Battle Royale

is a Japanese seinen manga series written by Koushun Takami and illustrated by Masayuki Taguchi. It is based on Takami's novel of the same name, telling the story of a class of junior high school children who are forced to fight each other to the death. It was serialized by Akita Shoten in Young Champion from 2000 to 2005, and later combined into 15 tankobon volumes, which were released in English by Tokyopop from 2003 to 2006. In October 2007, a special edition of the manga began being released. The manga follows the plot of the novel fairly closely, but expands on the backstory of each of the students. Much like the plots of the novel and film adaptation, the manga is noted for its intense and gory violence. The Tokyopop English adaptation of the manga makes several changes to the plot, such as claiming that "[The] Program" is a reality TV show and changing the time setting of the story by almost 10 years; both changes are contradicted in later volumes. Characters is a Japanese student and one of the three main protagonists. Shuya, who is nicknamed "Shu", lives in the fictional town Shiroiwa in Kagawa Prefecture. is the main female protagonist of the series. She is one of the class of third-year students in Shuya's school. Noriko has a crush on Shuya, whom she admired for his music and song-writing. is a transfer student and the winner of a previous Program. At the very beginning he meets Shuya and Noriko and joins up with the two of them. is the main antagonist, who tries to win the Program (using a coin-toss to decide whether or not he plays), killing the most students in the class making him the largest threat. It is later mentioned he had been in a car crash at a young age (where he witnessed his mother's death), causing brain damage and resulting in a lack of emotions and regret. is the secondary antagonist, considered one of the most beautiful girls in the program, she is also the most deranged, and the female with the most kills, succeeding in using her feminine wiles and ability to feign emotions to manipulate then kill her classmates. It is later revealed that these psychological issues stem from her father leaving after her parents divorced, and the subsequent sexual abuse she received from her new stepfather as well as physical abuse from her own mother.