6 ms·

And before Battle Royale, there was Kaiji. It's identical. People with debt invited to a game and a chance at loads of cash. People die in the game and some ge

And before Battle Royale, there was Kaiji. It's identical. People with debt invited to a game and a chance at loads of cash. People die in the game and some get enslaved. Rich people sit in another room and laugh while they watch people suffer. There's even a game where the "contestants" walk high up and fall to their deaths. Then the main character gets called back into the game and you get a season 2.

dudisubekti 2y ago
Yeah I don't understand why people make the connection between Squid Games and Battle Royale. Hunger Games is the one closer to Battle Royale, while Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation.
- echelon 2y ago
  That's the correct analogy and chronology. Another one is Ready Player One borrowed from Sword Art Online, which borrowed from .hack, which borrowed from Serial Experiments Lain, which drew upon a rich pantheon of cyberpunk novels.
  - macleginn 2y ago
    If we're talking about the movie, RPO is roughly 40% Summer Wars.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
  Because Kaiji is just less popular
- peteforde 2y ago
  While I fundamentally agree with you about the lineage, I can appreciate that there is a direct thread of artistically psychotic surrealism in Squid Game that feels inherited from Battle Royale. The pink caskets (which might be my favourite visual element) feel like they would be at home in the world of Battle Royale, but IMO feel way too dark humor for Hunger Games. Battle Royale and Squid Game both feature characters reaching quivering ecstacy when players die. My memory could be rose colored at this point, but Hunger Games just wasn't that dark.
  - ajmurmann 2y ago
    I always thought of Hunger Games as Battle Royale for children. The violence and darkness in general is so very stripped down. IMO that's what made Battle Royale and, as you point out, Squid Game interesting. I do think that's more common in Asian cinema and tv though.
    - peteforde 2y ago
      cough Oldboy cough
  - butlike 2y ago
    As a white male American, I've sort of started to realize that 'asian' media plays with life/death more than american media, which seems to simply delineate: life = good; death = bad instead of exploring the notion of acceptance.
    - peteforde 2y ago
      Sounds like you might enjoy the 1999 movie After Life. A+
  - gamblor956 2y ago
    There are several characters in the first Hunger Games that revel in the death of their competitors, including several that torture their victims to death. A number of the competitors go into the games knowing what they involve, having specifically trained to kill other children. In the second and third Hunger Games novels, the traps and obstacles are designed to torture, maim, and/or inflict painful deaths, for the viewing pleasure of those watching (in the second) or just to inflict pain (in the third). At the end of the final novel, the "good" guys murder a bunch of innocent civilians (including children) in order to assure their ascendancy to power. In terms of darkness, the Hunger Games is darker than Battle Royale. But it's not a direct comparison, since Battle Royale is a satire and Hunger Games is not.
- hmcq6 2y ago
  Same, Battle Royale always seemed anti-government to me where Squid Games is very explicitly anti-capitalist. I know there was a reward for winning and the fundamental reason for the Battle Royale was economic, but I always got the vibe the government was the problem. Like, the kids in Battle Royale weren't exempt if they were rich, right? It was a lottery. Squid Game only appeals to people struggling under capitalism.
  - ajmurmann 2y ago
    Yes! Squid Game is voluntary and motivation is economic pressure or greed whereas Battle Royale is a randomly selected school class which is explicitly a punishment for young people.
    - mejutoco 2y ago
      I wanted to add in BR the schools selected are the ones with the worst academic scores, IIRC.
      - hmcq6 2y ago
        I don't think this is correct. I remember it being a lottery Maybe in Battle Royale 2 it was revealed this was the case
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    Battle Royale was about curbing juvenile delinquency, no overt or fundamental economic reasons. So, same boat, Battle Royale is anti-authoritarian thus in the same line as Hunger Games. Squid Games is anti-capitalist thus in the Running Man (the novel, 1982) line.
  - hibikir 2y ago
    Kaiji and Squid Games could be happening last week, in some warehouse complex, or a missile silo, and we'd never know. The contestants choose to be there, even if the choice isn't exactly free. Meanwhile the point of Battle Royale and Hunger Games is to have the entire world watching. Pure amusement for the rich vs political propaganda trying to remind the masses how little they are worth. A Battle Royale participant is semi-worthless, because every teenager, possibly every person, is seen as worthless. In Kaiji they are setting up situations to show how stupid and immoral the dregs of society are.
- JoeyJoJoJr 2y ago
  > Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation. The presentation comparison is apples to oranges. Kaiji just wouldn’t work as live action (although they tried with a movie) as it relays heavily on the affordances of anime/manga as a medium to present Kaiji’s inner world and show visual metaphors for his emotions. Without that you take away the substance. It’s fair to say Squid Game steals a lot of themes and ideas from Kaiji, but it’s certainly not just Kaiji with different wrapping (unless there is something I am missing having not read the manga).
  - dudisubekti 2y ago
    I guess, it takes a lot of effort to do cross-medium adaptation. Personally I dropped the show mid-series because I have consumed similar stories (Kaiji, Liar's Game) so the show didn't sustain my interest. YMMV That being said, I was thinking of the article when I wrote my comment, they should've featured Kaiji instead of Battle Royale since it's the main inspiration behind the show.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
silisili 2y ago
And before that was Hard Target, which is arguably a better story than both.
imgabe 2y ago
And before that there was The Running Man and The Long Walk both by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) that were about deadly game shows / contests in futuristic dystopias.
- forgotoldacc 2y ago
  There's "inspired by" media with similar concepts, then there's straight up copying it and not even bothering to change the content. Star Wars is inspired by westerns but adds its own flavor. Squid Game straight up copies Kaiji to the point that the only real difference is the language.
  - gostsamo 2y ago
    Star wars is inspired by Dune quite directly.
    - saberience 2y ago
      Eh this is more of a stretch, George was more inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces than he was Dune. Star Wars is telling a completely different story with a different central idea than Dune. The only obvious similarity is a desert planet.
    - MattPalmer1086 2y ago
      I always heard that George Lucas was inspired by The Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa. If you watch it (and it's a great film) the parallels are quite obvious. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
    - jerf 2y ago
      I believe the point is that Star Wars is inspired by enough things and puts enough creativity into the combination that it isn't an obvious rip-off of any of its inspirations. Everything has inspirations. Truly new ideas are rare and often the first author to a truly new idea doesn't necessarily do a great job with it, and certainly can't explore it fully in any one work. But there's definitely a category of "direct ripoffs with little more than the proper nouns filed off". I'm not even targeting that at the current discussion; it has been observed by many people that rather a large number of "Hallmark movies" are literally just the same story, beat for beat, with the details of the participants in the love triangle slightly altered and recast. There's entire genres that are arguably just ripoffs of the genre template, over and over.
golergka 2y ago
There's always a TV tropes page with a much more complete list https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame
lynguist 2y ago
Not only that but Squid Game is literally the “real live adaptation” of Kaiji; the creator has said that it (the initial concept, the premise, etc) is based on Kaiji (he said it’s inspired by a manga with the same theme). The card game with the slave (I love that one) and the “waza” in the background when the main character doubts himself are some iconic missing adaptations. :) Here is an online adaptation of it: https://e-card-kaiji.netlify.app/ https://e-card-kaiji.netlify.app/
- glandium 2y ago
  There are literal live adaptations of Kaiji too (3 feature films starring Fujiwara Tatsuya)
jjmarr 2y ago
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame This dates back to at least Ancient Rome, where slaves would fight each other in the Colosseum for the amusement of spectators. Many people volunteered (actually seeking enslavement) because being a gladiator led to glory and riches. Flamma was granted his freedom 4 times and refused it every time! He refused to quit and ended up dying in his 30s. The idea that someone would voluntarily rejoin the game show of death is very realistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamma That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.
- alterom 2y ago
  >That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement. Same applies to many, many soldiers — and it's not just about the skills. It's just that things don't matter as much anymore outside of that environment.
- 0xEF 2y ago
  This was always so interesting to me, especially when I think back to being a kid. The neighborhood kids would hang out in nearby farms and fields, catching bugs, snakes and frogs...only to put them in jars or terrariums to see if they would fight. In retrospect, it seems positively sociopathic, but it was fun at the time (and spurred a lifelong interest in frogs, for me). As an adult, it makes me wonder if that's what we were doing though; setting up gladiator games to try and feel a dominance over something in a world where we were constantly the bottom of the hierarchal ladder. The above step on the below, so to speak.
mejutoco 2y ago
Lord of the flies is related too.
arkh 2y ago
The power of Kaiji is how the author via the main character thoughts go into the metagame of each game. The art style is "special" but the content of the anime and the manga (because you'll want more of it) are top notch.
kreco 2y ago
Kaiji is a fantastic manga! The atmosphere is quite unique and for 1996 it was so innovative.
slightwinder 2y ago
> And before Battle Royale, there was Kaiji. Coincidentally, they both are from 1996. Though, the Battle Royale-novel was only finished in 1996, while Kaijis first chapter was released in 1996. So maybe they had the same inspiration, or somehow the novel was influenced by the Manga, even though it was so early in its fame.
- nextworddev 2y ago
  In 1996, times were tough after sudden and dramatic burst of the great Japanese real estate bubble. Multi-year recessions, mass layoffs, people turning to sketchy hustles to make side income. Kind of mirrors what's going on in many countries.
throw4847285 2y ago
The best thing about Kaiji is that it falls into one of the most common genres of manga: edutainment. Every challenge is solvable via game theory or social psychology, explained in surprising depth. One of my favorite things about manga is that regardless of what genre a series might seem to fall into, it might also involve in depth explanations of topics either real or fictional. That combination of soap opera and explainer is so common in Manga and seemingly so rare outside of it.
- wruza 2y ago
  I like this even though I don’t read manga. From time to time you just stumble upon a comment that explains that in manga … actually … and it was …. And it all makes a lot of sense! It creates out-of-band immersion unavailable to most western stories, which often just hand-wave shallow stereotypical motivations and world mechanics.
  - throw4847285 2y ago
    It's especially fun when it's the same tone as other instructional works, but the thing being taught is totally fictional. Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui is a phenomenal manga that combines a deep love of classic tabletop gaming, goofy humor, and detailed cooking advice but for cooking monsters. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, because that level of instruction comes with the genre, it can be amazing for a creator to purposefully avoid that. Taiyo Matsumoto is a weird vibey almost abstract artist, and when he took on the classic sports manga structure in Ping Pong he intentionally explains nothing about how Ping Pong works lets the whole story play out via the main characters repressed feelings. Manga rules.
foresto 2y ago
Battle Royale's premise is not identical, but what you're describing does match Squid Game. Is that what you meant to write?

dudisubekti 2y ago

Yeah I don't understand why people make the connection between Squid Games and Battle Royale. Hunger Games is the one closer to Battle Royale, while Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation.

echelon 2y ago
That's the correct analogy and chronology. Another one is Ready Player One borrowed from Sword Art Online, which borrowed from .hack, which borrowed from Serial Experiments Lain, which drew upon a rich pantheon of cyberpunk novels.
- macleginn 2y ago
  If we're talking about the movie, RPO is roughly 40% Summer Wars.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y ago
Because Kaiji is just less popular
peteforde 2y ago
While I fundamentally agree with you about the lineage, I can appreciate that there is a direct thread of artistically psychotic surrealism in Squid Game that feels inherited from Battle Royale. The pink caskets (which might be my favourite visual element) feel like they would be at home in the world of Battle Royale, but IMO feel way too dark humor for Hunger Games. Battle Royale and Squid Game both feature characters reaching quivering ecstacy when players die. My memory could be rose colored at this point, but Hunger Games just wasn't that dark.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  I always thought of Hunger Games as Battle Royale for children. The violence and darkness in general is so very stripped down. IMO that's what made Battle Royale and, as you point out, Squid Game interesting. I do think that's more common in Asian cinema and tv though.
  - peteforde 2y ago
    cough Oldboy cough
- butlike 2y ago
  As a white male American, I've sort of started to realize that 'asian' media plays with life/death more than american media, which seems to simply delineate: life = good; death = bad instead of exploring the notion of acceptance.
  - peteforde 2y ago
    Sounds like you might enjoy the 1999 movie After Life. A+
- gamblor956 2y ago
  There are several characters in the first Hunger Games that revel in the death of their competitors, including several that torture their victims to death. A number of the competitors go into the games knowing what they involve, having specifically trained to kill other children. In the second and third Hunger Games novels, the traps and obstacles are designed to torture, maim, and/or inflict painful deaths, for the viewing pleasure of those watching (in the second) or just to inflict pain (in the third). At the end of the final novel, the "good" guys murder a bunch of innocent civilians (including children) in order to assure their ascendancy to power. In terms of darkness, the Hunger Games is darker than Battle Royale. But it's not a direct comparison, since Battle Royale is a satire and Hunger Games is not.
hmcq6 2y ago
Same, Battle Royale always seemed anti-government to me where Squid Games is very explicitly anti-capitalist. I know there was a reward for winning and the fundamental reason for the Battle Royale was economic, but I always got the vibe the government was the problem. Like, the kids in Battle Royale weren't exempt if they were rich, right? It was a lottery. Squid Game only appeals to people struggling under capitalism.
- ajmurmann 2y ago
  Yes! Squid Game is voluntary and motivation is economic pressure or greed whereas Battle Royale is a randomly selected school class which is explicitly a punishment for young people.
  - mejutoco 2y ago
    I wanted to add in BR the schools selected are the ones with the worst academic scores, IIRC.
    - hmcq6 2y ago
      I don't think this is correct. I remember it being a lottery Maybe in Battle Royale 2 it was revealed this was the case
- Propelloni 2y ago
  Battle Royale was about curbing juvenile delinquency, no overt or fundamental economic reasons. So, same boat, Battle Royale is anti-authoritarian thus in the same line as Hunger Games. Squid Games is anti-capitalist thus in the Running Man (the novel, 1982) line.
- hibikir 2y ago
  Kaiji and Squid Games could be happening last week, in some warehouse complex, or a missile silo, and we'd never know. The contestants choose to be there, even if the choice isn't exactly free. Meanwhile the point of Battle Royale and Hunger Games is to have the entire world watching. Pure amusement for the rich vs political propaganda trying to remind the masses how little they are worth. A Battle Royale participant is semi-worthless, because every teenager, possibly every person, is seen as worthless. In Kaiji they are setting up situations to show how stupid and immoral the dregs of society are.
JoeyJoJoJr 2y ago
> Squid Games is just Kaiji with better presentation. The presentation comparison is apples to oranges. Kaiji just wouldn’t work as live action (although they tried with a movie) as it relays heavily on the affordances of anime/manga as a medium to present Kaiji’s inner world and show visual metaphors for his emotions. Without that you take away the substance. It’s fair to say Squid Game steals a lot of themes and ideas from Kaiji, but it’s certainly not just Kaiji with different wrapping (unless there is something I am missing having not read the manga).
- dudisubekti 2y ago
  I guess, it takes a lot of effort to do cross-medium adaptation. Personally I dropped the show mid-series because I have consumed similar stories (Kaiji, Liar's Game) so the show didn't sustain my interest. YMMV That being said, I was thinking of the article when I wrote my comment, they should've featured Kaiji instead of Battle Royale since it's the main inspiration behind the show.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

silisili 2y ago

And before that was Hard Target, which is arguably a better story than both.

imgabe 2y ago

And before that there was The Running Man and The Long Walk both by Stephen King (as Richard Bachman) that were about deadly game shows / contests in futuristic dystopias.

forgotoldacc 2y ago
There's "inspired by" media with similar concepts, then there's straight up copying it and not even bothering to change the content. Star Wars is inspired by westerns but adds its own flavor. Squid Game straight up copies Kaiji to the point that the only real difference is the language.
- gostsamo 2y ago
  Star wars is inspired by Dune quite directly.
  - saberience 2y ago
    Eh this is more of a stretch, George was more inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces than he was Dune. Star Wars is telling a completely different story with a different central idea than Dune. The only obvious similarity is a desert planet.
  - MattPalmer1086 2y ago
    I always heard that George Lucas was inspired by The Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa. If you watch it (and it's a great film) the parallels are quite obvious. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hidden_Fortress
  - jerf 2y ago
    I believe the point is that Star Wars is inspired by enough things and puts enough creativity into the combination that it isn't an obvious rip-off of any of its inspirations. Everything has inspirations. Truly new ideas are rare and often the first author to a truly new idea doesn't necessarily do a great job with it, and certainly can't explore it fully in any one work. But there's definitely a category of "direct ripoffs with little more than the proper nouns filed off". I'm not even targeting that at the current discussion; it has been observed by many people that rather a large number of "Hallmark movies" are literally just the same story, beat for beat, with the details of the participants in the love triangle slightly altered and recast. There's entire genres that are arguably just ripoffs of the genre template, over and over.

golergka 2y ago

There's always a TV tropes page with a much more complete list https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame

lynguist 2y ago

Not only that but Squid Game is literally the “real live adaptation” of Kaiji; the creator has said that it (the initial concept, the premise, etc) is based on Kaiji (he said it’s inspired by a manga with the same theme). The card game with the slave (I love that one) and the “waza” in the background when the main character doubts himself are some iconic missing adaptations. :) Here is an online adaptation of it: https://e-card-kaiji.netlify.app/ https://e-card-kaiji.netlify.app/

glandium 2y ago
There are literal live adaptations of Kaiji too (3 feature films starring Fujiwara Tatsuya)

jjmarr 2y ago

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DeadlyGame This dates back to at least Ancient Rome, where slaves would fight each other in the Colosseum for the amusement of spectators. Many people volunteered (actually seeking enslavement) because being a gladiator led to glory and riches. Flamma was granted his freedom 4 times and refused it every time! He refused to quit and ended up dying in his 30s. The idea that someone would voluntarily rejoin the game show of death is very realistic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamma That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.

alterom 2y ago
>That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement. Same applies to many, many soldiers — and it's not just about the skills. It's just that things don't matter as much anymore outside of that environment.
0xEF 2y ago
This was always so interesting to me, especially when I think back to being a kid. The neighborhood kids would hang out in nearby farms and fields, catching bugs, snakes and frogs...only to put them in jars or terrariums to see if they would fight. In retrospect, it seems positively sociopathic, but it was fun at the time (and spurred a lifelong interest in frogs, for me). As an adult, it makes me wonder if that's what we were doing though; setting up gladiator games to try and feel a dominance over something in a world where we were constantly the bottom of the hierarchal ladder. The above step on the below, so to speak.

mejutoco 2y ago

Lord of the flies is related too.

arkh 2y ago

The power of Kaiji is how the author via the main character thoughts go into the metagame of each game. The art style is "special" but the content of the anime and the manga (because you'll want more of it) are top notch.

kreco 2y ago

Kaiji is a fantastic manga! The atmosphere is quite unique and for 1996 it was so innovative.

slightwinder 2y ago

> And before Battle Royale, there was Kaiji. Coincidentally, they both are from 1996. Though, the Battle Royale-novel was only finished in 1996, while Kaijis first chapter was released in 1996. So maybe they had the same inspiration, or somehow the novel was influenced by the Manga, even though it was so early in its fame.

nextworddev 2y ago
In 1996, times were tough after sudden and dramatic burst of the great Japanese real estate bubble. Multi-year recessions, mass layoffs, people turning to sketchy hustles to make side income. Kind of mirrors what's going on in many countries.

throw4847285 2y ago

The best thing about Kaiji is that it falls into one of the most common genres of manga: edutainment. Every challenge is solvable via game theory or social psychology, explained in surprising depth. One of my favorite things about manga is that regardless of what genre a series might seem to fall into, it might also involve in depth explanations of topics either real or fictional. That combination of soap opera and explainer is so common in Manga and seemingly so rare outside of it.

wruza 2y ago
I like this even though I don’t read manga. From time to time you just stumble upon a comment that explains that in manga … actually … and it was …. And it all makes a lot of sense! It creates out-of-band immersion unavailable to most western stories, which often just hand-wave shallow stereotypical motivations and world mechanics.
- throw4847285 2y ago
  It's especially fun when it's the same tone as other instructional works, but the thing being taught is totally fictional. Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui is a phenomenal manga that combines a deep love of classic tabletop gaming, goofy humor, and detailed cooking advice but for cooking monsters. And on the opposite end of the spectrum, because that level of instruction comes with the genre, it can be amazing for a creator to purposefully avoid that. Taiyo Matsumoto is a weird vibey almost abstract artist, and when he took on the classic sports manga structure in Ping Pong he intentionally explains nothing about how Ping Pong works lets the whole story play out via the main characters repressed feelings. Manga rules.

foresto 2y ago

Battle Royale's premise is not identical, but what you're describing does match Squid Game. Is that what you meant to write?