The final showdown of Battle Royale
Here we are at the penultimate volume of Battle Royale. Four contestants left, but it is the last few that are always the toughest. Volume 13 saw the end of one of The Program’s greatest villains, Mitsuko, but left us with the final confrontation we all knew was coming. We have just a few chapters to resolve the chaos of Battle Royale and find out who wins and who is dead.
Battle Royale’s final showdown is finally here
We might still have a few more chapters to go, but this is where everything in Battle Royale has been leading to. Kawada, Shuuya, and Noriko, the three remaining heroes we have left, are discussing plans for the future. At least, the hypothetical plans for a potential future in which they survive the next few hours and somehow make it off the island. Where they would go and what they would do.
For Shuuya, hope is an act of rebellion. For the orphan, caring for others is an act of spite. He knows he is unreasonable in how he clings to his faith in himself and those around him, but that is what makes him so endearing. When he speaks of living a life stronger and bolder than the trauma that has been inflicted upon him, even the cynical Kawada believes him. His hope is even more powerful and painful considering what we know is about to come.
See, these three don’t know that Suga has already died. They wait for him to arrive while we, the reader, know that they are waiting for a ghost. All that is coming is Kiriyama and his cold, dead gaze and mounting kill count. When he finally shows up about halfway through Battle Royale Volume 14, it sparks one of the most thrilling action sequences in the manga.
There are guns and chases through the woods and a car chase that feels both explosive and somehow grounded in reality, something the series hasn’t bothered with to this point. There is the obvious moment when the group thinks they’ve killed Kiriyama in an exploding car that ends up being false hope. Even Kadawa mentions that it feels anti-climatic to imagine their greatest threat dying so easily.
In the moments between Kiriyama’s apparent death and his sudden but inevitable return, the writers indulge in a bit of philosophy. Shuuya laments at the fact that he feels nothing but sadness at finally putting an end to Kiriyama, to which Kawada mentions that killing, even out of self-defence and when backed into a corner like that, shouldn’t feel good. Injecting these moments into the action scenes should slow them down but it feels necessary to keep the forward momentum from becoming unmanageable.
However, Kiriyama isn’t dead and the chase must continue, this time out into a familiar field where they had to flee from him during their last encounter. Out of bullets and options, Kadawa makes his valiant last stand, armed with the shotgun that he left behind in an earlier chapter. It feels convenient but the shot of Kadawa standing with Kiriyama’s car flipping over him is badass enough that I forgive the writers. We’ve been waiting for this showdown since Battle Royale began; the writers are allowed to be a little indulgent.
There is a lot of back and forth, with Kiriyama’s bulletproof vest protecting him from Kadawa’s shotgun blast, which is consistent with the strange rules set up within Battle Royale. This is a world that veered into the fantastical, so of course, a Kevlar vest would protect Kiriyama from a shotgun blast at close range.
In the end, it isn’t Kadawa who takes the shot against Kiriyama. It isn’t even Shuuya, who is stuck unable to reach for a weapon. Noriko, largely forgotten for most of the action here, shoots Kiriyama in the head. It feels dramatic and appropriate, a lesson that, when given no other option, even the gentlest of us will choose violence to survive.
However, it doesn’t kill Kiriyama. The bullet in his brain only triggers his backstory chapter, something I’ve been expecting for a while now. It is a little disappointing to see it all explained to me, how he was a normal, gifted child until a car crash damaged his brain and took away his ability to feel, leaving him seemingly empty for most of his life. It could have been presented earlier, before the final confrontation. Or just not explained at all, leaving us to wonder, like the other characters, what could make someone so cold and distant and inhuman.
While the bullet to the brain doesn’t kill Kiriyama, it does break something within him. The emotion that he had pent up inside him for all those years is seemingly released and he becomes the true final boss of Battle Royale. Moving in a broken way, like something is puppeting his body for him, makes him very creepy to see but does lean harder and harder into the unrealistic. The line the manga has been treading this whole time feels like it has been properly crossed during this encounter.
That is where this volume ends. Shuuya finds the dagger that Suga left him before the harrowing events in previous volumes. It is a touch obvious and predictable but Suga deserves to have another crack at taking down Kiriyama so I’m not going to complain. Even Mimura showed up briefly in this volume, so all our heroes at least get a mention before the final climax.
In a volume that has more action than any other in Battle Royale, no one actually dies in volume 14. There are a lot of wounds to lick and some past trauma bubbling up beneath the surface, but no one is dead by the final page. With only one volume left to go, that is unlikely to continue. Overcoming the danger of Kiriyama is one thing, but we still know nothing about Kadawa’s plan to escape from the island except that it involves something marked on his map. What that entails, we still have to wait and see.
Looking to get your hands on Battle Royale Volume 14? It is pretty tough to find these days but you can always try your luck on Amazon.
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