Battle Royale Across Media – A Statistical Look

Battle Royale the movie is one of my all-time favourite movies. I have watched that film a decade ago and probably rewatched it more time than any other. I don’t normally like ultra-violent film but I am drawn in more by the concept and the relationship between the characters. I have recently finished reading the novel, of which the movie is based on,. It is very interesting to get more backstories of the characters and to notice the differences in how the stories happened. There is also a manga version which also have discrepancy from these two other media. That got be intrigued to see all the little comparison between the media and all the different statistics I can think of to do with the story. This post is simply just for my curiosity and for those who enjoy Battle Royale and may want to read something more and a little different on it.

[This post contains heavy spoilers. Please do not continue reading if you have not seen the film or read the novel/manga but want to do so without knowing what happens]

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Note

• For the statistics, I will order them as as (Manga, Movie and Novel); and
• I will refer to the students by their surnames for consistency throughout the post.

GENERAL INFO

Only a few people ended up killing in the game

• Most Kill – Male: Obviously Kiriyama Kazuo (14,12,12), He is responsible for a third of the deaths. [Second place is Kawada Shogo (2,2,1) a serious drop off. I am also a little surprised about the low number since he seemed pretty lethal with firearms yet his kill total is so low)
• Most Kill – Female: Again, obviously Souma Mitsuko [second place is Noda Satomi (3,3,3). Noda as the second deadliest female student is also a little bit of a surprise, but her outburst in the lighthouse did murder three of her friends
• Kiriyama and Souma combined to kill nearly as many people as the rest of the classmates combined (50%,45%,48%). They are the most lethal in manga and the least in movie
• Number of boys who kill at least one person: ~6.3 (7,5,7). Movie version has two fewer killers due to lack of screentime to develop certain plots, resulting in Oda (and his dispatch of Hirono) and Mimura (and the storyline with Iijima) not receiving kills they had in novel and manga.
• Number of girls who kill at least one person: ~6.7 (6,8,7). Movie version is slightly inflated by Minami and Inada killing each other, an event which did not happen in the other two media

There are also some interesting discrepancy among the media regarding the causes of deaths

• Four people were killed by different people in the three media(Kiriyama, Koninobu, Fujiyoshi, Minami)

More people were killed by gun shots than any other cause of death

• 61% of students were killed by gunshot. This number goes up to 69% in the manga version.
• Second in the list is blade wounds (via sickle, machete, ice pick etc.) Interestingly, Manga also has much fewer kills by blades
• Out of all 9 deaths by blades in the movie,  a third are caused by Souma and her issued sickle and the other six by six other individual people
• Other uncommon causes of death include drowning (Hirono in manga), beaten by a baseball bat (Hatagami in novel) and strangling (Hirono in novel and Kuramoto & Yahagi in movie)
• 10% of students chose the suicide route (10%,14%,10%)

Given the runtime of 113 minutes, Battle Royale manages to show us all the deaths that happened in the tournament.

WEAPON INFO

Weapon distribution is significantly different between movie and the other two sources

Row Labels	Manga	Movie	Novel	Average
Handgun	15	8	13	12
Other – non lethal	7	11	7	8
Other – lethal	8	8	8	8
Blade	6	8	8	7
Machine gun	2	2	2	2
Shotgun	1	2	1	1
Rifle	1	0	0	0
Grand Total	40	39	39	39

‘Other – non lethal’ refers to weapons that really are not used for killing. This category includes paper fan, GPS and megaphone

‘Other – lethal’ refers to non-bladed, non-gun weapons that can really be used to kill or injure. This category includes grenades and icepick

Battle Royale sure has many different types of handguns

• In all media, there are around 10 types of gun makers (Beretta, Browning, Clot, Derringer, Glock, Ingram, Luger, Sig Sauer, Smith & Wesson, Walther)
• Most popular gun type: S&W M19 .357 magnum revolver
• In manga, there are 15 types of handguns
• Most issued handgun makers in manga is a Colt (Colt.45, Colt M1991, Clot Python)
• Only 4 guns appear in the three medias, Beretta M92F 9mm, Browning Hi-Power 9mm, Colt Python .357, S&W M19 .357
• In Novel, it is Smith & Wesson: Chief’s Special, M19, Military & Pilice, M59
• Most popular gun type: S&W M19 .357 magnum revolver. It is actually the only type that was issued twice in all media. In the movie version, Motobuchi got the normal type while Utsumi got the ‘snub nose’ type .

There are weird differences between media. I have no idea why they need to be different

• Smith & Wesson M19 .357 magnum revolver are held by three different students: Kotohiki (manga), Motobuchi (movie) and Hatagami (novel)
• Also, in 6 different cases, the same type of guns are given but they are of different types (e.g. Kotohiki got a S&W M19 in manga, Glock 19 in movie and S&W M59 in novel)
• 8 people also have completely different weapons. Most of them don’t really matter because we barely see them use it meaningfully (Kuramoto, Sawagawa, Takiguchi, Inada, Edo, Nakagawa, Minami) but I am a little surprised the list includes Kiriyama as well. He has a war fan in the movie (before subsequently collected all other guns from the other guys), knife in a novel and an uzi in manga. Just interesting to think why they make them different at all!
• Mimura is the only one with the same gun type in all three media (Beretta M92F 9mm semi-automatic Pistol)
• Movie also has fewer pistols handed out (8 vs. 14-15) but one more shotgun
• On he other hand, Manga has by far the highest gun count (at 48%) versus the other two. That may also explain the higher kill by guns in manga
• For some reason, there are more useless weapons in movie, 4 more than in the other two media (boxing gloves, cloth headband, cloth hanger, plastic hammer, binoculars, potlid which are not in the other two medias)

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In general, manga follows the novel much closer than movie. This makes sense since movie is limited by its running time of 113 minutes while manga has 15 volumes and 119 chapters. My statistics does not show this but I believe that the manga is has a much heavier sexual undertone than the other two media, but still equally violent. I still have no idea though why certain details, such as weapon types, are changed at all from the novel. Anyone who has a clue, please let me know!

[I like Hunger Games too, especially Catching Fire movie, but Battle Royale will always be my better-liked movie:)]
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APPEDIX I: SOURCES I USED

Battle Royale Wiki – All things you need to know about BR across all sources!

Wikipedia entry on Battle Royale – Supplimentary source

Movie Internet Firearms Database – Battle Royale – Never knew this kind of sites existed. Used to double-check weapon list

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