Battle Royale Angels' Border manga review

 By Mark Rodriguez

I saw this book in the book store several years ago and decided to pick it up, curious about the premise. It's a good read, but I had no idea that it was a companion piece to Battle Royale, a series that already had its own manga series (now out of print), a movie and a novel.

This is basically Hunger Games but with a somewhat school setting. In a dystopian future pretty similar to modern day Japan, every year a randomly chosen class of 9th graders are taken on what they think is a field trip, but are actually kidnapped and forced to play this game in an island. Everyone will have to kill each other until one remains, and they all wear collars that detect their every move. If they choose to disobey and not kill anyone within 24 hours, the collars will explode and kill everyone at once. The kids are given some rations and random weapons. The only problem is that the weapons can be anything from a gun to a hammer... giving whoever has the hammer no choice but to move in close to strike, while those aimed with guns can just shoot from a far. This is what the government calls 'The Program'.

The teacher looks a little TOO happy about this

It seems that somewhere during the main story, 5 girls are seeking sanctuary in a lighthouse. Of course fear and paranoia runs rampant as they all know they're going to have to kill each other eventually. The story focuses on the thoughts of two girls in particular.

The first half of the book focuses on Haruka, a short haired girl who has secretly fallen in love with her best friend Yukie, but never had the chance to come out since the field trip abduction happened. The story deals with Haruka's thoughts as we see flashbacks to before this started, as well as flashes to the present as more and more girls find their way to the lighthouse.

The second story focuses on Chisato, though most of this story is a long flashback as to how she met an older guy named Mimura. As they talk, she tries her best not to be charmed by him, due to his rep as a playa, but it seems she eventually does fall for him.

Both stories have the same ending, though the Haruka story shows more of the aftermath, while the Chisato story shows a little more of before. While her story was more of a flashback before this whole mess started, it does show what inspired her to do the actions that led to the story's tragic ending.

My Opinions

There's not much to say other than discovering that there's a whole other story I'm missing here. I never heard of Battle Royale so I didn't know this was just a companion piece to it. It would be like reading a book focused only on the training Katniss and Peta went through, without reading the entire Hunger Games story or watching all the movies.

Haruka's story was a bit better done, since it perfectly mixed how she fell for Yukie but also shows flashbacks on how they were forced to be in The Program. Chisato's story was all a flashback to how she met Mimura and it almost felt like I was reading another book. Both stories are also drawn by different artists so when both stories got to the same finale, it kinda confused me at first since Haruka was drawn blonde in her main story but with black hair in the second story.

Pretty interesting story. I did like the feel of 'you never thought it would happen to you' since this happens every year. Haruka would listen on the radio about the deaths of previous Programs, but never thought she would be trapped in one herself.

Hopefully I can track down the actual story and see the whole thing. I hope it goes deeper into what exactly happened after the lighthouse incident. The book is still seen in bookstores nowadays, which surprises me to find out that the main story this is supposed to be a companion piece for is out of print.