Battle Royale
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For the novel, please go to Shuya Nanahara (Novel). For the film, please go to Shuya Nanahara (Film).

Shuya Nanahara (七原 秋也, Nanahara Shūya) is a major character in Battle Royale.

Backstory[]

Shuya is an orphan due to different circumstances. It is suggested that his father was killed by the government for struggling against the regime and his mother dies from an unknown illness which she caught after giving birth to Shuya (in a flashback another child in Shuya's class says "I bet it's something like AIDS"), and Shuya's remaining family rejected him. Shuya was put into an orphanage called the Charity House where he met his best friend Yoshitoki Kuninobu. The Charity House, a Roman Catholic orphanage run by Ryoko Anno. When Shuya first went into care, he felt like nobody cared and that he wanted to be noticed. One day he jumped off the roof and when everybody cheered him, he felt accepted and kept jumping off anything he could. This stopped when, on one occasion, he landed on top of a little girl, injuring her. He felt guilty about it and stopped jumping; by then he felt accepted. He plays basketball and used to play baseball until the coach decided to cut a student from a baseball game, Shuya decided to quit as well after attacking the coach. When Shuya asks the student to start a baseball team with him, the student tells Shuya that he is not interested due to entrance exams. During the summer after this incident Shuya was depressed until he heard rock music on the radio. It was at this moment that he got the dream of being a rock star and started to learn how to play the guitar even though rock and roll is outlawed.

Friends and Enemies[]

Shuya's best friend was Yoshitoki Kuninobu, whom he had known since he came to the Charity House. Shuya's other friends were Hiroki Sugimura, Shinji Mimura, and Yutaka Seto.

Shinji would be Shuya's second closest friend after Yoshitoki. Shinji noticed Shuya after he was kicked off the baseball team and talked about him with Yoshitoki. Shinji thought that Shuya didn't know when to quit but once he heard that this was the way he was and he would do anything, no matter what as long as he thought it was right, then he figured Shuya was a cool guy. Shinji would come over to the Charity House during the summer to check up on the depressed Shuya. Shuya didn't even notice he was there until he was out of his state and they would end up becoming friends and teammates on the basketball team.

Because of his friendship with Shinji, Shuya gained another friend in Shinji's best friend Yutaka . It is unknown how exactly close the two were but Shuya knew that Yutaka would be hard on himself but he knew Yutaka was a good person overall.

Shuya met Hiroki after he witnessed him getting harassed by two karate students at the dojo they all attended. Shuya jumped in and kicked one of the karate students in the face as he felt it was unfair for two of them to pick on a person who didn't want to fight them. Once they challenged him as well, Shuya was ready but failed to deliver another kick and was almost hit but Hiroki saved him and beat both students and the two would become friends from that day on.

Shuya got along with the majority of the girls in class but was clueless when it came to figuring out which ones had crushes on him which were Yukie Utsumi, Noriko Nakagawa, Yumiko Kusaka, and Yukiko Kitano. Yukie's had a crush on him once she saw him on his first day of school, while Noriko's attraction began when she saw him playing baseball for the last time. Yumiko and Yukiko's attractions started earlier as he and Yoshitoki snuck into their classroom in fourth grade to taste some of their food. Shuya announced how good their food was, which made both girls feel better at their work.

Shuya didn't really have any enemies, although he didn't get along with the Kiriyama Family since they picked on students like Yoshio Akamatsu. As a result, Shuya would often try to cheer Yoshio up after he witnessed some of the bullying.

In the Program[]

The Beginning[]

In the story, Shuya is in the class picked to go on The Program, and is gassed on the supposed school trip like the others. Shortly afterward, he wakes up, and the psychotic teacher Yonemi Kamon and organizer of the program reveals that the class are the latest participants of The Program. Shuya is supplied with an Army knife to begin with and as he leaves the classroom, he tells Noriko he will wait for her. While walking through the school he is thinking of the best people he can rally to help him escape and avenge his best friend Yoshitoki. All he finds when outside is the body of Mayumi Tendo and Yoshio Akamatsu, who has gone mad thinking all the people who used to pick on him would try to kill him. After knocking out Yoshio with one of the arrows used by him to kill Mayumi, Shuya runs off with Noriko, who has just come out, and they run off into the woods where Shuya dresses the wound to Noriko’s leg and they then agree that they trust each other and they will stick together. Over the next few hours Shuya and Noriko ally with Shogo Kawada, and Shuya witnesses the deaths of:

  • Boy #3 Tatsumichi Oki, who tries to kill Shuya and Noriko but dies when he and Shuya fall down a hill, resulting in Tatsumichi landing face first on his own machete.
  • Boy #20 Kyoichi Motobuchi who has gone mad and is trying to win for his father and almost kills Shuya with his revolver, but is shot twice by Shogo with his shotgun before he can.
  • Girls #6 Yukiko Kitano and #7 Yumiko Kusaka, who are gunned down from behind by Kazuo Kiriyama while trying to tell everybody not to play.

Noriko then falls ill and Shuya starts to take her to the island clinic. He sees Hirono Shimizu, and Kaori Minami, having a shootout. Kaori has gone mad but Hirono expresses an interest in going with Shuya before she is shot by Kaori, who then turns the gun on Shuya after Hirono runs off. Shogo then saves Shuya by shooting and killing Kaori. He and Shuya then treat Noriko at the clinic. Kawada’s father was a doctor so Kawada knows how to treat her. When leaving the clinic Hiroki Sugimura turns up and he and Shuya agree that they are on the same side and that Sugimura will come with them later but he is looking for Kayoko Kotohiki. They agree when he finds her he will light two fires so that Shuya and the others can see the smoke and then Shogo will use a birdcall device and they will home in it and hook up. Shuya gets separated from the others shortly after they leave the clinic when Kazuo fires at them. Shuya leads him away from the others but is shot and almost killed. Shuya is saved by Hiroki who turns up just in time to help him. Hiroki then leaves Shuya with Yukie Utsumi and the group she has formed in the lighthouse. Shuya has a dream in which he sees Yoshitoki, Shinji and his mother and father and Noriko at which he wakes up and finds out that Mimura is dead and Yukie also reveals to him she has a crush on him and she kisses him using the excuse that they could be dead the next day and that she had to express her feelings. Yuko Sakaki, who witnessed Tatsumichi's death and believed that Shuya did it, hears that Shuya is well and tries to poison him with her weapon of Hydrocyanic acid (cyanide), but accidentally poisons Yuka Nakagawa instead. This leads to the culmination of Satomi Noda's paranoia which ends up killing all the girls except Yuko. Shuya breaks out of the room he was locked up in when he hears all the gunshots, believing that Kiriyama has come back but finds a literal bloodbath of dead girls and a hysterical Yuko. Shuya tries to calm her down, but she runs to the top of the lighthouse and almost falls over the railing but Shuya catches her. Yuko realizes what her inner demons did to her and how they killed her friends, and so she decided to pay for her mistakes. She pries Shuya's fingers open and falls to her death. When looking for Shogo and Noriko, he finds Mizuho Inada who was ill with schizophrenia before the Program (her obsession with Dungeons and Dragons only adds to this, making her believe she is the chosen daughter of the 'Elder Gods') and has been driven past the point of no return and he jumps off a small cliff to escape from her and finds himself standing in the area Shinji's bomb destroyed and he also finds Shinji's dead body.

Vs. Kazuo[]

Shuya's affections for Noriko grow as he starts calling her simply by her first name, "Noriko." Kazuo dies soon after he attacks Shuya and the others. Shuya kills Kazuo. Shuya, Kawada, and Noriko hijack the government boat. Some of the soldiers are kept alive and sent off in a lifeboat. Shogo later dies from his injuries.

Shuya and Noriko also get the name of somebody who can help them by Kawada and the two of them stay in hiding at his place for three months. Shuya goes and checks on the orphanage he grew up in, and sees that Ryoko is still alive, and that she now seems to have a boyfriend and was happy for her. Shuya then goes to the point where Shinji's aunt helps them cross over the Pacific Ocean clandestinely aboard a cargo ship and land in the United States, where they decide to live in New York City. The manga ends with an afterword from Shuya, telling about how they managed to make it to New York, and that he still grieves over the deaths of his classmates and friends. He states "Things were a hell of a lot better than they had a right to be", followed by his final line: "Fucking Game..."

Etymology[]

  • The name Shuya means "autumn" (秋) (shū), and "also" (也) (ya)
  • Shuya's surname Nanahara means "seven" (七) (nana), and "meado, field (原) (hara)
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