"Coolest" of the male Battle Royale characters

[IAceI]

Clearly is Toshinori Oda. Novel was better than the movie, but his only scene in the movie was awesome, but I enjoyed how when he died in the novel they used the black comedy bit between himself and Kiriyama.

Never read the Manga, honestly couldn't care less because theres no way it could top the novel. The novel was awesome, and the film done an awesome job fitting as many characters that they developed in in 2 hours.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

The novel is great, although I'm guessing that the English translation has not done it any favours (over simplistic in some places). The manga is a definite must read though. Really really good and develops characters even more.

[Skummy]

I find the manga's pretty much the middle ground between the novel and the film....the novel takes a hell of a long time to really go anywhere, and can be a real tricky read to begin with, especially if you're not used to Japanese fiction, as there's an awful lot of names to deal with, while the film throws you into the action without dwelling too much on backstory....the manga seems to fall right in to a happy medium, or at least I reckon so.

Although, to be honest, out of all three, I prefer the film...it's just so beautifully made, despite (or sometimes perhaps because of) the subject matter, and neither the book or the manga are able to capture that to the same degree.

[Kaney]

Sugimura is being seriously underrepresented here.

Name one other character in the book who gets the upper hand on not only Mitsuko, but Kiriyama as well? Sugimura would have kicked everyone's ass if he wasn't such a soppy bastard >_>

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Sugi's cool. Of course the coach system for BRIV was based around my three favourite characters and Sugi's definitely one of those.

[Mick]

One thing I loved about the BR manga was the amazing job it did at character development. of the 44 odd students, many were well developed. I really like all the characters you mentioned on the list, but my favorites being Hiroki and Kazuo.

Good call...

Who would've thought Akamatsu would've been given flashbacks?

[GoGo Yubari]

My one problem with the BR manga is that it feels like a snuff film at points. Gratuitous shock value stuff for the sake of shock value stuff. That being said, there was a lot of AWESOME character development there, especially for Akamatsu.

[Katsuya]

Sho Tsukioka rocks, naturally. But Kazuo, despite being my less-favourite of the two villains, wins this for me.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Being an old romantic at heart, the manga covers Kuzuhiko Yamamoto and Sakura Ogawai's suicide pact really really nicely and tragically.

[Zaz]

Sho Tsukioka rocks, naturally.

[Blehschmidt]

I had to sign up for the Kawada band wagon.

I just recently finished all of the Manga myself, and he is just so awesome through out. Not to mention he is great in the book, and pretty darn good in the movie.

[Zaz]

I had to sign up for the Kawada band wagon.

I just recently finished all of the Manga myself, and he is just so awesome through out. Not to mention he is great in the book, and pretty darn good in the movie.

[M.V.P.]

Kawada for me, I've only watched the movie and he came off to me as a genuine badass.

And the things he says about the profession of his father cracks me up too, altough I'm not really sure if that was a joke or not.