Choices in Battle Royale

This is the exact point of the film, eh? I haunts you and goads you to put yourself in their situation and try to answer this question for yourself as honestly as possible...

I generally think - especially at that age - my role would be close to Hiroki Sugimura's. Was always quite independent-minded, never tended to do what I was told to do unless I decided it was worth doing. Even with a solid weapon, most likely I would have kept out of everyone's way as much as possible, and sought out my own objective.
Depending on who was on the island, this probably would have involved finding some people I trusted and trying to take on the system.

Really can't say how this would have panned out, but I'm fairly sure it'd involve my violent death. But that's the same whichever way you go, and at least I'd know I didn't die being a twat.

P!ss myself.

Die.

When darkness overcomes the heart, Lil' Slugger appears...

Honestly I would probably try to hide and wait it out - defend myself when necessary - and hope that the survival-of-the-fittest spiel was part of some grotesque social experiment I could survive by outlasting.

Long post is long. And probably not interesting. Just a warning.

Depends? Are we talking about 14 year old me or present-day me? Over a decade has passed since then, and a lot has changed.

Well, 14 year old me would die. Simple as that. I don't think I'd have tried to kill anyone. I would consider hiding. I would consider taking on the system, but even if I decided to do that I'd not think it through well-enough and die very quickly and senselessly. If I hid I might last awhile... I think the story is a bit unrealistic about how easily people finding each other, considering how large the area is and how few are around. The dangers zones don't mitigate that too much. In the end, though, that would only buy me three days at most before the collar went off, since I wouldn't kill anyone and it would practically guarantee at least one other survivor. So, yeah, I'd die.

If it were me now I'd handle things somewhat differently. I could see things going two different ways, depending on what I decided to do. All I'm certain of is that I would work to not die, but there's more to it than that because I have a rather strong and strict view of life and death that influences my actions and morality.

See, I consider death to be literally the worst possible thing to happen. I think my death is scary and disgusting, and all other deaths are just the same. And I don't really care how one dies, because in the end the state of death is the same, and that is to be avoided. And if nothing is worse than death, then logically any and every amount of suffering is still preferable to it. I also believe that hope only actually dies with death, because only at the very moment of death is the possibility for change truly taken away. So I think thinking a situation is hopeless is short-sighted. All of these ideas make me an ardent pacifist, not because I'm against the use of force, but because I hate death (so nonlethal force is at least morally acceptable, though I'd still argue that it's generally impractical). And it makes me appreciate life more, and make me feel that life is inherently good, the opposite of death, because with life comes possibility and hope.

And because of how strongly I feel about the subject, my agenda in life is simply to prolong lives and prevent deaths, without any note of utilitarianism in that line of thinking.

So I could decide two courses of action. I think one is obviously preferable but probably would have a significantly smaller chance of success.

The preferable action would be to try and actively stop the system to prevent any and all deaths that I could. I would do so by trying to round up people I consider trustworthy, and try to formulate a plan to take out the managers of the game. But this would come with some obvious snags, the first being that I'd be unwilling to kill them either. How would I prevent them from continuing, if they are fully willing to kill me, if I am unable or unwilling to do the same to them? Well, the only courses of action are trying to either reason with them, or restrain them nonlethally by taking away their power. I fully believe such things would be technically possible, but I also believe that they would be extraordinarily difficult and would come with new problems (what about their bosses away from the premises is the main one), and I'm also doubtful that I'd be able to come up with a concrete plan to do these things anyway. So the end result, if attempting to do this, would still most likely result in my death, which is unacceptable, and the situation for others would remain unchanged, which is also unacceptable.

The second option is far worse, in my mind, but possibly would have a rather greater chance of success, and that would be to play to win at all other costs. I would reason that I need to survive at all costs so that I can prevent future deaths later, so I could consider new plans to take out the system, as well as go about my ultimate goals in life that would still benefit many more than forty odd people, if I succeeded in them. But this would completely shatter my morality, which quite firmly states that one death is just as bad as forty, or a million, or everyone, that every death is unacceptable. If all lives are good, and indeed, invaluable, then you can't justify taking one to save another. It is literally trying to put a price on something that is necessarily always beyond price. So I might win, if I was lucky, but it would be a pyrrhic victory.

I don't know which of these I would choose. I would want to choose the former, but I don't know if I would when the latter would seem simpler, safer, and with a better chance of success. It really would be a catch-22, because I'd consider it to be unacceptable to go the more moral (in my view) way and fail, and also to go the immoral way and succeed. The only truly acceptable course of action would be to go the moral way and succeed, but it would be the worst gamble... I don't know if I'm a strong enough person to do that. Even if I tried, I might change my mind if I felt I had to.

This is one of those times when having superpowers would be really helpful helpful. If I could just project force fields around people to prevent them and myself from being harmed, then I could take control of the situation immediately, but, yeah, adding fantasy to fantasy.

tl;dr: I'd probably die by someone else's hand.

This thought experiment is pretty much the only interesting thing to come out of Battle Royale, since the story itself is so problematic. Part of me is thankful it won't ever be a situation I have to deal with, and part of me wishes I'd have a chance to actually experience a situation like it to test myself and see if I could handle it. Only if it were actually some sort of hyper-realistic shared simulation, though... though if I knew about it, I wouldn't feel any qualms about trying to stop it and failing, so I'd lose some realism. I'd just try new things over and over, like my personal Kobayashi Maru.

It's really impossible for me to know how I would react in that situation, and what I would do. I doubt i'd have the guts to try fighting back against the system, and even if I did I doubt I would be able to trust others enough to band together and achieve it. That's one of the things about the game; people you trusted yesterday, you have no idea whether you can trust now that you've all been thrust into the game and everyone is going through these struggles in their heads. At the same time i'm sure I wouldn't be able to go around looking for other people and killing them the way Kiriyama or Mitsuko did. No matter how badly I want to live or how desperate my circumstances, I can't imagine finding it within me to do that. What i'd probably do is find some out-of-the-way hiding place and wait it out, hoping that everyone else will just wipe each other out and i'd be the last one left. Unless someone else has one of those trackers like Hiroki had, in which case i'm simply screwed (even if the original person wouldn't use it to hunt me down, someone more aggressive who captures it would). I'm pretty sure i'd do anything I need to to defend myself if someone aggressive found me and came at me, but that would probably be it. I think a less likely, but still real, possibility is that i'd simply commit suicide. In the end I have no idea and I could never possibly know unless i'm ever put in that situation, which fortunately I never will be.

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free."
- Goethe

To me it seems like the most sensible thing to do would be to join the computer/pyrotechnic-obsessed guys and hope they think of something or find out how to remove the necklaces.
Still, this situation would be so complex and specific that one can't really be sure how to react. Actually a very thought-provoking movie.

Okay, I may have thought about this too much but here goes:

Unless I'm the last person out, my first thought is that the people coming out of the building are easy pickings, so the question is do I stay? I could probably kill 2 people and still get away. When I actually get out I can't decide whether I want to commit to something that awful, morality comes to the forefront as well as fear of others with similar plans, and I run in a direction I don't think other people will go. I find a quiet place and examine my map, if there is any secluded area of coastline, any bottlenecks, any areas that look like defendable high-ground I go there. I hide and secure my position, if my weapon is good then I stay like that, if my weapon is bad then I put some extra effort into the hiding part. I stay there as long as possible and defend my bunker. I either die defending it or wait until a few people left and then 'play the game' - anybody who is left is more likely to be one of the psychopaths than not, I fight and commit to it.

If there are any groups like the last three in the actual movie, I don't know what I'd do, they're not evil, they don't deserve to die. If I see that I honestly don't know.