Shuya Nanahara

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Shuya (in the left) trying to protect Noriko (in the right).

Shuya Nanahara (七原 Nanahara Shūya) is the main hero from Battle Royale. He is the #15 Boy of the Shiroiwa Junior High Class B of 9th Grade.

Character Background

He 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 Kuninobu, 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. Throughout the film it is shown that many girls (Yukie Utsumi, Yukiko, Mayumi Tendo, and of course Noriko) expressed that they love him, apparently because he is much more caring than most of the other boys in the class. It is also likely that off-screen, Nanahara has always benefited those girls and did caring things for them similar to how he treated Noriko's bullet wound and carried her to safety while she had a fever.

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.

Shuya's men spares few of those sent to his base, killing many of the students and earning the ire of the students who were their friends. Shuya takes the remaining soldiers as prisoners, constantly attempts to persuade them to join his cause, although he is often met with contempt, as the few remaining students in the class refuse to forgive him for the deaths of their comrades.

Eventually, a student named Aoi Takuma allies himself with the terrorist after Shuya offends the United States with a video encouraging the youth of all countries bombed by the US to rise up and rebel, which, in turn, forces the US government to bomb the base. Shuya and Aoi fend off the soldiers sent to storm the base, just long enough for them and their allies to escape while the base is bombed to ashes.

Shuya and Aoi reunite with their allies in Afghanistan and go their separate ways.

He was portrayed by Tatsuya Fujiwara, who portrayed also Light Yagami in the Death Note films.