‘Battle Royale’ and the Horror of Generational Warfare [The Lady Killers Podcast]

“You just have to fight for yourself; no one’s going to save you. That’s just life, right?”

Generational identity is a sensitive subject. We often feel as if people our age have been put into reductive categories or dismissed and maligned due to the worst tendencies of a fraction of our members. But the one thing on which we all usually agree is that the generation that follows is even worse. Gen Xers spent years mocking Millennial indulgence in participation trophies and avocado toast and we all now unite in shaking our heads over Gen Z culture like voice messages, baggy jeans, and internet speak. It’s always “these kids today” who are ruining our lives and never the problems we’ve created for ourselves. 

No film explores generational scapegoating like Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale. With an economy in shambles and teen mischief on the rise, an entire country decides to punish its teens rather than examine its own massive failures in leadership. 

Kitano (Takeshi Kitano) is a frustrated teacher who retires after one of his wayward students stabs him in the leg. But rather than try to address this delinquency or perhaps examine his own failure to engage his students, Kitano signs the class up for a Machiavellian government program that forces the students of Class 3-B to fight each other to the death. Kitano thinks he’s tipped the scales and plans to sit back and enjoy the carnage but his cruelty reveals a deep insecurity at the heart of this despicable test. 

In the latest episode of Bloody FM’s The Lady Killers Podcast, co-hosts Jenn Adams, Sammie Kuykendall, Rocco Thompson, and Mae Shults meet at the lighthouse to chat about teen assassins, killer cheerleaders, and vindictive teachers in this bombastic film. What happened between Kitano and his estranged daughters? Why have the exchange students signed up for another BR? How will mass murder solve any of the government’s problems and what’s in store for this cycle’s young winners?

Stream below and subscribe now via Apple Podcasts and Spotify for future episodes that drop every Thursday.

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