Battle Royale Assignment

Synopsis

Battle Royale is a Japanese film based around 15-year-old students at high-school. We follow the
students misbehaving and eventually stabbing a teacher, who tries to keep the students in check
decides to take extreme measures. As the students are coming back from a basketball game, they all
lose consciousness, after waking up they are back in their old classroom and are being informed that
they must kill each other until there is only 1 person left under the “BR Act”. We then follow student
Shuya Nanahara as he tries to navigate the island to survive without killing anyone and survive with
his newfound crush, he is attacked by his different classmates for various reasons. Both teaming up
with other students and losing teammates, he groups with Shogo who helps him survive and escape
successfully.

Logline

Misbehaving students are put on an island without laws and with weapons where they fight until
there is only one student left.

Main Characters

Kitano

Name: Kitano (キタノ)

Role: Teacher

Age: Unknown most likely 40+

Dramatic Motivation:

Shogo Kawada

Name: Shogo Kawada (川田章吾)

Role: Student

Age: 15/16

Dramatic Motivation: Survived a previous BR Act with a friend who was killed Infront of him, wanting
to get revenge on Kitano he survives to enact it at the end.

Shuuya Nanahara

Name: Shuuya Nanahara (七原秋也)

Role: Student

Age: 15

Dramatic Motivation: Wanting to survive and live his life and be with his newfound
love he wants to escape the Battle Royale to go back to normality and not have to see his friends die.

Noriko Nakagawa

Name: Noriko Nakagawa (中川典子)

Role: Student
Age: 15/16
Dramatic Motivation: Having a newfound love interest in Shuya, she wishes to
escape the Battle Royale act alive with him. She doesn’t have any interest in harming anyone as she
wouldn’t want to lose a friend.

Mitsuko Souma

Name: Mitsuko Souma (相馬光子)

Role: Student
Age: 15
Dramatic Motivation: Being psychologically abused as a child and dissatisfied
with her life as a teen, her warped perception of reality leads to psychotic outbreaks which led to
her rampaging and killing 6 other students.

Genre

Battle Royale is an action-based thriller as it focuses on high school children fighting each other to
the death or until one is left standing, using the thriller aspect to build up tension in some drawn out
fight scenes. Battle Royale’s popularity lead to it inspiring other playwriters to write screenplays
which formed a new “Battle Royale” genre.

3 Act Breakdown

Act 1

We are shown the lives to misbehaving students, whole classes skipping lessons and a student
stabbing a teacher. We see them at a basketball game and on their way home, lose consciousness
only to wake up back in their classroom being informed they will have to murder each other until
there is one survivor.

Act 2

We follow the students trying to understand their current situation, find weapons to fight and
protect themselves with, and exploring to find a vantage point to hopefully survive in. We also see
the more prepared students attack early on, taking out students mercilessly.

Act 3

Shogo leading Shuya and Noriko, abusing his knowledge of his previous BR Act survival, slowly
reaches an end point after beating Kazuo Kiriyama. He fakes the death of Shuya and Noriko, and

Kitano and kills Kitano. As they escape Shogo dies from his injuries and Shuya and Noriko leave their
old lives together.

Differences from a western film

One of the main differences observed within Battle Royale that sets it apart from western films is the
Requiems or flashbacks that are used. Whilst flashbacks are used in western films to provide more
context to a story / plot, the requiems were used to portray a certain meaning to the audience.

Another different is the film itself, the violent acts and gore displayed within the film would not be
found in another other film, in fact it is one of the main reasons Battle Royale was never formally
distributed to a western audience.