Manga Corps

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami is one of my favorite novels. It’s pure pulp page-turning heart-pounding action. The premise is simple and often replicated but never done better: students are trapped on an island and must kill one another. Only one student can survive. Armed with weapons and supplies scattered around the island, the students’ true nature are revealed in the brutal game.

I was excited when I saw that VIZ is publishing Battle Royale: Enforcers, a new manga series written by the author of the novel, with art by Yukai Asada. I picked up the first volume a few days ago, ready to return to the twisted world of students facing off against one another.

The premise of Enforcers is similar to the original novel. Students must fight each other to the death on an island they are all trapped out on with no way out. Suspicious people monitor them, orchestrating the entire event. Except this time around in Enforcers there’s an artificial intelligence named Sister and the students have tablets—slightly more futuristic.

Aside from those futuristic additions, Enforcers feels very much like taking the Battle Royale formula and throwing in a new set of students, which is appealing to me as a fan of the original novel. The thrill of seeing what happens next, how relationships are tried, and how the people survive is what keeps me turning the pages. Enforcers delivers on its promise, creating tense and trying situations right off the bat with pretty minimal setup.

The cast are all students at Daitoa Academy, a rehabilitation school for delinquents. The main character, Rion Sakamoto, is there because of his love of rock music, which is expressly forbidden in the fictional fascist country of the Republic of Greater East Asia. Classmates are split into squads, who must band together for survival.

There’s one aspect of Enforcers that I’m not enjoying: the art. Asada is clearly capable of drawing high detailed manga, but I find his character designs unappealing, inconsistent, and awkward. There’s something off-putting about the way they’re drawn—antiquated and in a style that I don’t particularly like.

The character art is very close to being so unappealing that I want to drop the series. But the fact that the original author is writing the manga, I’ve got high hopes for where the story will go. So I’m planning stick it out despite my distaste for the art.

Enforcers‘ first volume does establish some relationships in a meaningful way amongst the classmates. Some romantic, some just friends. That’s where the tragedy will come from, so I’m glad to see those seeds planted. Horrible seeds of heartbreak! There’s one particularly powerful moment in the manga where an AI forces squadmates to choose one member of their squad to kill, showing the cruelty of Sister.

Koushun Takami has not written a follow up novel since publishing Battle Royale in Japan in 1999. It was also his first novel. That’s strange and a bit curious to release a big hit and not follow it up with another novel. But he was involved in other manga adaptations of the series, like the one-off Battle Royale: Angels’ Border, which expand upon a section of the novel. New characters and a new setting written by Takami are what keep me drawn to reading Battle Royale: Enforcers.

Volume 2 of Battle Royale: Enforcers releases on November 19, 2024 in North America, and I’ll definitely be picking it up and reading it. The manga has a lot of potential, and I’m curious to see where the story goes. The Battle Royale premise is evergreen and a great backdrop for dramatic storytelling.

If you’re a fan of the original novel or the Battle Royale film, it’s worth checking out Enforcers to scratch that itch. New readers can also jump right into Enforcers, as there’s no knowledge of the other entries in the franchise needed.

Volume Details

• MSRP: US$14.99
• Release Date: Jul 16, 2024
• ISBN: 9781974743797
• Publisher: VIZ (VIZ Signature imprint)
• Pages: 200
• Dimensions: 5.75 x 8.25 in.
• Rating: Mature
• Available in print: yes
• Available digitally: yes