Film Nihilism in 'Battle Royale': Fukasaku’s Philosophy of Honor, Friendship, and Humanity Anonymous 12th Grade

Everybody loves a good teen film, and the genre has a lot of competition. You’ve got John Hughes’ classics like "The Breakfast Club" and "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off". Nineties teen rom-coms like "Ten Things I Hate About You" and "She’s All That". Richard Linklater’s coming of age comedy "Dazed and Confused" or recent hits like "The Fault In Our Stars" and "Love, Simon". You could even throw all eight Harry Potter films into the mix. Why not? But looking into the most popular lists of favorite teen films, I’m disappointed to find that my favorite teen film doesn’t even crack the top 100. Of course, I’m talking about Kinji Fukasaku’s turn of the millennium masterpiece, Battle Royale.

The premise of Battle Royale is really simple: in a dystopian Japan, a classroom of teenagers is chosen every year and shipped to an island where they have to fight to the death until only one is left standing. You might recognize this premise from the Hunger Games books, the first of which came out 8 years after Battle Royale and nine years after the book by Koushun Takami on which it’s based. This concept is also the basis for the hugely popular video game Fortnite: Battle Royale and it’s predecessor Player Unknowns Battle Grounds which was at least...