Battle Royale Ultimate Edition Volume 5 Hardcover – February 10, 2009

love the item, glad I purchesed it would order again. fast and reliable service and it was excatly what i needed

I have never read manga before. I picked this up after researching for new comics to read. I thoroughly enjoyed this series and highly recommend it. It's gripping and intense...not for the faint heated. I agree with most of what the first reviewer here said, so I won't rehash the plot.I will first just point out the parts I disliked. There's a lot of repetition. I got tired of Shuuya stupidly yelling all the time and the multiple conversations and flashbacks that went over old ground. However, I read somewhere that these manga are originally printed in Japan in those short chapters (yes?) along with other stories, so I am guessing the repetition was necessary to get new readers up to date and to remind old readers of necessary back story. Plus the flashbacks and dream bits keep major players `alive' for the reader after their deaths. So that's good. The over the top slobbering and crying were a bit much, I felt. I wish I knew what the Japanese writing across so many scenes meant. Kiriyama was just too hard to kill, had that hovering jacket, and the inner ki bit was my least favorite plot device. My suspension of disbelief goes only so far. The `extras' included in the Ultimate Edition didn't seem worth it. I don't care about drawings of guns. Big deal.On the good side, the author and artist greatly impressed me with their ability to make 50+ characters all recognizable, have distinct personalities, and have believable foibles. They really come alive and many of their deaths made me cry. I thought the ending plot twists very good, except the death of one character at the end who I felt should have lived. That death was too predictable. The maps and grayed out character lists were very helpful. I liked the character profiles.Summed up...? Very much worth your time.

Good read and great conclusion to the series.

I like the manga version of BR better than the movie, and this part of the story has some of the best bits. Mitsuko Souma vs. Kazuo Kiriyama is a classic fight, and shows perfectly how sweet Mitsu's weaknesses and overconfidence are her downfall. Then we get Shogo's backstory, and it's a real tear-jerker.About the only nit I'd pickis that the final fight on the island is much too long-drawn-out, and Shuuya's insane compassion for an icy mass murderer strikes me as suicidal.And I'd like to know why this volume of the Ultimate Edition is apparently so very hard to find. Maybe a reprint would be in order?

Fantastically well-made Hardcover edition of this great series!

I have all five Ultimate Edition Volumes (bought them years ago).. never realized that they were so high in price now. These are the only magna books I own so it took some getting use to it, but it is really surprising Let me stress, these aren't for children. They are very graphic with violent images and nudity.Some people compare this story to the Hunger Games (this was first).. but WAY more graphic. The basic story (as you may know if you read the other volumes) is 42 9th grader were gassed (knocked out) as they were on the way to a school field trip and awaken on a remote island. They are in a classroom and it was explained to them that they must all battle to the death until there is 1.I can tell you, it took me some getting use to the graphic nature of this. This isn't for everyone, not even remotely. Once you get use to the violent graphic nature of the story, its a pretty interesting concept. (Read them years ago, just flipped through and it is STILL disturbing).Lets put it this way.. if you like the SAW movies, you then should be able to handle this magna. If you are disturbed by those movies, these books are NOT for you.