Sunday, January 20, 2008

Day 18 - January 18, 2008

Our group leader was not present in our workstation yesterday, maybe he's really disappointed with us. But before the day ended, I've found out that he's not really mad. Sorry for what I've posted the previous day. I presumed that he's mad because he already preached us before.

I've got no PTRs to fix. Good thing that my co-ojt has a movie saved in his machine. It's entitled "Battle Royale", a Japanese movie wherein a randomly selected class will be chosen to play this game, the Battle Royale, and the students will kill each other until there's one left. The movie is impressive and I'm still hooked at it. I want to watch this again. In this movie, I've realized that TRUST is really a big deal in friendships. You should trust your friends if you're really a real friend to them.

What if this happen to us? Will my friends kill me too? Me, I won't kill my friends. I'll do the same as what Shuya Nanahara did. Protect your friend until the end.
Here's the plot of the movie, courtesy of the ever resourceful wikipedia.org:

The plot of the film is fairly faithful to that of the novel, with a few key differences. The prologue is as follows:

"At the dawn of the millennium, the nation collapsed. At fifteen percent unemployment, ten million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted school. The adults lost confidence, and fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act - AKA: The BR Act..."

The film centers around Shuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara), a charismatic young boy living in Kanagawa Prefecture. After his mother abandons him and his father commits suicide, he becomes disillusioned with life. The rest of his classmates are similarly disillusioned, and have little respect for authority. Shuya's best friend, Yoshitoki "Nobu" Kuninobu (Yukihiro Kotani), attacks their teacher Kitano (Takeshi Kitano), but runs away before he can be identified. Noriko Nakagawa (Aki Maeda), a sweet, reserved young girl who happens to witness the incident, hides the knife that Nobu has just attacked Kitano with. Kitano, frustrated, resigns.

The next year, as the students are nearing the end of their compulsory education, they embark on a class trip. On the bus the entire class is gassed, kidnapped, taken to an isolated island, and fitted with metallic collars. Once there, the students are shocked to find that they are inside an abandoned school, and that Kitano (along with the government) is behind the entire operation. Kitano informs them that they have been selected as participants in Battle Royale, a game created by the Millennial Educational Reform Act (better known as the Battle Royale Act) where the students must kill each other until only one is left. One class from the country per year is selected to participate in the program. If, after three days, a winner is not declared, everyone dies by way of the explosive collars attached to each student's neck, which also prevent the students entering certain areas of the field of participation, the idea being to force students to encounter one another. (These instructions are delivered by a cute, smiling girl via a video, who behaves like a kindergarten teacher and refers to herself as their "big sister".) After killing a student, Fumiyo Fujiyoshi, for whispering, Kitano also detonates Nobu's collar, killing him. One by one, each student leaves the school, having been provided with survival packs and a random weapon.

Some students refuse to play the game. Shuya, grieving over Nobu's death, decides to take it upon himself to protect Noriko, the object of Nobu's affection. The pair eventually team up with Shogo Kawada (Taro Yamamoto), a seasoned warrior and Kobe native with an agenda (he reveals that he is out to avenge the death of his girlfriend, Keiko Onuki, who sacrificed herself for him in a previous game). Elsewhere, class president Yukie Utsumi (Eri Ishikawa) gathers up a group of girls and decides to hide in an abandoned lighthouse, while junior revolutionary Shinji Mimura (Takashi Tsukamoto) gathers his friends and plans to blow up the school (along with Kitano), thereby liberating the students.

Some students are all too willing to play the game. They include a mute boy named Kazuo Kiriyama (Masanobu Ando), who has signed up for fun and kills without remorse, and a troubled femme fatale named Mitsuko Souma (Kou Shibasaki) who has taken it upon herself to win the game, using everything she has at her disposal, especially her sexuality.

Still other students accept their fate. While some commit suicide, a student named Hiroki Sugimura (Sousuke Takaoka) decides to make the best of his final hours, and seeks out his best friend, Takako Chigusa (Chiaki Kuriyama), and the girl he loves, Kayoko Kotohiki (Takayo Mimura).

One by one, each of the students die, until only Shuya, Noriko, and Kawada are left after a final battle between the two transfer students. Kawada reveals that he knows how to disable the collars, and fakes Shuya's and Noriko's deaths. Declared the winner, Kawada treks to the school. Kitano has since declared the operation a success, and is the only one there. Kawada confronts Kitano, and is soon joined by Shuya and Noriko. Kitano is unsurprised to see that Shuya and Noriko have survived, having realised Kawada's plan. He reveals that he had hoped that Noriko would survive, as his daughter, Shiori, hates him - he sees Noriko as the daughter he never had. Not wanting to return home, he orders Shuya to kill him, which he eventually does when Kitano threatens Noriko with a gun, which is revealed as he falls to be a water pistol. Following a final conversation with Shiori, in which he tells her one must accept the consequences of hating someone, he dies.

The remaining trio escapes the island on a boat, but Kawada succumbs to his wounds and dies after teaching Shuya how to pilot the boat. As he dies, he reveals that in Shuya and Noriko he accomplished his goal of discovering why Keiko sacrificed herself for him - she, like he now, had finally found true friends and was willing to give up her life for them. Shuya and Noriko make it to land, where they become fugitives wanted for murder. Together, they go on the run.

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