The Hunger Games is too similar to Battle Royale

Having just finished The Hunger Games, I am a bit shocked that the book was ever published, when it is almost a carbon copy of Battle Royale. Now I know that Battle Royale's author was japanese, but doesn't he have some sort of copyright protection in place, especially since he published in North America years before The Hunger Games? Even if Suzanne Collins swears that she came up with the idea on her own (and I do believe her), her publishers must have known about the books similarities to Battle Royale, yet they went ahead and published The Hunger Games anyway.

I mean, consider the following, keeping in mind Battle Royale was published in 1999 and The Hunger Games in 2008:

1. Both books feature a "last boy/girl" standing "game", in which teenagers are put in an arena and expected to fight to the death, winner gets to live.

2. In both books, these games are conducted by fascist governments as a way to keep an unruly population under control.

3. The children are chosen at random in both books. In The Hunger Games its one boy and one girl per district, in Battle Royale the combatants are all from the same randomly selected highschool class.

4. In both books, at the end of the day the dead players are announced by loudspeaker. The Hunger Games added the detail of having the dead children's faces put up in the sky with a projector.

5. In both books, characters are killed with poisonous food.

6. In both books, more than one character makes it out alive, and the survivors have romantic entanglements.

7. In both books, traps drive the combatants towards one another (though the way it was handled in Battle Royale was "smarter" - instead of random disasters, people knew ahead of time which zones would become dangerous, and this allowed for deeper strategy than The Hunger Games could offer, in which "random events happen as the plot demands").

And I'm upset about it, for a variety of reasons. First, Collins' success has basically shut down any sort of big budget Hollywood adaptation of Battle Royale (which I was really looking forward to!), second Battle Royale was the superior work yet never got the kind of recognition it should have (and now probably never will, because of the popularity of The Hunger Games overshadowing it), likely because Koushoun Takami was japanese and therefore not seen as worth the time to pimp in North America.

Basically, I think that Battle Royale was the smarter work, so in my mind it deserves more credit and the author deserves all those big royalties from a hollywood blockbuster - Not Suzzane Collins, whose The Hunger Games is filled with contrivances to advance the plot for example, mutant zombie werewolves come out of nowhere to save Katniss the trouble of finishing off Cato in his battle armor, a stupid love triangle, and a shallow Mary Sue character as the lead. It's just not fair, dammit!

Anyways, don't want to rant forever, and I've said my piece, but what do you all think? Is The Hunger Games too similar to Battle Royale? Or does The Hunger Games stand on its own two feet and deserves the praise it has received?

I haven't read The Hunger Games yet, so I can't remark on the similarities. I'll be back when I have.

However, Battle Royale already has a live-action movie adaptation (a good one, too). I don't see why we should want a Hollywood version a few years after the Japanese movie, or how that would improve on it (other than probably making the characters American and getting rid of everything that was related to the Japanese school system).

I saw that book in Waterstones in Belfast. I read the blurb and actually set to The Wife at the time, 'I remember when this was called Battle Royale'.

I have somewhat selfish reasons for wanting a Hollywood blockbuster based on Battle Royale - namely, I want my family to stop it with the "everything from Japan besides nintendo and toyota is crap" lines I always get for reading manga and liking anime. Guess I'll just have to hope that the live-action version of Akira does the trick.

To reply to your points one-by-one:

Battle Royale hardly invented this genre. "Bunch of people forced to fight to the death; last one standing gets to live" is a story that's been around a while. Making the combatants teenagers doesn't make it unique.

So they're both copying the Roman Empire's "bread and circuses" gladiator games.

Given the basic premise, the most obvious ways of selecting combatants would be random selection, choosing people who have pissed off the government in some way, or picking on an oppressed minority. The first really drives home the capriciousness of the regime in a way the second doesn't, and the third introduces a social dynamic to the hypothetical future that would distract from other stuff the authors were aiming at.

So how would you announce the deaths?

Very common plot device.

The first part serves to make it less of a downer and/or subvert the expectation that the game set up; generally speaking, if a story tells you early on how things are gonna pan out, how things actually pan out is gonna be more complicated. As for the second part, do you have any idea how many stories end with characters embarking on a romantic relationship? That sort of ending is far, far too common for anyone in recorded history to take credit for.

Forcing people to navigate an area filled with traps is also a very old plot, and it fits in so nicely with gladiatoral games that it's only natural to combine the two.

So it's not really that The Hunger Games rips off Battle Royale; it's that they both emulate many other stories that came before.

edited 24th Dec '11 7:04:27 AM by RavenWilder

I haven't read the Hunger Games yet, and it does seem to have many detractors.

Is the execution bad as it sounds?

The last time I heard of the live-action AKIRA was when it was said the director refused to be further involved in the project, not to mention they changed the entire setting and focus on teenagers in Manhattan. I don't think it will be a good example, but I digress.

edited 24th Dec '11 6:51:38 AM by Fancolors

@My God It's Full Of Stars:

How would a Hollywood movie convince your family that Japanese culture can be good? Just show them the existing Battle Royale movie: if you can handle a bit of gore, it's a very good flick.

Also, I agree with Raven Wilder that those plot points hardly originated with Battle Royale.

edited 24th Dec '11 6:57:04 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

If you want them to see something Japanese that isn't crap (I'd disagree with them about Toyotas, incidentally) show them Ran.

Admittedly, that's partly Shakespeare in a funny hat but, hey...

And Persy Jackson is just Harry Potter with a greek mythos theme.

Wasn't that how the author pitched the novel? "It's like Harry Potter + Greek Mythology"? I thought I heard that somewhere...

I don't think it's a rip off, but I DO think that everything people think the Hunger Games did well, is done far better in Battle Royale.

I dislike The Hunger Games, but for some reason I am put off by claims that it is a ripoff of Battle Royale. It just strikes of "WAAAH WE'RE THE TRUE ORIGINALS" to me.

Yeah, it's super annoying, and shows up like clockwork whenever people mention the Hunger Games.

I'll just copy-paste what I posted the last time someone argued that Battle Royale was better than The Hunger Games.

I actually thought the first Hunger Games was better than Battle Royale. Both works had three possible endings—the one I was kind of hoping for (a bunch of characters survive), the one I would have expected in real life (one character survives), and the horribly cliched one that was actually used as the ending (the two lovers survive.) Both works occasionally tend towards another ending, before snapping things back on track to ending 3. The difference is that The Hunger Games leans towards ending 2, and makes it relatively believable that ending 3 occurs instead, whereas Battle Royale tends towards ending 1, and relies on a long string of bad luck and stupid decisions to bring about ending 3. (Then again, Battle Royale has a deadpan sense of humor, which is sadly lacking in a lot of dystopian YA written in America—and besides, Hunger Games books 2 and 3 suck.)

I just thought the psychology was better in BR.

^ Maybe we're comparing different works—did you watch the movie? (I'm thinking about this in terms of the book.)

Then again, if you think the book had better psychology, I'm not sure how to respond to that. People snap at exactly the right moment and in exactly the right way to railroad the plot to ending 3, often without any prior buildup or warning. It just seems too convenient to me.

edited 26th Dec '11 2:27:35 PM by feotakahari

I did not watch the movie.

It was not amazing psychology.

It was just WAY better than Hunger Games.

To the posters who are saying BR was more advance psychologically and more advanced in style, you realize it was written for an Adult demographic so it would allow for more heavy handed portrayals than a YA series,right?

Also, To those saying BR is being outshone, take into account how many people never heard of it before Hunger Games. It was bad luck the Virginia Tech massacre happened at time of American publication so it was halted... That doesn't dismiss how much free promotion BR is getting now. Seems like an awesome boon. I was 9 when BR came out. I never would have known about it's awesomeness if it weren't for Hunger Games when I was 20.

I personally disliked the Hunger Games because the conclusion was incredibly anticlimatic and just seemed half-assed to me.

Sorry. Um. Spaced out there for a bit. How is Katniss a Mary Sue? I've seen this a couple of times with no reasons given, and nit annoys me so much. She's not! She's not even close! Under any definition other than "female character I don't like", she's nowhere near.

.

Anyway. I think you're reaching. Seriously-people are killed by poisoned food? That's one of your similarities? The ideas of kids being forced to kill each other? A couple of your criticisms completely over-look the fact that these events aren't happening randomly, they're being made to happen by the Gamemakers. The "random disasters" and "random wolf muttations" weren't actually random.

Basically, this reads like sour grapes. Sorry.

Totally agree with this.

And if you really want to show them a good Japanese thing, watch a Miyazaki film like Spirited Away.

I have seen arguments for Kat-is-sue. And I can see it,sorta. Mostly because of the whole protagonist-centered-morality deal. I can find arguments for it, if you'd like.

I don't think she's a sue, she's just badly written to me.

BR and HG are both similar for thematic reasons. It's hard to explain, but the premise is very similar. Basically, it's like Terraria and Minecraft. Very different, but it has its similarities.

edited 19th Jan '12 3:37:37 PM by MrAHR

I don't think that a lot of the stuff Katniss does is intended to be seen as moral. She's supposed to be highly flawed. It's one of the things that interests me about The Hunger Games: it's rare to see a book for young adults with a female protagonist that doesn't fall into the Girls Need Role Models trope. She's very self-interested in the first book (well, she's selfless when it comes to her family, but has little problem with the idea of killing others - even Peeta - to stay alive). It takes her until the middle of the second book to think seriously about opposing a government that she's well aware is tyrannical. Her ability to empathize with other people is severely limited. All of this is shown quite deliberately. It's the furthest thing from protagonist-centred morality I can think of.

Katniss, Peeta and Gale all have their own strains of morality, with areas where they're clear-sighted and others where they're dreadfully wrong, and it's one of the things that makes them interesting characters.

I am mostly referring to the treatment of other people, who are never really shown as anything but compliant with Kat's world views.

Also, Kat's morality is REALLY warped, to the point it could be seen as sociopathic, due to her lack of...empathy...I guess? over the death of human beings. It goes from being a flaw to something that seems to come about because the author isn't too good at writing first person.

Finally, traits like starvation are not given the proper psychological weight it deserves, and are just sort of tacked on, cheapening it further.

Here are some thoughts on it.

Those phrase it better than I do.

edited 19th Jan '12 4:36:20 PM by MrAHR

I don't quite understand what you're getting at. Yes, Katniss is selfish and thinks of her survival before that of others. That's not portrayed as a good thing. The moment at the end of her first Hunger Games where she's about to kill Peeta is intended to show just how self-focused her outlook is, and the books show her grappling a lot with the question of whether or not she's a good person. One of her worst moments in my view is when she rapidly gives up on Peeta after his rescue from the Capitol just because the Capitol's brainwashing has made him hostile to her - but she does later figure out that she's wrong there. For the entirety of Mockingjay she's in the grip of PTSD so deep she's barely capable of functioning, much less thinking about the needs of others.

By and large, she's the way you'd expect the average person growing up in an oppressive dictatorship to be, rather than the hero most people like to assume they'd be if they lived in such a tyrannical state. She's bad at thinking outside the box, and at seeing the big picture, being mostly focused on her family and on survival; as a result, when she's thrown into a death match, she assumes she has to play it out according to the Capitol's rules if she doesn't want to be killed. She's bad at empathizing with people she doesn't know. Even when she does try to do the right thing - as on her visit to District 11 - it can backfire horribly. It's a realistic depiction of how an person in such circumstance might act, and of the degree to which someone with little knowledge of the wider world and little political savvy can be manipulated.

That doesn't make her sociopathic; given her circumstances, it makes her average. Most people are inclined to hold their own survival above the survival of people who are trying to kill them, when you get right down to it. Readers just aren't accustomed to our protagonists being morally average, especially not in young people's fiction and especially not when they're girls.

EDIT: And the posts you link to are inaccurate to the extent that it feels the writer is projecting her own political perspectives on the book. The rich people aren't all shows as bad, and the "poor" certainly aren't all shown as good. Gale is a textbook example of how oppression can lead a person to an attitude of complete ruthlessness towards those they fight. Meanwhile, Katniss' prep team and even Effie - who are all well-off and vapid - are over time shown quite sympathetically, despite being fairly flippant and unconcerned about watching young people kill each other as entertainment. That's one area where Katniss is, in some sense, ahead of the other characters in District 13 - having been to the Capitol, she's able to see their citizens as human beings, rather than just impersonal oppressors.

edited 19th Jan '12 5:26:32 PM by WarriorEowyn