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BATTLE ROYALE (2000)

SPOILER FAQ:
THE RULES OF THE GAME
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The Right Way to Fight a Battle Royale

by the BR Act Committee

comments:

The "full" version of the instructional video (where these screencaps are from) can only be found in the domestic Japanese release of the Original Version of Battle Royale. The different editions of the Special Version contain a parody instructional video made to celebrate Kinji Fukasaku's brithday.
Hello, everyone in Class B! You are the lucky class chosen for this year's Battle Royale! She actually identifies the group as "Shiroiwa Junior High School, Class 3-B." Read more about the origins of the name in the Trivia page.
Congratulations! Now, I'm going to explain the rules for you. Listen well to fight right and with gusto. She identifies herself as "Oneesan," which means "Big Sister," perhaps a nod to 1984, but more likely in reference to how some TV show hostesses in Japan refer to themselves.
You are on a deserted island that looks like this! It's about 10 kilometers around but we evacuated everyone, so it's empty! In the novel, each prefecture had its own area where the BR was fought. Class 3-B fought on the fictional island of Okishima, north of the city of Takamatsu in the Seto Inland Sea. For certain shots in the movie, the island of Hachijo-Kojima in the Izu islands 300 miles south of Tokyo were used, even though it doesn't greatly resemble this topographical map.
The island's divided into many zones. Every six hours, your teacher'll broadcast updates about which zones are becoming danger zones. Kitano made announcements at midnight, too, as danger zones appeared during the graveyard shift. Presumably the students were supposed to stay awake until then, lest they wind up sleeping in a danger zone.
If you're in those zones, you should leave quickly...because the danger is... One thing mentioned in the novel but was unannounced in the subtitles of the movie (but done there anyway) was that the school's zone (D-6) would become a danger zone soon after the game began.

OK, about the necklaces you're wearing.

They're 100% waterproof and shockproof...and permanent. It monitors your pulse, informing us of your location and movements. So if you linger in a danger zone, or cause trouble, we can identify you and transmit radio waves that trigger an alarm and boom! It explodes! If you try to rip it off, it explodes too, so promise not to do that, okay?

The necklaces were identified in the novel as model "Guadalcanal-22."



The graphics imply that the collar completely encircles the neck. For the movie, however, most of the prop collars used only partially went around the neck, like a glorified headband. This would be fine, except that when our heroes take off their necklaces in the end, they slip off just like glorified headbands, and clatter weakly on the floor (when we hear them "clink" metallically every time someone touches them before).
Oh, I forgot one important thing. There's a time limit on this game! 3 days. If we haven't got a winner after 3 days...all the necklaces automatically explode! And no-one wins. As long as we're here, let's fight hard so that doesn't happen! In the novel, there was no hard time limit on the game--the game ended (and everyone's collars detonated) when no-one was killed within a period of 24 hours. Theoretically, the game could "time-out" within a day, or drag on until the number of danger zones made combat inevitable or impossible (trigerring a time-out).
You'll leave the room one by one, but first you get a kit. Inside is food and water, a map and a compass, a flashlight and a weapon. So check it out later, OK? The girls might need personal items so you can all take them. "The girls might need personal items so you can all take them"--both male and female students were able to take along the bags they brought on the trip (their blue schoolbags, seen in the storage racks above the kids in the box, and carried by Noriko and Nanahara in flashbacks). This explains why several students were able to change clothes, and Mimura was able to bring along his computer.

The kids also got additional ammunition--we see Kawada throwing Nanahara a box of bullets, and we see a stack of the same boxes next to the water bottles of the "lighthouse girls." And Kiriyama obviously had plenty.

In the novel, the kids left one by one with intervals of two minutes between each departure (apparently not so in the movie).

Akamatsu came upon the strategy of lying in wait near the exit to eliminate the competition, but didn't decide to do so until he spent some time hiding out somewhere else and discovering what his weapon was, which explains why he only managed to kill Tendo and attack Nanahara, and not anyone before.
Each weapon is different. Not just guns and knives, either. It's random, so maybe you'll get lucky, maybe not. It eliminates natural advantages. ::gasp:: this one's super lucky!

 

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The Non-Spoiler FAQ and general information about Battle Royale
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