Shuya Nanahara

The following is a list of characters that appear in the novel, manga, and film versions of Battle Royale.

Boy #15 Shuya Nanahara (七原 秋也, Nanahara Shūya^?) has witnessed a good deal of troubling events throughout his life. His father was killed by the government for struggling against the regime, and his mother died while he was in third grade. When the rest of his family rejected him, Shuya was put in an orphanage. He is willing to trust others, not wanting to take part in the Battle Royale program. He tries several times to rally fellow students in an attempt to escape, but fails. Consequently, he narrowly escapes death at the hands of his classmates on several occasions. Shuya is a self-proclaimed "rock star", listening to and playing rock 'n' roll music in spite of the ban on the genre. Shuya's favorite artist is Bruce Springsteen. After the death of his best friend Yoshitoki, he vows to protect Yoshitoki's crush, Noriko, in his stead. Shuya survives the contest and escapes. In the manga version he emigrates to the United States.

In the English manga, he has the nickname "Shu."

In the original novel, Shuya develops an anger and feels remorseless when he kills soldiers on the boat. In the manga, Masayuki Taguchi altered Shuya's personality so the characters could differentiate themselves, as he believed the serialization of the manga requires more of this aspect than other mediums such as novel and film. Taguchi described Shuya as developing a justice-oriented personality like "the character of a shonen manga." As Taguchi developed Shuya's pacifistic characteristic, he decided to change the ending and allow for Shuya to spare the soldiers in the boat. Taguchi somewhat felt that Shuya pulled him into the story.

In the film, many of Shuya's characteristics are highly pruned, such as his love for Bruce Springsteen and rock 'n' roll music. However, in the film, he is still an extremely caring individual who desires for his classmates to halt their violence upon each other. In the end, after killing the administrator of the current Battle Royale, Kitano, he and Noriko become fugitives and are wanted by the government.

In the sequel to the film, Shuya becomes a terrorist, leading an army of youths who have either lost a family member or survived a Battle Royale, and declares war on all adults who support and administrate the Battle Royale Act. This forces the government to initiate a new BR Act, called BR II, which sends a single 9th grade class to a terrorist base in order to terminate the threats, with the targeted terrorist being Shuya.

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