Customer Reviews

Battle Royale Vol. 8

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As you can tell from the cover of Volume 8, Mitsuko takes center stage in this volume, with all the bodily assets that she squeeze into it! Mitsuko is always looking for a few nice boys to kill some time....I mean boys to kill and she'll stop at nothing to gain their trust in order to slice their throats with her mini-scythe. The next two unfortunate lucky guys are the complete pre-adolescent loser Yuichiro and the brawn of the outfit Tadakatsu. Mitsuko weasels her way out of the attempted killing of Tadakatsu and gains the trust of Yuichiro and then the mind games begin. Mitusuko's body is on full display as she tries to turn the friends against each other and mark off some more contestants from the Program. But she reveals a bit too much as we find out what caused her to become so warped and morally repugnant.

Battle Royale 8 was a little over the top, bordering on the ultraviolent pornography stereotype of manga in the West. So many bodily fluids are excreted in this installment that you might want to wash yourself with a garden hose after reading it. In some ways you feel that Mitsuko's victims deserve their fate for letting their lust cloud their judgement. I mean while they are too embarrassed to look at her naked body, they have no qualms about killing their fellow students. Not for the squeamish, but still an engaging, if tragic and heart-rending series.

I knew that Tokyopop's translators have been mistranslating their mangas for years, but this one, Battle Royale vol. 8 is the worst one I have ever read!!
Before I bought this volume, I had bought Tokyopop's other mangas like Vampire Game, Petshop of Horrors... Each of them has same problem.

OK, I can understand that a lot of Americans might not find the jokes in the mangas funny because of the cultural differences, so they had to change characters' conversations in order to satisfy the readers. But if Tokyopop does samething too often, I will say Tokyopop are disrespecting original authors' rights.

In this volume, the translator changed almost 95% of all the conversations, even the most slightest detail. Although the "new" content is not "that" different from the original one, but these modifications already spoil the whole story.

For example, in the last page, after Souma Mitsuko raped(?) and killed Yuichiro, what she said to Yuichiro's corpse in the original version was, "If I am pregnant, I will give birth to your child." In Tokyopop's version, the translator changed it to, "Thanks, guys. It was fun while it lasted. Sorta...Hmm...I wonder how many people saw me naked?"

All right. "If I am pregnant, I will give birth to your child." Is this sentence that hard to understand? Do readers have to know Japanese culture well in order to understand it!? The translator totally changed Mitsuko's personality by modifying her mumble. I can't see why the translator had to do this!

I suggest those who like this story and haven't read volume 8, take Japanese version or French version if you can read in Japanese or French. This volume will piss off anyone who has read other versions before.