016 - Battle Royale vol. 9

016: Battle Royale vol. 9   By Koushun Takami and Masayuki Taguchi With English translation by Keith Giffen   Someone plays dead and schoolkids drop like flies.   Theme Music: 'Electro Hype' by Liam Bradbury Podcast created by Jim Fitton and Steven Gorton.   Topics :   ·       Who is Kayako? ·       Kazuo Kiriyama ·       Narrative storytelling technique in this volume, a stream of consciousness a la James Joyce's Ullyses.   Pop culture references:    Superman / Krypton (Sugimura suspects that "Froggy" has body armour)   Synopsis:   The program continues when Sugimura finds the dead body of Hirono via his tracking device. He continues to look for Kayako only to encounter Yoshitori Oda, a.k.a. Frogboy. Kiriyama breaks up the two, he fires at Yoshi and scares off Sugimura. Yoshi plays dead thanks to the use of his body armour. He cries out in the hopes that Kiriyama can come close enough so that he can make a surprise attack. Kiriyama isn't fooled. With his machine gun he evasively ducks down and disembowels Yoshi from his groin.   Having previously survived an encounter with Kazuo Kiriyama, Shuya Nanahara is guided by a vision of his recently departed friends. He shortly wakes up realising he's been nursed by Yukio Utsumi. Utsumi has set up a group of 6 girls with plans to defeat the program. Chisato Matsui, Haruka Tanizawa, Yuka Sakaki, and Satomi Noda. They have taken fort at the island's light house. However, one girl, Yuko Sakaki, is scared of Nanahara, she is paranoid and deluded enough to believe him to be the devil incarnate. Utsumi locks Nanahara in the bedroom with the promise that she'll free him once he gains all of the girl's trust.   Sakaki poisons Nanahara's food but her go awry when the boisterous Yuka insists on serving the food and tries some for herself. Yuka dies prompting the group into a panic. Satomi takes dominance and holds every one hostage whilst demanding the killer to reveal them self.  The cook, Chisato, eventually gets a gun and holds up Satomi only for Satomi to shoot her. In defense of Chisato and the others, Utsumi retaliates and the entire gunfight ends with only one survivor, the person who incidentally started it, Sakaki.   Nanahara breaks out of the bedroom having injured his arm, believing that it is Kiriyama who is responsible for the gunfight.   Instagram –  weappreciatemanga.co.uk Twitter - @RealJamesFitton Website – Weappreciatemanga.com Email – [email protected]