Battle Royale (Koushun Takami) vs The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

I know they're not the book covers, shut up they look cool

I recently read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and while I was entertained, it bugged me on a few levels. I have had to think on this a long while, but I want to really understand why I've got a bug up my butt, because this story has had such an impact on our media culture that I am sure it’s going to influence stories to come.

So, I used Battle Royale as a yardstick.

To quickly recap, The Hunger Games is a dystopian YA novel. (Note the YA in that – young adult. This is a book that has to conform to certain rules of its genre.) The titular Hunger Games are an annual tournament in a country called Panem, where a girl and boy from each of the twelve slave districts are selected by chance to compete in a televised battle to the death. The book is told from the perspective of Katness Everdeen who competes for her district in lieu of her younger sister. This is all very interesting.

So I like the premise.

But the execution of this idea was lacking (for me) and there are many reasons for that, but one is obvious. The Hunger Games is a dystopian YA novel. YA. Young Adult.

Now, I’m not saying that you can’t have a dystopian novel written for young adults, and I’m definitely not saying you can’t have a good dystopian novel written for young adults, I’m saying that in this particular case, the YA – that rating – handcuffed this story and prevented it from reaching its full potential. YA meant this particular story couldnt go into the dark where it NEEDED to go.

There are plenty of YA novels that manage to incorporate heavy themes into a book geared towards teenaged readers – Harry Potter springs to mind, and Tomorrow When the War Began. But Collins wants to tell you a story about children battling to the death… without any gore.

Gore is typically not a YA theme, at least not in this medium. But how can you tell a story about what it means to battle to the death without gore? How can you write about the horror of murder, about a totalitarian government that forces a gladiator charade and then skip out on the yukky part? How do you make death a character, while at the same time covering your eyes when he appears and refusing to react to anything he does? This is what I mean, the YA rating slapped on this handcuffed it from really creating a clear message, from really exploring the themes that Collins hints at.

Apart from the overaching "death battle" theme, Collins touches on themes of government control and slavery, love, a society desensitised to violence, class distinction, how much of an impact television has on our lives … but never really focuses her story on any of them. I think this is because she didn’t want to delve too deep and confuse her younger target market, but the result is more blurred messages.

Government control is shown but never actually explored. We see the people are starving, but the only one who really seems outraged at what this means to the people is Katniss’ friend Gale, and he's hardly a major player. We know Katniss believes the games to be unfair, but doesn’t really seem to care if they continue after her exit from them.

Love is hinted at; a lot of Peeta Mellark’s (the other contender from Katniss’district) actions seem to be driven by his love for Katniss, but Katniss seems remarkable unaware, or maybe just unmoved, by this.

And I’m sure Collins wants us to be aghast at the idea of a bloodthirsty crowd watching the teens in their death throes … but she never gives us a chance to be shocked. She can’t shock us with what would be gory death descriptions because of the target audience, so I would expect Katniss to really explain either the deaths or how the deaths affect her. But she doesn’t. Katniss takes the whole thing extremely well; she only really balks at one death of a young tribute.

Class distinction is probably the most explored theme throughout the novel, as the distinction between the Capitol dandies and the starving district where Katniss lives is well done and interesting.

The whole television angle is I’m sure the main theme, that we are slaves to the box which is reflected by the Capitol making the games mandatory viewing. But this message is skewed by the whole interviewing segment where Katniss is suddenly amazingly beautiful from her makeover (of course!) and changes her personality in order to get sponsors. It’s not subversive at all. Katniss knows she must play by the pre-determined rules… and she does.  This is like saying the Bachelor is an awful show… and then signing up to be on it. (especially jarring as Katniss seems to have an almost aspergers-like level of not understanding human interaction/expectations/social signals for the rest of the story)

So if the story is not making a political point, it must be character driven, right? But it’s not. Katniss’ love for her sister is plain to see, and it’s what drives her to take her sister’s place in the games... but Katniss is the same person at the start of the book as she is at the end. She is cold, and she is only in it to survive. Katniss doesn’t seem at all changed by the events of what is supposedly her story – even though she participates in a post-apocalyptic gladiator battle…

Okay… so why have I called this blog Battle Royale vs Hunger Games? It's not really fair to compare the two, because one book is for adults and one is for young adults.

I know that. In fact, I don't care that they use the same premise... alot of people get hung up on that, but that isnt important. What's important here is that Battle Royale goes where the Hunger Games doesn’t. Or can’t.

Battle Royale (by Koushun Takami) is another story about a totalitarian government forcing teenagers to fight in a death match – this time a military research event called ‘The Program’. The Program is just as inescapable as the Hunger Games, except it takes place on an island, and the children are wearing bomb collars around their necks.

There are a few big differences in the book, most notably the gore level is high in BR, such as what I tend to call headhopping - switching character POVs during the story -  and a bigger focus on the political message. 

We've got Katniss...

...and Shuya...

Unlike Katniss, whose actions are motivated by survival and wanting to return to her sister, the main protagonist of Battle Royale, Shuya, is motivated by love, rebellion, and hope.

One of the main differences in the two stories is that the participants in Battle Royale are all people Shuya goes to school with. Katniss interacts with people she has never seen before (apart from Peeta) and this lessens the intimacy – and the shock value – of the death match.

Katniss’ drive to save her fellow participants is almost non-existent; Katniss mainly wants to stay away from them … because she doesn’t know them, and she wants to survive. Understandable. Shuya wants to survive as well, but he wants to gather his fellow classmates and escape as he feels a connection to them, and that’s why the story is all the more devastating when some of the classmates are more interested in killing by the rules than banding together.

Battle Royale explores numerous reactions to The Program, some people decide to kill, some decide to hide, some are leaders, some are protectors, some are hopeless, and some go completely crazy. It shows very well that dire circumstances will bring out different reactions in people. Takami lets you into the characters heads, makes an effort to portray them as real people with real motivations, before they are brutally done away with. This is what makes the story so awful.

Compare to Hunger Games, when most of the characters are killed in the first few minutes of the games, and it is impersonal and mashed together. Then, the other characters are sectioned into good and bad, so there are no moral dilemmas for the audience to really deal with.

Battle Royale is horrific… but is not horror that glorifies the murder; it is horror that makes an attempt to personify the corpses. The very fact the corpses of Shuya’s classmates are left around, dead on the ground for the duration of The Program, bringing home the stinking, fly-blown reality that they were people, and they do not disappear after they are murdered. Shuya and friends wander around the island and see them there. It's very disturbing. This is in striking contrast to Hunger Games efficient removal of the bodies (and also, the magic salve that removes injuries…)

Battle Royale raises the point that maybe you can’t trust anyone, and adversely, how sometimes you just have to trust, and I’m sure Takami was using this theme to describe life in general.

Battle Royale is about humanity, about politics and rebellion, and about endurance. It, like Lord of the Flies, is about the sheen of civility over barbarism. It’s about moral ambiguity, whether good people can do evil things and vice versa. It doesn’t blink in the face of its characters deaths – in fact, Takami makes you “watch” every single one, he makes you experience them, no matter how uncomfortable it is. Because he’s trying to tell you something clearly. Battle Royale, and The Program itself, is a microcosm of the brutality of life which you can’t always close your eyes to.

But Takami balances students trying to kill and rape one another with the naivety of things only important to teenagers, like who has a crush on who (and how much this matters to kids on their first loves), and who’s the best at baseball in the class. He counteracts the shadow of the totalitarian government, with some truly rebellious characters who want bloody revenge. The result is a story that has a well defined point.

Battle Royale is not without its flaws, some of the translation from its native Japanese is clunky and there is random head hopping. Most of the characters are nothing new, mostly like archetypes, with only a few surprises. Some of the characters are downright Gary-stus. Some of the backstories are meandering intrusions, and trying to keep track of 40+ students with similar names (to Westerners) is a right pain at the start.

And adversely, Hunger Games is not without its achievements, I actually like Collins writing style, and though her descriptions and hand holding through developments were often anvilicious, I chalked this up to the YA genre. I like that we actually have a female main character, and one who is so cold and unfriendly (not often you see that and it’s not a bad thing) so I really liked Katniss apart from her lack of growth.

I just think Battle Royale, with its flaws, was a clearer story. If Katniss was allowed to explore moral ambiguity, if she was allowed to lust after Peeta, if she was allowed to react to the rotting stinking corpse of a fellow participant, if she was allowed to rebel and kill the big bad... I think the messages would be there. But she's not allowed to do any of that, because she has to be YA friendly.

The Hunger Games is not a bad story. It is not a book you SHOULD NOT read; in fact it is an entertaining story. But it is a story that confuses its message. It wants to tell you glorifying television is bad while at the same time relishing how beautiful Katniss is as she is led to slaughter. It wants you to know that government control is bad, without bothering to have characters that care about it.

And I don’t know how much of that is toning down the (pretty hardcore) ideas to suit a younger audience.