Comments on the Battle Royale manga
I've been a fan of the Battle Royale movie series for years. Lately, my efforts to distract away from the depression have involved a lot of online manga scanlations. Yesterday, after recovering a little, I managed to read most of the Battle Royale scanlation in one sitting.
It surpasses the live-action in plot and character complexity beyond what one would expect. That's not saying that the movie's bad--rather, it's that the manga is screamingly awesome.
OK, granted, the artist is obviously one of those voyeurism-obsessed manga geeks, and as a result there are tons of gratuitous panty shots, legs in improbably short schoolgirl skirts, girls stripping, and of course, boobies boobies boobies bOObies. Lots of beefcake, too, but nowhere near. And to his credit, the artist is not afraid of gross. The drooling broken maniacs drool, the brains goosh, and Kiriyama fucking repairs a tendon in his own arm on screen. *squick*
The character backstories are much more in-depth, which is damn effective in getting us to sympathize at least a little with every single student who is killed. Even Kiriyama, which is an amazing feat. Rendering the death of a murderous sociopath as something poignantly tragic...well, I only hope I can work up to that writer's standard.
Anyway, two thumbs and one baby giraffe up.
It surpasses the live-action in plot and character complexity beyond what one would expect. That's not saying that the movie's bad--rather, it's that the manga is screamingly awesome.
OK, granted, the artist is obviously one of those voyeurism-obsessed manga geeks, and as a result there are tons of gratuitous panty shots, legs in improbably short schoolgirl skirts, girls stripping, and of course, boobies boobies boobies bOObies. Lots of beefcake, too, but nowhere near. And to his credit, the artist is not afraid of gross. The drooling broken maniacs drool, the brains goosh, and Kiriyama fucking repairs a tendon in his own arm on screen. *squick*
The character backstories are much more in-depth, which is damn effective in getting us to sympathize at least a little with every single student who is killed. Even Kiriyama, which is an amazing feat. Rendering the death of a murderous sociopath as something poignantly tragic...well, I only hope I can work up to that writer's standard.
Anyway, two thumbs and one baby giraffe up.