User blog:Zakel/Battle Royale 2

Battle Royale 2, is a 2003 Japanese, dystopian, action-thiller. It is a sequel to the 2000, Battle Royale.

Plot
In the sequel, survivors of the previous Battle Royales, led by Shuya Nanahara (the hero of the first film), have formed a terrorist group called "Wild Seven".

As in the first book, a class of teenagers from Shikanotoride Junior High School are kidnapped by the Japanese goverment. Instead of sterotypically studious Japanese students, these ninth grade are a "ragtag collection of deliquents and losers from all over Japan," After their school bus is diverted to an army base, the students are herded in the cage, surrounded by armed guards, and confronted by their school teacher, Riki Takeuchi, who lays down the ground rules of the Battle Royale game. The Wild Seven is hiding out in a deserted island, and instead of being forced to kill each other, as in the old Battle Royale, the students are ordered to attack the terrioist's group hideout and kill the leader, Shuya Nanahara, within 72 hours. Most of the kids are not intrested in being forced to avenge their families, but are coerced to fight through exploding metal collars, which their captors can detonate by remote control. The students are also put into 'pairs', if one student dies, then his or her 'pair' will also die because of the metal collars set to a certain frequency.

Once again, Shuya Nanahara - accompanied by the survivors of the previous "Games" - must fight to survive

Politcal Dimesion
Battle Royale 2 seems to express a reaction to the post-9/11 state of the world. The twin towers of the Toyko Metropolitan Goverment, Toyko's tallest buildings, are brought crashing down by the Wild Seven's bombs, along with the rest of Shinjuku's many skyscapers.

When kidnapped children are told the rules of the new Battle Royale game by their teacher, Riki, he points out a white line on the floor, and says, "There are two sides of life, the winners and the losers... This is the line that divides good from evil. It's black or white. There's nothing in between." Riki scrawls the names of the various countries on the chalkboard: Somalia, Bosnia, Japan, and so on. Riki asks out in anger "In the past sixty years, America has bombed everyone of them. Some 8 million people dead among 22 nations!" Riki states, "You are either with us or against us."

Once the Battle Royale begins, the classmates' experiences mirror two important chapters in American history, D-Day (similar to Point du Hoc landings) and the Vietnam war (when the kids regroup into the thick jungle in the Island's interior to face the tripwires and booby traps.)