DVD Review: Battle Royale

When everybody was talking about The Hunger Games, inevitably there'd be one person somewhere in the crowd that would say "Ugh, it's such a rip-off of Battle Royale." To be honest, those people were pretty annoying. But they had good reason to bring it up. For people who aren't familiar with it, Battle Royale was a book first, published in Japan in 1999. It was adapted into a feature film in 2000. It was also turned into a manga around the same time. The three versions have some big differences in the plot and the mechanics of the world, but the premise is generally the same. In it, a totalitarian government suppresses teenage rebellion by selecting one middle school class every year to compete in the Battle Royale. Which is, as you may have guessed, a fight to the death with only one student left standing.

I have known about Battle Royale for years, since 2001 or so. At the time I was working on a documentary about cosplay, and the school uniform from the film was one of the most popular costumes. Of course I read what I could about the story at the time, because I wanted to know what it was. A few years later, the manga was translated into English. It was gruesome, violent, disturbing, and yet compelling at the same time. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but not because it was bad. Just because I'd have to know someone really well before I said "Yeah, you should read this comic where they illustrate people's heads exploding in detail."

People like to say that the similarities between the two works (Battle Royale and The Hunger Games) are just superficial. And I'll be clear, I don't think that Suzanne Collins plagiarized anything. But for me the thing is that The Hunger Games could never be that great a book to me because I had already read the manga of Battle Royale. The themes were extremely similar, and more than just superficial. The authors were making similar conclusions about where our society is heading, and where it is now. They seem to draw on a lot of the same sort of cultural influences.

And in the end, Battle Royale made me think more, made me care more, and was more willing to push limits to make it's point. It's not that The Hunger Games is a rip-off, it's just that somebody else did the same story in a way that worked much better for me.

So after I saw The Hunger Games movie, I really wanted to watch Battle Royale. As much as I knew about the film, it was very hard to find in the U.S. for many years. It suffered from unfortunate timing because it was released not long after the Columbine Massacre, which colored it with a very different lens than it is seen with today.

To be honest, much of the film's lauded violence feels tame by today's standards, and it's only 12 years old. The story isn't as subversive, and it really doesn't live up to it's hype. But that isn't a bad thing, because the hype was obscuring the fact that it's just a really solid film. It is a Japanese film, and so some American audiences will just be generally confused by the pacing, structure, and some of the acting (which is a little different than what we're used to, not bad, just different). But the characters have some real depth, and even though I knew everything that happened I still cared about everyone.

It's major flaw is the same problem I had with the book of The Hunger Games-we don't know enough about who is making the children fight, and we need to. This isn't some macguffin that can get swept under the rug. It's no longer revolutionary to have children fighting to the death (sadly) but what is still relevant is the social commentary, which can only be made by revealing more of the machine.

I can't hold that against Battle Royale because in 1999, it was a different world and a different place to be telling this kind of story but it still affected my reaction to it. What amazes me is that it doesn't hold back. While the movie is far less violent and graphic than the manga, it still doesn't hesitate to have heads cut off and axes go through skulls. American movies are violent, and everyone talked about how violent the Hunger Games was. But those stories feel bloodless in a way, even if they aren't literally. Part of this is because in Battle Royale, the students aren't strangers to each other. They're classmates and friends. Boyfriends and girlfriends, cliques with mean girls and victims of their bullying. The characters come in with baggage, not just their own, but with each other. And that matters, it makes it feel more personal and more terrible.

Overall, I actually wouldn't recommend this movie to fans of The Hunger Games, unless you already thought the book could have gone further and you wonder what it would be like if it wasn't YA. But if you like Japanese action movies, horror movies, or you want to think about how messed up our society can get, then it's worth a watch.

Supernatural Rewatch Part 3

Don't forget to check the "supernatural rewatch" tag to see all the posts in this series! It's hard to keep going through these early episodes, especially knowing how the season ends up. From now on I should probably do these write ups right after watching, because it would be more interesting for all of us. Bloody Mary: This is actually the last episode I watched back when they were first airing. Although I don't remember the way that the story ended up so it may be that I saw the previews but didn't watch the episode. None of which is actually important. Anyway.

The show seems to be happy making it's way through well known and well worn legends, but at least it's putting it's own twists and mythology to them. The thing that interests me about Bloody Mary is that it's always a different system for calling her forward, and a different tale about what she'll do to you. I'm sure research papers have been written about the ways the myth evolves in different areas and throughout it's history.

The episode itself hits a couple of my own personal fears, like the idea of looking in a mirror and seeing your reflection do something else. It's like I've been saying for years, if you're faced with most popular fears you know what to do. Zombies? Head shot. Vampires? Stake to the heart. Werewolves? Silver bullets. If all else fails, cut off it's head. But when your mirror goes evil? You're just screwed. You can never tell if breaking it will fix things or set the evil free.

The revelations in this episode weren't bad, and Sam's secret did add a nice layer to his character and start to build up an interesting piece of the show's mythos. I'm just looking forward to a time where both brothers are interesting in a single episode, rather than having each one take a turn while the other takes a back seat and goes back to their stereotypical role.

Oh, and let's not forget that this episode featured another pretty girl who needed their help, will be eternally grateful, and never shows up again.

Skin: This episode actually does what I was complaining about for Bloody Mary, it manages to give both brothers plenty of character development and issues and doesn't send one or the other to the background. It also is the single grossest thing I think the show has put onto camera yet, so I guess kudos for that?

One thing this episode flirts with but doesn't finish is how these brothers manage to lie and get themselves on some law enforcement radar nearly every week. I find it hard to believe they're not climbing America's Most Wanted. I can suspend that most days, but it's going to be hard to explain later how Dean Winchester isn't dead. Not to mention how weird the investigation would get if they were really looking into his past and trying to make sense of any of it. I suppose since the suspect is dead they just closed the investigation.

Using a telepathic shape shifter to get into the brother's heads was a neat way to go about it, so that you don't have to manufacture a "chick flick moment" for them to bare their souls. But it does seem like a cop out, I'd like them to have these kind of moments themselves out of something genuine.

Lookit that, this episode has another attractive young lady who needs their help, almost dies, and will never be seen again. We're now 5 for 6! The only reason we aren't at a perfect record is that Jess doesn't count on this particular trope, she's her own kind of special.

I did appreciate that Skin was about a more vague villain, just a shapeshifter, not some specific piece of folklore. It's good to mix it up.

I'm happy I wasn't at Comic Con

Over the last weekend, tumblr and every other piece of social media was full of people talking about how much they wished they were at San Diego Comic Con.

Meanwhile, I was so glad that I wasn't.

I love conventions, I actually wish I could go to more of them. But I love them for completely different reasons than most of the people who were talking about SDCC. I love seeing cosplayers, I love seeing friends I don't hang out with too often. I like to be in an area full of people with similar interests just to talk to random strangers. And I enjoy the occasional odd encounter with a star of a favorite show in an elevator.

What I hate is lines and waiting. My sister dubbed it "wait rage" a few weeks ago. I hate waiting, I can't stand it unless I have something specific to do while I'm waiting. But in general, the thing I'm waiting for better be worth wasting this precious amount of my minutes on Earth. And while I love a lot of the things that were happening at SDCC, I could read about it all from home without having to camp out in a line for three days for a chance to MAYBE make it in the door.

Plus I heard that they weren't even clearing the rooms in between panels, so half the time you would be waiting in line and not get in because somebody had camped a chair in the room the entire day and they might not have even been there for what you were trying to see.

I don't know the solution to this problem in general (besides clearing the room, which I know takes precious time but come on, it's a necessity). Dragon*Con has a pretty big problem with it as well. The last few times I've been to bigger conventions it's been with a press badge, so I've thankfully been able to enjoy the event without too much waiting. But one year at Otakon I waited in a twelve block long line, outside, in the August heat of Baltimore, for a concert that turned out not to be any good. They hadn't set up the sound system properly so the music sounded terrible, and the seats we got after waiting so many hours were so far back that we were getting assaulted with echoes as well. The whole thing was a complete and utter waste, we left after maybe twenty minutes.

And that's the thing about these events. Sometimes there's a brilliant and amazing thing that you wish you'd been there for, but it's not like you'll miss out on the big announcements or not know what's going on. Waiting in a line for a signing is one thing, getting that brief moment of one on one with your favorite star is pretty awesome and so I don't begrudge anybody that. But camping out for two days for a Q&A panel, where you probably won't get to ask your question and 90% of the questions will be either something easily found elsewhere or the person asking spending five minutes talking about how much they love the people on the panel...in my world that equation isn't worth it.

Maybe I've gotten jaded from attending too many conventions and seeing too many panels. Some people will probably say I'm just not a big enough fan, and that might be true. I can't think of anybody that I am just so enamored with that I would wait five hours for a chance to stand in the back of a room and listen to them talk. I would pay for a ticket to a limited seating event that guaranteed I got in the room without having to wait, sure. But my time is worth more than money, and I only get so much of it. I'd rather spend it reading about SDCC from home and then going out and doing anything I wanted that weekend than waiting in line.

I know there's no easy solution, and like I said, I don't know what it would be. But the big conventions really need to address this problem. Because I for one am not counting the days until I might be able to go to SDCC unless it's with a press badge and a particular project in mind. Going as a fan just seems like an experience in camping, and I'd rather do that outside.