Movie Review and Op Ed
THOUGHTS ON JAPANESE CREATIVITY : BATTLE ROYALE

by Jin Woo Cho

Japanese entertainment industry has been popular worldwide for its variety of contents, starting from manga to animation movies and TV cartoon series deriving from manga. But Japanese visual entertainment is not famous just because of its variety but its creativity and imagination. They have elevated the status of cartoon and comics from mere children’s thing to the level of art, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion and Cowboy Beebop. These are some successful examples of manga to animation transformation that were acclaimed as masterpieces. Aside from the “artsy” depth of the story, Dragon Ball series and Pokemon featured interesting synopsis, creating a worldwide phenomenon.

The Japanese word “Otaku” depicts a typical “nerdy” individual who is a devoted fan of manga and animation, which created a problem of social isolation of individual because Otakus prefer to stay at home watching anime rather than socializing with others.

The flourishing of “Japanimation” established the image of Japan as the number one in visual entertainment industry, not to mention the commercial success generated. The bottom line is that the prosperity of Japanese visual entertainment is attributed to the creativity and imagination of contents.

The Japanese creativity is no exception when it comes to movies, as Japanese movies gained fame due to their controversial topics. Battle Royale is considered the symbol of the Japanese radicalism. The movie was produced after the popular novel with the same title, which was one of the best-selling and most controversial novels. The plot starts under the assumption that Japan became a police state. It experiences a major crisis when the economic downfall is combined with the social problem of teenagers rebelling against adults.

In an attempt to restore order, the Japanese government creates Battle Royale Act. According to this law, the government randomly chooses one class among the entire Japanese schools and sends them to an isolated island, where the classmates have to kill each other until only one survives. In order to make sure that the students obey the rules, each of the students is collared with a bomb along with a tracking device that would explode within the time limit of two days. They are also given weapons that are random to carry out the program successfully.

It is almost agonizing to watch what students go through during the course of desperate attempt to survive as some choose to take their own lives while friends betray each other and kill those who they dislike.

It occurred to me that there is no limit on how far the Japanese imagination can go; I admire their ability to come up with something that is original and sophisticated as well, but I wonder what kind of consequences it would lead to. The creators claim that their controversial topics pertain to the criticism of current Japanese society but it would work the other way as well. There are many incidents where Japanese students commit gruesome murders, and many of them said that what they have seen in mangas and movies inspired them.

This leads to the old dispute of whether the media and the entertainment industry are linked with teenage violence, but I am inclined to believe that the Japanese extremity of violence definitely is one of the bigger factors of social problems Japan experiences. For example, I still vividly remember the opening scene of the movie Suicide Club, in which a group of Japanese female students jump into the track from the platform as the train is coming in. It is relatively rare to see such a graphic scene from the movies of other countries.

It is a cliché, but it is true that the prosperity of Japanese movies and anime founded on good imagination also has its downsides.