May the odds… oh wait, wrong movie.

Recently I revisited the classic (and influential; looking at you, Hunger Games) film Battle Royale, about a near-future Japan where every year a class of students is shipped off to an island to battle to the death. Though it doesn’t delve into some of the class issues that makes the later Hunger Games so provocative and interesting, it’s still a must-see film. In fact, I love how Royale deals with dissatisfaction on both sides in a very Japanese way. The adults see ungrateful, unruly teens and feel like they need to be taught a lesson (which one could say about today’s entitled youth), but how can you not also sympathize with teens growing up into a world lacking in opportunity? It’s a fascinating exaggeration of reality where kids are forced into a cutthroat system against their will, and how they deal with that by trying to find rebellious ways out, whether suicide, bucking the system, or just finding their own way together despite the ‘rules’ that they’re supposed to play by.

But at the end of the day how can we not focus on the amazing hypothetical scenario the film (and its successor) proposes:

If you were in a Battle Royale/Hunger Games scenario, what do you do when you’re forced to kill or be killed? Make allies? Go fully aggressive homicidal? Play nice to get close, then betray those who trust you? Or opt out and kill yourself before they can do it to you, in some final act of defiance?