attle Royale Novel Gets New Manga Spinoff in January
Battle Royale: Tenshi-tachi no Kokkyō (Battle Royale: Angels' Border), a new spinoff manga based on Koushun Takami's dystopian novel Battle Royale, will launch in next year's third issue of Akita Shoten's Young Champion magazine on January 11. Mioko Ōnishi (Izo's Lover!) is drawing the new manga, and Takami is penning an all-new story for it.
The original 1999 novel followed a class of junior high school students who are forced to play a deadly game. On a deserted island, they must hunt each other down, and the last studentleft alive wins. The novel inspired two live-action films, and the first film by director Kinji Fukasaku was converted into stereoscopic 3D this year. Masayuki Taguchi serialized an earlier manga in Young Champion from 2000 to 2005.
Viz Media published the original novel in North America, and its Haikasoru imprint reissued the novel (pictured at right) with a newly revisted text, as well as supplemental material from Takami himself, Max Allan Collins (Road to Perdition, Batman: The Child of Dreams), and Fukasaku. Tokyopop published the 15 volumes of Taguchi's manga version in North America.
source: ANIME NEWS NETWORK