Tokyopop has announced that veteran comic writer and artist Keith Giffen will adapt the controversial Battle Royale manga for the American market.  The manga is set in a near future Japan in which the authoritarian government reacts to increasing school violence by instituting Battle Royale, an ultra-violent, survivor-like competition in which a randomly chosen high school class is armed and placed on a deserted island to fight it out amongst themselves.  According to the rules either one student kills the rest and emerges victorious or the entire class will be liquidated.  With such an over-the-top premise it may seem unlikely, but the Battle Royale film, directed by veteran Japanese director Kinji Fukusaku, was a major hit in Japan spawning a manga series as well as a sequel, Battle Royale II, which is currently in production, though the recent death of director Fukusaku may delay its debut.

 

In a reversal of the usual form the Battle Royale manga was based on the film rather than the other way around -- and the film itself was a faithful adaptation of the novel by Takami Koshun.  Koshun teamed with artist Masayuki Taguchi for the manga series that remains true to its source material.  With its 'Lord of the Flies with guns' storyline made all the more disturbing by the fact that the entire Battle Royale bloodbath was created by government edict, this property is actually more typical of contemporary Japanese live action cinema than it is related to current trends in manga and anime.  Thanks to directors like Fukusaku, who went from war epics and yakuza films to a shocker like Battle Royale, and Takashi Miike with his well-know penchant for dismemberment, contemporary Japanese live action cinema has made a habit of pushing the boundaries of cinematic propriety.  Witness the reaction of Keith Giffen to the Battle Royale property, 'I thought I knew the limits to which 'extremes' could be taken -- I was wrong.'  It should be interesting to see if a manga based on a shocking property like Battle Royale is successful here in the States, where the film itself has still not been released.