Battle Royale 4 (Ultimate Edition)

This has degenerated into new levels of depravity and ridiculousness.  My roommate and I were debating over whether or not it was serious about it or not.  It keeps a straight face when characters do things like manipulate ki and then reference the fact that it’s not something that they should be able to do, but I’m pretty sure the series itself is self-aware enough to know that these things are pretty stupid.  It would have to be.

This has gotten pretty hard to read, though.  The deal breaker for me is the repetition.  Sugimura finally finds Kayoko, and the two of them eventually face off against Kiriyama.  During the ENTIRE fight, Sugimura is a broken record about how Kiriyama has no emotion and he needs to do this for Kayoko, Shuuya told him to come back, Kayoko isn’t going to die like her other friend, he needs to sieze the moment, et cetera.  There is at least one chapter, maybe two, but for all intents and purposes, dialogue is repeated ad nauseum from the time Shuuya figures out what is going on in the lighthouse to the time he rejoins Shogo.  This part is particularly bad, because there isn’t anything going on BUT dialogue repetition.  I know this is supposed to be a character building moment, but Shuuya doesn’t do anything but repeat himself and replay scenes we’ve seen over and over again through his head.  There is no development.  The only thing notable that happens is that he finds Mimura on his way back to camp.  I can see this strengthening his resolve (and it does), but it makes the rest of the repetition unnecessary.  Sometimes the same things are repeated every three pages.  It’s just… it’s hard to read.  The fights are still pretty cool, but the dialogue just kills them.

There are parts where you have to roll your eyes too, where the series crosses the line from extreme into stupid, like I mentioned earlier.  At one point, Kiriyama is shown reading a book called “Introduction to Judo,” implying that he has never practiced martial arts before, then he proceeds to beat up the gym teacher, a seasoned practitioner, and pluck his eye out.  As I mentioned, the Kiriyama/Sugimura fight has moments where they channel Dragonball (and mention that this is what they’re doing), which is sort of uncalled for. Really, anything having to do with Kiriyama steps over some sort of line.  The fight with Sugimura, even without the Dragonball stuff, is pretty ridiculous.  Elsewhere, Mitsuko… is just gross.  I mean, she’s leaking.  And then she… tastes.  Eww.

But then there are parts where Mizuho, one of the last random characters, freak out, and sometimes you think that reading this far is worth it.

So basically, Shu makes it back to camp, Sugimura finds Kayoko, and Sugimura and Kiriyama face off.  I’m a bit disappointed that Kiriyama and Mitsuko haven’t fought yet, but I’m pretty confident this is the very next thing that will happen.  There are still awesome things going on, but you sort of have to forgive the series its terrible dialogue.  Which is hard, because this is some of the worst dialogue ever, but… yeah.  There are only three volumes left, and I’m pretty confident we won’t need a lot of the repetitive filler that we got in this volume since there’s still a lot left to finish up.