alternatehistory.com

First post here.

I've just finished with Koushun Takami's manga series Battle Royale. For the lack of a better word, it was almost unbearably depressing. I've heard it's infamous back in Japan just because of the premise: a high school class is taken away each year and put on an island. Each of the kids is given a weapon, and they're forced to kill each other. The contest ends when only one student is left alive.

I thought it would be just a pulp comic with blood, gore and no real plot when I picked it up. But it was a real tear-jerker. Because each of the 40 kids has at least one chapter narrated by them, before most of them are killed by their own classmates. All of the characters are sympathetic victims, really. (In the end, the survivor Noriko says "Even the worst of them deserved better"). Battle Royale was an emotional fragmentation grenade to me.

There's signs that the story takes place in an alternate history Japan. The totalitarian state is called the "Greater East Asia Republic". The old Imperial Japanese flag with sunbeams is everywhere, from water bottles to school buses. Maybe Japan won WWII in this timeline?

What did you guys think of the alternate history aspect?
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