List of Battle Royale characters


The following is a list of characters that appear in the novel, manga and film versions of Battle Royale.

Primary characters

Shuya Nanahara

Boy #15 Shuya Nanahara has witnessed a good deal of troubling events throughout his life. His father was killed by the government for struggling against the regime, and his mother died while he was in third grade. When the rest of his family rejected him, Shuya was put in an orphanage. He is willing to trust others, not wanting to take part in the Battle Royale program. He tries several times to rally fellow students in an attempt to escape, but fails. Consequently, he narrowly escapes death at the hands of his classmates on several occasions. Shuya is a self-proclaimed "rock star", listening to and playing rock 'n' roll music in spite of the ban on the genre, and his favorite artist is Bruce Springsteen. After the death of his best friend Yoshitoki, he vows to protect Yoshitoki's crush, Noriko. Shuya survives the contest and escapes. In the manga version he emigrates to the United States.
In the English manga, he has the nickname "Shu."
In the original novel, Shuya develops an anger and feels remorseless when he kills soldiers on the boat. In the manga, Masayuki Taguchi altered Shuya's personality so the characters could differentiate themselves, as he believed the serialization of the manga requires more of this aspect than other mediums such as novel and film. Taguchi described Shuya as developing a justice-oriented personality like "the character of a shōnen manga." As Taguchi developed Shuya's pacifistic characteristic, he decided to change the ending and allow for Shuya to spare the soldiers in the boat. Taguchi somewhat felt that Shuya pulled him into the story.
In the film, many of Shuya's characteristics are highly pruned, such as his love for Bruce Springsteen and rock 'n' roll music. However, in the film, he is still an extremely caring individual who desires for his classmates to halt their violence upon each other. In the end, after killing the administrator of the current Battle Royale, Kitano, he and Noriko become fugitives and are wanted by the government.
In the sequel to the film, Shuya becomes a terrorist, leading an army of youths who have either lost a family member or survived a Battle Royale, and declares war on all adults who support and administrate the Battle Royale Act. This forces the government to initiate a new BR Act, called BR II, which sends a single 9th grade class to a terrorist base in order to terminate the threats, with the targeted terrorist being Shuya.
Shuya's men spares few of those sent to his base, killing many of the students and earning the ire of the students who were their friends. Shuya takes the remaining soldiers as prisoners, constantly attempts to persuade them to join his cause, although he is often met with contempt, as the few remaining students in the class refuse to forgive him for the deaths of their comrades.
Eventually, a student named Takuma Aoi allies himself with the terrorist after Shuya offends the United States with a video encouraging the youth of all countries bombed by the US to rise up and rebel, which, in turn, forces the US government to bomb the base. Shuya and Aoi fend off the soldiers sent to storm the base, just long enough for them and their allies to escape while the base is bombed to ashes.
Shuya and Aoi reunite with their allies in Afghanistan and go their separate ways. In the films, Shuya is portrayed by Tatsuya Fujiwara.
Kills: Tatsumichi Oki ; Unspecified number of soldiers ; Kitano ; Kazuo Kiriyama

Noriko Nakagawa

Girl #15 Noriko Nakagawa is the story's primary female character and Shuya's first companion, as well as, ultimately, his love interest. She is a quiet, reserved girl who is considered cute by Shuya. In the novel and manga, she is shot in the lower leg for attempting to help Yoshitoki Kuninobu; in the film, she is shot in the arm, although this wound is an accident. In both versions she falls ill and is treated for her fever by Shogo and Shuya at a pharmacy. Although she does not realize it, she manages to keep Shuya sane, and she is the only other person besides Shuya to survive the game. While innocent at heart, she is profoundly philosophical and inspires hope in Shuya and Shogo, and everything she says is true in the broader context of the novel. It is she who kills Kazuo Kiriyama, with the one and only bullet she fires during the course of the game. In the English-language version of the manga, after the game, her family supposedly rejects her, so she emigrates to the United States with Shuya. In the film, teacher Kitano cares for Noriko, wishing her to win the game and reveals a picture of her as the victor when she, Nanahara and Kawada break into the school. He even goes into the island to look for her, giving her an umbrella in the rain. Shuya has commented that she wrote the best compositions in Literature class; as a result, when she speaks from her heart, her words are described as being "like poetry".
Aki Maeda portrays Noriko in the film adaptations.
Kills: Kazuo Kiriyama, Unspecified number of soldiers

Shogo Kawada

Boy #5 Shogo Kawada, portrayed as a loner within the class ranks, is a transfer student. He is put in Class B about two months before the program takes place. He is the winner of the current program and a previous program which he participated in some three years prior. He allies himself with Shuya and Noriko, telling them he knows a way to escape from the island and the entire Battle Royale program. Noriko and Shuya frequently doubt his trustworthiness, but these doubts turn out to be unfounded, as Shogo reveals that he deliberately transferred to the school in hopes of being in the selected class. He is on a mission to avenge the death of his girlfriend, who died during the last program they played in. He along with Noriko and Shuya defeat Kiriyama. He helps overturn the program, helping Shuya and Noriko to escape, but he succumbs to his wounds and dies. In all versions he is the final participant to die.
In the novel, Shogo is described as having "the body of a middleweight boxing champion". In the manga he is also very muscular. He also is the only student with facial hair. Shogo has a distinct scar underneath his left eye caused from a knife wound when he won the program, the previous year. In the novel, Shuya also noted he saw Shogo had multiple gunshot scars all over his torso from when they would change in gym class.
In the manga flashbacks, his father was a doctor and ran a small poorly equipped local hospital. His father was self-employed and Shogo would occasionally help out, this is how he was able to treat Noriko's wounds with such expertise. His father was killed by the government, when he tried to protest Shogo's entering of the program. Shogo also had long hair in the flashbacks, as opposed to the present when he has it completely buzzed.
Koushun Takami describes Kawada as a "Young Champion-esque character" and recalled that a person told him that Masayuki Taguchi's version of Shogo Kawada "looks like Bancho Kiyohara," referring to the Yomiuri Giants baseball player Kazuhiro "Bancho" Kiyohara. Readers of Young Champion ranked Kawada first in a character popularity poll. Taguchi felt that timing contributed to the ranking as a Kawada-centered story appeared at the time of the poll. Takami felt that Kawada would have received first place even if a Kawada-centered story had not appeared on the same pages as the poll.
Shogo is portrayed by Tarō Yamamoto in the film adaptation.
Kills: Kyoichi Motobuchi; Kinpatsu Sakamochi ; Kaori Minami, Kazuo Kiriyama ; Yonemi Kamon
Killed by: Kazuo Kiriyama, Nature

Kazuo Kiriyama

Boy #6 Kazuo Kiriyama is the player who kills the most students in the game.
In the novel and manga, Kiriyama is a sociopath with the mind of a genius and the inability to feel emotion, due to brain damage from a car crash in his childhood that led to partial lobotomy. He is slender and handsome, with slicked back hair which he never changes the style of because he can't be bothered to. He came from a rich family, but in the manga profile and the novel it is suggested he is an illegitimate child. Kiriyama has a great intuitive grasp of everything, enabling him to not only do outstanding schoolwork, but also to master normally time-consuming skills such as painting, playing the violin, and various martial arts at a rapid rate. However, due to his emotionless state, he tends to set them aside after attaining mastery, and then losing interest in them moments afterwards. This quick intuitive grasp allowed Kazuo to be the first student to master the mechanics of the Program. In the manga, he also plucked out an abusive gym teacher's eyeball and crushed it with it still connected by the optic nerve, just to see the color of the liquid within. He was also the only male student not to fall for [|Mitsuko Souma's] charms. Kiriyama is also shown to have a high tolerance for pain, such as when, after killing Mitsuko, he cuts his arm open and tapes the muscles that control his index finger back so as to permanently pull said finger back into a position that allows him to fire at a much more rapid rate.
During his time in school, Kiriyama became the leader of his own gang, consisting of Mitsuru Numai, Hiroshi Kuronaga, and Ryuhei Sasagawa. Despite their loyalty, he has no attachment to any of them and murders all of them during the Program. Kiriyama participates in the Program not out of necessity, but only because he had nothing better to do, and succeeds in killing many of his classmates, only to ultimately be killed in the end. In the novel, Noriko shoots Kiriyama in the head once, and then Shogo shoots him in the head again; at that point Shogo tells her that he killed Kiriyama to spare Noriko the guilt of murder. In the manga, Shuya ultimately kills Kiriyama by shooting him in the neck, though Kiriyama was able to regain his emotions from an earlier shot in the face, and moments before his death, he tells Shuya that he can feel again.
In the film, Kiriyama, not from Shiroiwa Junior High School Class 3-B, voluntarily joins the Battle Royale program for his own entertainment. Unlike his novel and manga counterparts, he displays emotion and takes enjoyment in killing students. Kiriyama is also depicted as mute and never speaks during the course of the film. In this adaption, the "Kiriyama family" gang members from the novel and manga, led by Numai instead, thought Kiriyama was in the league with Kitano, and tried to bully him to confess, but were killed by him. Shogo ultimately kills him by shooting and detonating his collar.
Kiriyama is portrayed by Masanobu Andō in the film adaptation.
Gained weapons- Colt Python, 2 hand grenades, Uzi
Kills: Hiroshi Kuronaga, Ryuhei Sasagawa, Izumi Kanai, Mitsuru Numai, Yumiko Kusaka, Yukiko Kitano,, Yutaka Seto, Toshinori Oda, Mitsuko Soma, Shogo Kawada ; Shinji Mimura, Mizuho Inada ; Keita Iijima ; Kayoko Kotohiki, Hiroki Sugimura ±
Killed by: Shogo Kawada ; Shuya Nanahara ; Noriko Nakagawa