap in the face every time a death occurred, and there are graphic depictions of people’s heads exploding, eyes popping out as a bullet passes through the socket, handfuls of brains being scooped from skulls, and arteries being severed.  This would be enough for me really, but the weapon array is truly astounding, and sometimes the shock comes from the method of execution, some of the more surprising being a crossbow, scythe, and even common knives being plunged into skulls.  It’s also jarring because this series doesn’t revel in its gore in the way other series I read do.  Gross things happen in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, but you can laugh it off in that series because it’s so over-the-top.  This is relatively straight, there’s a lot of crying and reflection when a death occurs, and a lot of the murder scenes are really heartbreaking.  Well, almost heartbreaking, at least.  The violence is still pretty cartoony, but it is harder to take when it’s serious like this.

There are 42 characters to start the tournament.  The disadvantage to most tournament-style series is that mostly the opponents are glossed over in favor of developing the main character’s personality or skills or whatever.  While the characters here aren’t exactly the deepest you’ll encounter in a manga, they are surprisingly developed given their number thanks to frequent flashback scenes showing you their favorite memories, usually right before they die (but not always).  This gives them more of a face for whatever trial they’re about to go through, and it is extremely effective.  There is a main character, but most of the battles in this volume do not happen to him, and its other characters that engage in combat… though Shu gets his fair share of flashback and memories too.

The last chapter is really disturbing.  That is one twisted, sick, despicable girl.

Also, there are a few manga allusions made throughout the series which are varying degrees of obvious.  One of the ones that made me pull a face was a really obvious allusion to “Baron Gong Battle,” one of the other series the artist draws.  The other two were more subtle and I’m not quite sure I pegged them right… “Wild 7″ is the brand of cigarettes smoked in the series and also the t-shirt design Shu sports on the cover.  “Wild 7″ is also the name of a really retro action manga series from the 60s featuring a lot of violence and motorcycle gangs that fought with an array of weapons, though I’ve never read it to draw any parallels between it and Battle Royale.  The third is something my roomate picked up on.  He says the character that Shu is watching on TV on one of the first pages is the main character from “Apocalypse Zero,” though identified by a different name.  I’m willing to believe that, they look enough alike, but I don’t think there was any TV series version of “Apocalypse Zero,” if that makes any difference.  Just an OAV.

But yes, this volume is totally worth your time if you’re at all into the violent, gory stuff.  There’s not much there for people looking for a deep story since the story is fairly simple and the characters don’t have that much depth, but I suppose it also works on another level as a relatively realistic (as opposed to… I don’t know, comedic or over-the-top) take on what would happen if you dropped that many teens on an island and made them hunt each other.