 Alright so way way too many people over the years have told me that The Hunger Games is a ripoff of Battle Royale and I feel like most of those people either have not watched Battle Royale or have not read the book or they haven't watched The Hunger Games or they haven't read the books or they're just kind of dumb to be honest because lately my video on Hunger Games Clones and how they work has just been getting more attention like that just happens sometimes on YouTube but it's been getting attention I've been noticing a lot more comments of people saying actually The Hunger Games is a ripoff of something else it's a clone of something else and those people are incapable of observing anything beyond the absolute most basic surface level because the basic premise of Battle Royale and The Hunger Games is the same that's true and Battle Royale did come out first that's true but beyond that they are very very different stories and I'm talking like the actual events of the stories themselves are very different the types of characters that are in there the type of world it takes place in the themes and symbolism of the story those are all very very different from Battle Royale to The Hunger Games and I kind of just wanted to make this video so I could try nipping this in the bud once and for all and I did rewatch the Battle Royale movie last night I did read the book for it like 10 or 12 years ago but I am mostly going to be comparing the Battle Royale movie to The Hunger Games both books and movies because number one it allows me to use clips and stuff which makes things a little bit easier and number two it just I don't know the book Battle Royale is not great and it's a little bit more opaque in terms of like themes and stuff plus let's be honest none of the people who are saying um actually The Hunger Games is a ripoff of Battle Royale have actually read the book anyways I'm one of like six people in the English-speaking world who have read it the rest of you just watch the movie don't lie also spoilers ahead if that wasn't obvious but basically like I said the actual details of these stories are very very different from one another okay like the basic setup is pretty similar but other than that very different like The Hunger Games was written by an American it was created by Americans and specifically it was created to comment on American society because it's a dystopia dystopia's comment on society it's not about the future it's about the present and The Hunger Games is about like the class divide and it's about American obsession with violent media and plus it's about how reality tv is really really fucked up when you stop and think about it especially back when the books were first coming out it was just getting worse and worse and worse over time it seems to have chilled out a little bit but we also got Milf Manor this year so maybe not that much I mean I honestly learned a lot from like all of that talk and I mean everything that's coming out of his mouth has been just I'm just wrong and I'm just like you're welcome this is your dad this is your dad now on the other hand Battle Royale was the book was written by a Japanese person the movie was created by Japanese people and it's about Japanese society and problems that the creators saw with Japanese society specifically it's about how little Japanese culture values its young people as a basic refresher The Hunger Games is about a country called Panem which is far in the future after some sort of apocalypse it is geographically in what is now the United States but it's far after the United States has it's the United States is gone basically and there it's ruled by a capital which is super wealthy and nice and it has 12 districts which are all basically just colonies of the capital and every year as punishment for a rebellion that happened a long time ago every district has to send one boy and one girl to an event called The Hunger Games and they all kill each other and the last one standing wins and gets to go home and The Hunger Games are a really big spectacle in Panem now Battle Royale on the other hand is about a class of Japanese teenagers who were selected at random to kill each other to make them respect their elders like it's it's not explained super well and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense but again it it does help with the message that the story is trying to send like the game in Battle Royale is public knowledge like people know about it but it's also pretty secretive you know they don't have cameras broadcasting everything the way they do in The Hunger Games and they also don't turn the winners into celebrities like they do in The Hunger Games like the opening scene of the movie shows somebody who just won her game being pulled out and getting to go home and there's a news crew that is trying to get a look at her soldiers are holding them back and not allowing them to interview her whereas in The Hunger Games like again it's a big spectacle they got they got to go on a victory tour afterwards and also there's a scene partway through the movie where Kitano the guy who is running the games who is played by Takeshi Kitano for I don't know why it's so funny to me to that they have the same name okay it's funny to me but anyways there's a scene where he gets a phone call from his daughter and he doesn't tell her what he's up to he just tells her he's on a business trip as he puts it again this is public knowledge but it's secretive and it's like that because in Japan again their society does abuse its young people but everyone even though they know about it they just kind of push it out of mind and try not to think about it whereas in Panem the cruelty is front and center in both Battle Royale and The Hunger Games the games that the characters are forced to partake in are a means of societal control and in the Battle Royale book it's actually not even so much about trying to keep the kids under control as it is just about trying to keep the population under control like it's the government making everyone fear them like it makes even less sense there trust me but again they're they're both means of control but in The Hunger Games it is a display of opulence you know because in Battle Royale the whole thing just takes place on this abandoned island you know like it looks like people used to live there but they're long gone so there's just a bunch of like rusted out homes and abandoned stuff around and there's like this old school that the game makers are based out of um but it's like falling apart around them and they are monitoring the kids but it's just through microphones they don't have cameras set up all over the place so they can see everything whereas The Hunger Games they have this massive arena which is purpose built just for the games and they build a new one every single year and it's filled with all kinds of like traps and monsters and ways for them to like force the kids to fight each other even if they don't really want to like it forces them you know out of certain areas or into certain areas and stuff so like it's clear they put so much time and effort into this because like again it's a display of their wealth and a display of their opulence whereas in Battle Royale it seems almost like an afterthought like it's it's something they need to do and they just want to get it out of the way so they're trying to expend as little time and energy on it as possible and while both stories do take place in a dystopian future they're pretty different dystopias because one of them is just japan it's like near future japan or actually now it would be in the past because it's supposed to be like right after the turn of the millennium which was around the time the movie came out but whatever that's not important it's supposed to be just japan in the very near future whereas again the Hunger Games is a totally fictional country way way hundreds of years from now this is kind of a double-edged sword for Battle Royale because it simultaneously makes it feel a bit closer to the real world because again it's like literally just the oh real government that has evolved to a point where it's doing this but then it also feels less realistic because it's hard to imagine the japanese government doing something this over the top with it whereas in the Hunger Games there there's some separation between the real world and panem but also it allows the author to go much crazier with all of the cruelty and everything and you can see how our current society could eventually lead to that but it would take a long time to evolve to that point and then there's all the differences in story so Battle Royale almost feels like it doesn't have a protagonist at all like it's kind of unfocused which i know that sounds uncharitable but that's really the best word i could think of for it like it's the story is kind of just the these kids get kidnapped essentially brought to this island and they get the rules of the game explained to them and then the rest of the movie is kind of just them killing each other until the end where something a little bit different happens except for this one weird subplot about this one group of kids that tries to build a bomb because one of them like his uncle was a terrorist who tried to blow up parliament and they just want to escape the game without killing people i i don't know it's kind of a it's a strange movie okay but other than that it'll like just go from one group of kids to another and it'll be like okay here's these people they do something and some of them die and then these other people they do something some of them die and in some ways it actually heightens the tragedy of it because we get to know them a little bit more but it's again it does feel kind of unfocused and it feels almost like there is no protagonist even though there kind of is whereas the Hunger Games is 100 catness's story and like yeah she can kind of see other tributes like making alliances and stuff off in the distance but we as the audience don't really see much of that it's all left to sort of just be implied because it's really only about catness and everything we're seeing is being seen through her eyes and then there's the endings which are again very very different partially because the Hunger Games has sequels and battle royale does not at least not that i'm aware of like in battle royale a couple of the surviving kids actually managed to trick the people who are running this game and then they escape and they just go on the run and they're wanted fugitives after that and i guess the message there is like just be smart and you can outsmart the system and then you can run away from it but you can't defeat it i i guess that might be the message whereas in Hunger Games uh catness and pita decide that neither of them wants to kill the others so they're going to commit suicide again on camera while everybody's watching which is very against the rules in the Hunger Games by the way like committing suicide would mean that their families would be horribly punished so that's why nobody does it but anyways they decide okay they're gonna commit suicide because they just can't do it and eventually that basically they're calling the game makers bluff because the game makers uh just tell them okay fine you can you can both live you both get to go home in a weird way they did beat the system but they didn't outsmart it they just tested their will against the will of the game makers and the will of the capital because the capital demanded that there be a victor so the stories here are fairly different from one another like the actual events that go down are different from one another even if the basic setup is similar and then of course there is the characters which are very very different like the types of people that are in both stories are substantially different like again catness everdeen the main character from the Hunger Games is a hunter before the events of the story even begins so she knows how to survive the games like when she gets thrown into the arena like she would have died if she didn't know how to like track how to survive in the wilderness how to shoot a bow and arrow like that's all stuff she knew before the story began and it's stuff that served her well and allowed her to you know be victorious in the end and she also volunteered for the games because her sister got picked and she was like okay I'm doing this to save my sister and she actually goes in expecting to die and of all of the tributes there again there's 24 people there she only knows pita and even then only a little bit and over the course of the story she does kill several people but she only does it when she's forced to which is a little bit of a cop-out in my opinion because while I do like the Hunger Games as a story it it never really grapples with the morality of catness having to kill other kids because all of the other kids that she winds up killing are like psychopaths or actively attempting to kill her at the time so there's never really a point where she has to kill someone who's innocent and begging for their life or anything. Battle Royale is again about an entire class of Japanese students which is about 40 kids that are just thrown in unexpectedly and none of them are prepared for this at all whereas again in the Hunger Games they knew that the games were coming for several weeks in advance in Battle Royale they're just thrown in have this explained to them and then they're given a bag with some supplies and sent on their way but the only ones that were at all prepared in Battle Royale were these two volunteers which it doesn't make sense that people can volunteer in that world like the way the game works how do people volunteer I have no idea but okay that's the thing that happened and they're the only ones that are prepared and the closest thing to a protagonist that Battle Royale has is Nanahara and he doesn't contribute all that much like I don't think he kills anyone over the course of the story and he spends most of it being saved by other people or being useless or running away like there's one scene where he attacks some dude to lead him away from his friends and tries to kill him he does shoot him several times but the guy turns out to be wearing a bulletproof vest so he doesn't actually kill him in fact Nanahara really only survives to the end because he just happened to run into Kawada who is one of the volunteers who went in there specifically because he wanted to like defeat the games it's again it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that people can volunteer but that's what happened and if he hadn't run into him he would have died like he just there's not much good that he can do there he doesn't have many useful skills and the Hunger Games does have a love triangle but it's kind of a fake one with Katniss and Pita just pretending to be in love for the cameras because they think it will make them look desirable whereas in Battle Royale yeah there is a love triangle between Nanahara a girl that he likes and one of his friends but his friend dies right at the beginning of the game and we don't even know about the love triangle until after his friend is already dead so we don't know about the love triangle until one leg of it is already gone so there's not really a love triangle there is there in the Hunger Games there are several characters several tributes in the games who are depicted as being just completely psychotic and evil but it's really only a couple of them most of them are regular kids and then there's a couple of career tributes as they're called who are kids that volunteered specifically to be in the games and have trained for years and years to reach this point but they have actual motivation for doing that because if they win the Hunger Games then they get lifelong fame and wealth like it's there's benefit to it for them whereas in Battle Royale there is there's a couple of characters who seem kind of psychotic but most notably is one named Kiriyama who is the other guy who actually volunteered and I guess he just likes killing people because then there's really no explanation given as to why he volunteered other than he just he just wants to go in and kill people and there are other characters who again they seem kind of psychotic but that's because they all know each other beforehand like again the tributes in the Hunger Games didn't really know each other whereas in Battle Royale they've known each other for years they've gone to school together they've grown up together and so some of them have old grievances that they want to settle and others of them seem kind of psychotic but really they are just very determined to live like Mitsuko is pretty much the only character in the movie that was really into like her and Kitano were the only ones that I I really liked at least on my most recent rewatch but Mitsuko was not somebody who like wanted to kill people she was just very willing to do it and we see she actually has a backstory which explains that where she was nearly abused by a pedophile when she was a kid and so she's like okay I'm willing to do anything to survive so she is kind of crazy yeah but there's an actual reason for it whereas other people in Battle Royale it's just like they're they're just crazy just because and there's actually many people in Battle Royale who commit suicide because they just don't want to kill people or because they're just so horrified by what's gone on and what's going on and I'm pretty sure that's meant to be a metaphor or commentary or something however you would put that for again Japanese society because in Japanese society they have a very high suicide rate among young people and part of that is just because of this enormous pressure that all of society including their elders is putting on them which again in Battle Royale it's just displayed but this game like they're being put into this horrible situation and have all this pressure put on them and they just kill themselves as an out and in Battle Royale the governments the game makers however you want to want to put it they very very clearly play favorites like Kitano is running things and he helps Noriko at more than one point like he clearly just wants her to win and he says as much in one of the final scenes of the movie like and even without that all of the characters are given weapons but a lot of them aren't actually weapons you know there's characters who are given grenades and submachine guns and shotguns and knives and hatchets and stuff and then there's other characters who are given like binoculars and a pot lid and a paper fan like those just blatantly are not weapons you know like they're claiming that it's an even playing field while blatantly playing favorites whereas in the Hunger Games they're all more or less on equal footing like you know Katniss and some of the others are still underdogs yes but it's not like the career tributes are thrown into the arena and already are decked out with weapons and supplies and stuff and that's because at the end of the day the Hunger Games is a story about a girl who inspires an entire country not just with the love that she shows for her sister and for PETA but with the determination and grit and intelligence and everything else that she shows in the arena she inspires a lot of people and then she is used as a tool the story is about life in dictatorships and it's about how apathy and cruelty towards people are what lead to revolution whereas Battle Royale is the story of a group of kids who are completely destroyed by the expectations of their elders Battle Royale is about life in a suffocating society and how there's really no way to beat it or change it all you can do is leave and leaving is very difficult so yeah Battle Royale Hunger Games very different stories they have a similar setup it wouldn't surprise me if Suzanne Collins was inspired by Battle Royale or she had heard of it at least before writing the Hunger Games but they're not the same thing it's not a clone it's not a rip-off stop saying 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