Battle Royale, Volume 3

This manga is about the famous asia movie battle royal. It's all good and stuff. This particular manga is pretty hentai. The story is good, but the artwork is really weird. It's a little over exaggerated. But personally the story is god enough to make up for the crappy artwork.

As Shuuya, Noriko, and Kawada try to decide on their next move, Shinji Mimura has already made his. He's been able to scrounge together some resources from the abandoned houses on the island, including a laptop, and has hooked up with the rat-looking Yutaka. His plan is to disrupt the Program computer systems and disable the exploding collars that all the participants are wearing. It seems Sugimura, the martial artist, is desperately combing the island, not looking for victims, but for a girl he cares about. Then there's the lovely couple of Yoji and Yoshimi, a couple who might have to make a life or death decision about their relationship. To top everything off we have an extremely graphic side tale about the sluttish vixen Mitsuko, a girl that would make Lizzy Borden look like a pious saint. The great characterization continues in Volume 3 but the formula is showing its first signs of weakness. It's starting to come down to 1.Introduce character 2.Show flashback 3.Character lives or dies. The whole scene where two people look at each other and you wait anxiously to find out whether they are playing the game is getting old too. There are some great plot twists and the character backstories on the whole are well done. The insertion of the side story at the end about Mitsuko, dubbed "soon-to-be-infamous" by the book jacket wreaks of high camp and comedic exploitation. The sex scenes are purposely grotesque in order to cover up what is actually happening in them. Still, overall this series is great. Probably needs to tinker with its formulaic storytelling in order to keep my interest for future volumes though.

As everyone has posted on this message board, there are shocking scenes of explicit sex that's definately not for the prudish. I agree with every poster here- the last chapter "Fallen Angel," which documents Mitsuko's past sexual escapades, is needlessly unecessary and exploitive, even for adult magna. It's already established in the earlier volumes that she is a sex-crazed pimp, so why must the authors further elaborate this by having her commit every sexual act in the book, including- blecch!- a urine scene? (I hope that's urine). Thumbs down on "Fallen Angel," but I will defend the chapters dealing with Yoshimi and Yoji- as graphic as their sexual exploits are, it is essential to the story, revealing to us a complex relationship further complicated by their participation in the Program. I find their story touching, and proves how effective "Battle Royale" does in making all it's participants human- we're even refered back to Fumiyo, who died so gracelessly in the first volume and here brought back in the memory of the boy who had a crush on her, Yutaka. "Battle Royale" is more than just an ultrviolent pulp, it's a smart and very suspenseful thriller not seen since the E.C. comics of the early 1950s, ingeniously balancing scenes of horror, romance, and humor (I never laughed as hard as when reading Takako confronting Kazushi in the middle of the book,warning him he "will die a virgin"). Of course, the "Fallen Angel" chapter places the series a step back, but otherwise it does good in its continuation of this great series. I can't give it five stars, but if only I could give it a score of 4.9...

While I agree that some of the sex scenes were gratuitous-they didn't advance the plot, the other ones-the ones withYoshimi and her boyfriend were an integral part of the story. As for the explicidness of the scenes, here I totally disagree with the other reviewers-I don't see how they can be any other way. To make them "tastefull" would be totally out of character for the story - the whole point is to show everything unflinchingly, good and bad, all the aspects of the human existence, even the ugliest parts.Overall, this is a good installment of the story, would have gotten 5 stars if it wasn't for the Mitsuko Souma sex scenes, which are gratuitous.