After watching the movie Battle Royale, which came out in 2000, it instantly reminded me of the series Squid Game that recently came out in 2021. I could tell that Squid Game’s plot is heavily influenced by Battle Royale. Similarities included the victims to be assigned numbers, specific rules they had to follow, both “games” had similarities and even some scenes were similar. The few differences were that in Battle Royale the victims were all children where in Squid Game they were adults. Both groups that were selected to be in the game based on their previous choices and actions. For the children it was their actions towards adults adults and for the adults in Squid Game it was their desire to pay off their debts.
I believe the whole reason for Kitano-Sensei conducting this game is because his own daughter does not respect him as a parent so he takes his frustrations out on innocent children to cope because he knows he would never be able to hurt his own daughter. Noriko Nakagawa, a girl who was among the rest of the students in the game; it seems to me that Kitano had a favor towards. She was never disrespectful towards adults and was an overall good girl. Kitano eventually wanted her to win the game in hopes of taking her in as his own to have the daughter he has always wished for.
As Kitano was causing a dystopia for innocent children he was going through his own. His selfishness to create a game to find a child that appealed to his idea of what he wants in a daughter, resulted in his won death. At the end of the game, Kitano seen Noriko had survived and wanted to make amends with her but what he didn’t know is that Shuya, Noriko loved interest had also survived. They ended up killing Kitano and ran off of the island to their freedom.
Junior Psychology major from Port Arthur, TX.
