Battle Royale News

 i've be hooked on mature manga ever since i read "berserk" (note: by mature i mean blood,gore,ecchi. not hentai) so i've been roaming the net looking for more manga in the category. i came across a forum talking about a subject "is there manga like gantz", i looked into it. the manga most recommended was "Berserk", "Monster", and "Battle Royale". people on the forum were putting mad hype on this manga so i was like, cool i'll check it out. i read it and here is my review
 
Art: the manga is 10 years old so i wasn't very surprised by the look of the characters in chapter one (it looked old but it was well done for its age). 
 
now here the kicker every time one character goes crazy they have a very fk'ed up disturbing look on there face that really throws the reader off. it makes the art look ten times worst.  


thats not even the worst shot...
 
also why is it that the 9th graders look like they are 40 years old?
 


as for the gore and blood, very good job except for one thing: they put gore into the story where it doesn't belong, example: 



 
either
a) there are razor blades on the edge of the door 
or
b)little girls in this manga has the strength of ten men
 or a manga that is supposed to be realistic they have very unrealistic moments  
 i give the art a 2 
 
characters: wow, where do i start -_-, there are over 40 characters in the manga and only ten are even remotely interesting, clever, or favorable. The characters in the manga were not well thought out and almost every one of them caved under pressure and went totally ape S@!t  making the reader think what the fk is going on...
as i stated above most of the characters went insane as they roamed about the island making the reader a little confused. if this is supposed to be a realistic manga why is it that a calm, care free, 9th grader with morals turn to murder so quickly? some of them wasn't even in danger and they turned on there friends. am i the only one that doesnt think that is realistic?
if you were to ever read the manga after this review you will notice what could possibly be the two most interesting characters in the manga (not saying names). the manga hardly started and the character that would have made the whole manga died by the hand of the other favorable character, wtf. that one out of like 7 good characters down the drain. not to mention the very weird sex scenes...
 
i give i characters a 2 out of 5
and im being generous.....
 
plot: the plot setup was great, chapters 1-10 could get a reader hook easily, however there are many holes that are left unanswered that the writers had to know we would ask.
like why the hell didnt the americans or the UN stop the game? they had to know about it.
why isn't there camera's everywhere but microphones instead? 
who did one of the characters sneak a laptop on the island? didn't the guards check them?
 
i give the plot a 3 and a half
 
all together the manga gets a 3 out 5 due to 3-5 awesome characters, and hit and miss plot, and good gore.
but once again im being nice, its lucky to get that
 
up next (if your even intersted lol) i'll re-review gantz, i let fanboyism get the best of me last time

   So recently I stopped in at Chapters to buy the last volume of Record of a Fallen Vampire and when I was looking through the rest of the fiction section and spotted some other stuff.

Now I haven't read through much of Future Diary yet but based on the Unscripted John did in March I decided to pick up the first two volumes* and it is pretty cool so far. As for the bottom item, I saw it standing out on the sci-fi section and remembered how much fun I had watching the cheesy B-movie film adapation late one night last year with some friends. 
 
I was suprised at how much text was in the original novel though since when I watched Battle Royale I pictured something around maybe 300 pages or so. Now it's not really visible here but the novel is just slightly over 600 pages. What is really cool though is that about 20 of those pages are two interviews the first being with the director of the film on the night before it's Japanese release and the second an interview with the author Koushun Takami conducted by VIZ. (Who published this release of the book last year)
  
 Oh and I stopped by HMV to pick up some new CDs. (and a couple old ones that I lost or just never bought) So if anyone is into music. Personally out of the six Crash Karma's (a super group made from musicians from some of the best Canadian alt-rock bands from the 90s to mid 2000s) recent debut album is my favourite.

*I've developed this pattern where if the first two volumes of a manga (or any graphic novel series really) or short novel series (less than 200 pages) that I'm interested in are out I'll buy both of them since usually by than they get the some of the more filler bits out of the way that are mainly there to just introduce the characters.