alt.hn

1/10/2025 at 5:53:06 AM

Before Squid Game, there was Battle Royale

 https://www.tokyoweekender.com/entertainment/movies-tv/before-squid-game-there-was-battle-royale/

by ecliptik

1/10/2025 at 4:31:38 PM

There is a much stronger connection between Battle Royale and Hunger Games, than Squid Game. Very similar government depiction, the announcement of deaths etc. Moreover, we should appreciate Battle Royale even more - because it was done waaay before any prior art existed.

by postexitus

1/10/2025 at 5:32:03 PM

You know what they call Battle Royale in France?

Hunger Games with Cheese.

I saw Battle Royale as a subbed bootleg around 20 years ago. Fantastic B-movie, and I understand some of the young actors got some notable roles as they got older (Takeshi Kitano was there because he was Takeshi Kitano), but it’s still a B-movie. Good time though, even today.

As an aside on Takeshi, for those who want to go down a rabbit hole, dig into “Takeshi’s Challenge” on the Nintendo Famicom. That game is a trip.

by MrFoof

1/10/2025 at 6:14:49 PM

I got that wrong.

“You know what they call the Hunger Games in France? Battle Royale with Cheese.”

Too many things going on, typed it in backwards!

by MrFoof

1/10/2025 at 11:51:49 PM

First version was funnier.

by tracerbulletx

1/10/2025 at 7:56:23 PM

This is a better joke too.

by deanputney

1/11/2025 at 12:52:31 AM

disagree. putting it on its head makes it funnier imo

by notnaut

1/10/2025 at 6:35:12 PM

Why not just edit your original comment?

by OnlineGladiator

1/10/2025 at 6:45:08 PM

I was past edit window.

by MrFoof

1/10/2025 at 8:48:22 PM

You can edit up to 2 hours after you write your comment.

by OnlineGladiator

1/10/2025 at 10:31:23 PM

that changes if people have voted on it or replied to it.

by notatoad

1/10/2025 at 10:58:53 PM

But then if they have cheese, why would they be hungry?

by gregschlom

1/11/2025 at 2:26:12 AM

Are people not getting the Pulp fiction reference?

by solumunus

1/11/2025 at 8:20:54 AM

It is 30 years after pulp fiction came out.

Last year I was chatting with the 20 year old son of a friend, and he didn't know what Highlander was. I mean...

by auggierose

1/11/2025 at 11:41:34 AM

> Last year I was chatting with the 20 year old son of a friend, and he didn't know what Highlander was.

Well there was only the one movie.

by dghf

1/10/2025 at 7:30:02 PM

I wonder if anyone will pick up Red Rising at some point. Might be too expensive to do properly

by christkv

1/10/2025 at 9:03:56 PM

hope so

by chrisweekly

1/10/2025 at 6:26:35 PM

First introduced to Takeshi Kitano in the 2000 remake of "Zatoichi" (highly recommend).

by JKCalhoun

1/11/2025 at 2:04:33 AM

In 2003 I was first unknowingly introduced to Takeshi Kitano on MXC on Spike. That fall in a Japanese film class I saw him in Sonatine which remains one of my favorite movies. Then in the spring of 2004 Zatoichi was released and I saw it in theaters. I had a year in my life where Takeshi Kitano was *everywhere*.

by JoblessWonder

1/11/2025 at 12:44:54 AM

If you like Beat Takeshi I can't recommend his "Outrage" trilogy enough.

by VectorLock

1/11/2025 at 4:53:24 PM

The outrage trilogy is amazing, I would also recommend Sonatine and Hana-bi.

by juliusgeo

1/11/2025 at 8:01:35 PM

Zatoichi is so so. Watch Sonatine.

by ekianjo

1/11/2025 at 2:19:47 PM

>but it’s still a B-movie

It was "the third highest-grossing Japanese film of 2001". "At the 2001 Japanese Academy Awards, Battle Royale was nominated for nine awards, including Picture of the Year, and won three of them".

Hardly a b-movie, except in the sense "not a Hollywood blockbuster crapfest"

by coldtea

1/11/2025 at 8:06:44 PM

Fujiwara did not have to wait to become a famous actor after BR. The same for Shibasaki Ko (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ko_Shibasaki)

People focus on Kitano too much he was just a secondary character in that movie.

by ekianjo

1/11/2025 at 3:14:14 AM

Battle Royale was a novel before it was a movie, and it's a much better novel than movie.

by achileas

1/11/2025 at 8:24:10 AM

lord of the flies is the name of the novel?

by homarp

1/11/2025 at 2:21:33 PM

Probably not, since aside from "kids in an island" there's no relation between the two, anymore than there is between and Gulligan's Island and the Castaway, or Alien and Passangers ("people on a spaceship").

by coldtea

1/11/2025 at 3:33:12 AM

Takeshi Kitano , AKA Vic Romano of Takeshi's Castle ("MxC" in US cable networks).

For anyone that misses that jewel of japanese game show, they have rebooted the franchise and the new series are available in Amazon prime.

by IG_Semmelweiss

1/10/2025 at 11:04:38 PM

Also, Asakusa Kid (biopic of him) is a really good movie, and Hana-bi is a great movie as well.

by peterarmstrong

1/10/2025 at 5:51:13 PM

> battle royale was a B movie

Yeah, if it's not an American movie, it's some cheap shit! /s

My brother, it was nominated for nine Japanese Academy Awards, it was helmed by one of Japan's top directors, is an adaptation of a best-selling novel, is regarded by critics as one of the best films of the era, has high production values, stars arguably the most famous actor in Japan, was scored by a famous and prolific composer (you might have heard his music in another movie called Django Unchained), etc.

That's not even getting into the economics of film in Japan. A successful film in Japan nowadays earns around $10M on a budget of half a million. BR, produced nearly twenty years ago, had a budget nearly ten times that much and grossed triple.

Suffice it to say, Battle Royale is a high production cost movie, which forecloses the possibility of it being a B movie.

and because I'm just some guy,

https://variety.com/2018/film/asia/japan-ethics-of-making-ch...

by KPGv2

1/10/2025 at 6:30:31 PM

I’ll stick my neck out and assert that “cheap” films are better, anyway: movie budgets’ sizes are inversely proportional to the producers’ risk tolerance; therefore, big money films are devoid of originality and any message they carry is nought but masturbatory self-aggrandisement.

The best films I’ve ever watched, that which had the biggest effect on me, were TV-plays and self-funded documentary-films.

by DaiPlusPlus

1/11/2025 at 2:46:26 AM

>> big money films are devoid of originality

That may be true for some but at the really high end, writers have the resources to so some fun things. Even many high-end marvel-style movies have hidden jokes and themes that 99% of viewer don't ever pick up on.

by sandworm101

1/12/2025 at 2:10:27 AM

Example - Dune 2. Good looking junk.

by emmelaich

1/10/2025 at 5:03:28 PM

IIRC, Stephen King's "The Running Man" and "The Long Walk" predate both Battle Royale and Hunger Games and deal with similar themes.

by commandlinefan

1/10/2025 at 6:20:59 PM

"The Running man" by Stephen King was published in 1982, the movie starring Schwarzenegger was released in 1987 (another adaptation will be released this year in 2025)

The story is similar to a Robert Sheckley's short story from 1952,"The Prize of Peril" adapted into a movie in Germany in 1970 "Das Millionenspiel" and in France in 1982 "Le prix du danger" (same year as King's Running Man novel)

I would say "The Prize of Peril" is the grandfather of these books, movies and series, as far as I know. Battle Royale is the start of another branch, though : it's not one vs many anymore, it's many vs many.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prize_of_Peril

by mlok

1/11/2025 at 12:19:35 AM

Would The Most Dangerous Game maybe be an earlier ancestor? Although the game in that is more one sided.

by harimau777

1/11/2025 at 12:07:14 PM

Perhaps the core source of inspiration are the roman gladiator arenas, themselves probably inspired from olympic games.

by astrobe_

1/11/2025 at 8:22:04 AM

The Most Dangerous Game walked so Hard Target could run

by skhr0680

1/11/2025 at 7:01:38 AM

Definitely at least some cousin branch of the family tree...

by jondwillis

1/11/2025 at 4:17:34 AM

Best episode of beavis and butthead

by johnvanommen

1/10/2025 at 10:36:38 PM

> it's many vs many. More like everyone against everyone.

by croes

1/10/2025 at 11:48:30 PM

So Hobbes' "war of all against all" is the real prior art, then?

by blacksmith_tb

1/10/2025 at 5:23:46 PM

The Long Walk is cited by the Battle Royale author as an inspiration.

by russdill

1/16/2025 at 3:58:03 AM

He also has his protagonists hail from the fictional town of Shiroiwa-cho 白岩町, which is a direct translation of King's frequently-seen "Castle Rock". I wonder how many Japanese readers of the original spotted that.

by Dunan

1/10/2025 at 6:58:07 PM

Collins has cited "The King Must Die", Mary Renault's book about Theseus and the Minotaur, as a primary inspiration for the The Hunger Games, FWIW.

by mkehrt

1/10/2025 at 9:03:16 PM

The Most Dangerous Game was published in 1924

by tootie

1/11/2025 at 12:16:20 AM

I vividly remember watching Battle Royale with my college roommate, and when it was over, we looked at each other and said "this would be an incredible premise for a video game". This would have been like 2004. We even tried to mod it into the original FarCry engine (the island setting was perfect), but it was too difficult for us. Too bad we didn't actually have the chops to do it, could have gotten the jump on Fortnite/PUBG by over a decade lol. Really wish we had stayed motivated, looking back on it.

edit: But yes, Battle Royale is a great movie, and Hunger Games totally rode its coattails.

by jdwithit

1/11/2025 at 10:35:35 AM

I had the same idea after watching Hunger Games. Played around with the concept for a few weeks and then eventually tossed it. My first interaction with Fortnite was when I saw them selling t-shirts in a brick and mortar shop.

But I don't feel hard done by, I'm sure many people had similar ideas around that time, and I never executed. I also have no idea how I would get a large multiplayer game off the ground without funding. The idea of making even a two-player game scares me.

by sd9

1/11/2025 at 11:50:37 AM

Before Fortnite released its Battle Royale game, it was a PVE survival/crafting shooter. It did the Battle Royale game mode copying the absolute sensation that was PUBG in 2017

But PUBG began as a series of mods for Arma 3, before moving to its own game with its own monetization (and running like absolute crap on release too).

I think there have been versions of PUBG mods for Arma for much longer than when I discovered it.

by automatic6131

1/11/2025 at 4:09:50 AM

Stephen King's "The Long Walk" was published in 1979

"Every year, on the first day of May, one hundred teenage boys meet for an event known through- out the country as "The Long Walk." Among this year's chosen crop is sixteen-year-old Ray Gar- raty. He knows the rules: that wamings are issued if you fall under speed, stumble, sit down. That after three wamings... you get your ticket. And what happens then serves as a chilling reminder that there can be only one winner in the Walk— the one that survives"

by WalterBright

1/10/2025 at 4:55:00 PM

Lord of the Flies?

by Lich

1/10/2025 at 5:00:55 PM

Definitely relevant and maybe inspirational, though I find "fight to death game show" format quite distinctive, so much so that it created its game genre 15 years later even with the same name as the movie.

by postexitus

1/10/2025 at 5:05:22 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Most_Dangerous_Game

by sitkack

1/10/2025 at 5:17:46 PM

interesting, had no idea!

by postexitus

1/10/2025 at 6:28:32 PM

Yeah, that was the oldest reference to humans hunting humans I could muster.

by JKCalhoun

1/10/2025 at 5:17:33 PM

Smash TV arcade game is from 1990. Not that distinctive in gaming.

by kevin_thibedeau

1/10/2025 at 5:33:07 PM

Big money! Big prizes! … IIIII LOVE IT!

by MrFoof

1/10/2025 at 8:59:55 PM

Manhunt?

by rubatuga

1/10/2025 at 10:42:52 PM

[dead]

by dr-detroit

1/11/2025 at 4:37:37 AM

Squid game reminded me a lot more of Liar game (the many variants) than a battle royale, though no one dies in the latter.

I especially like the “minority rule” game.

by pockmarked19

1/10/2025 at 4:36:00 PM

Amen!

by csswizardry

1/10/2025 at 5:04:36 PM

There's also mechanical similarities to Fortnite and PUBG. Especially the variety of weapons and an ever-shrinking map.

by kelseyfrog

1/10/2025 at 5:12:44 PM

PUBG and Fortnite are both directly inspired by Battle Royale. The whole video game genre exists and is named such because of that movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_royale_game

PUBG was inspired by the movie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PUBG:_Battlegrounds

Fortnite added Battle Royale game mode because they saw how popular PUBG was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortnite_Battle_Royale

by codetrotter

1/10/2025 at 5:22:35 PM

> The whole video game genre exists and is named such because of that movie.

If so, then it is ultimately named for the pro wrestling free-for-all format. The author says in the foreword that's how he chose the name for the book.

by arrosenberg

1/11/2025 at 3:43:02 AM

So they renamed the game from PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (thus why everybody called it PUBG) to PUBG: Battlegrounds. So what does the BG in PUBG stand for? The game is a real example of a PIN number!

by philistine

1/10/2025 at 5:11:15 PM

Unsurprisingly, since PUBG was essentially "what if Battle Royale was a video game?", and Fortnite is a PUBG clone.

by Nullabillity

1/10/2025 at 5:37:09 PM

Well, the free side of Fortnite is a PUBG clone. The old, paid zombie/horde side is coop

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 8:29:47 AM

It’s a little odd to me how much media attention these shows are getting, yet how little debt, more specifically usurious interest rates that lead to inescapable debt, as a general factor of modern life is discussed.

I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on. But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 3:38:44 PM

> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company.

I think my take on that is even more cynical: they'd be absolutely happy to make a story along those lines as long as they could monetize it successfully.

I thought the first season of Squid Game was wonderful and it depressed me to no end to see how thoroughly the whole thing was monetized. I get it, it's the way of the world, but seeing Netflix commission a "real life" game show, kids in Squid Game outfits at Halloween, the fact that the second season largely exists because the creator was financially screwed out of the first... I don't think it's possible to make a broader argument about any of this stuff without the distributors immediately undermining it.

by afavour

1/10/2025 at 5:52:25 PM

> the creator was financially screwed out of the first.

I wasn't aware of that until watching this recently: The Capitalist Body Horror of Squid Game https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCxNnAAbKk4

by crtasm

1/10/2025 at 3:25:43 PM

"But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company."

You've never heard of Breaking Bad? More recently, Emily the Criminal is an absolutely superb movie and great example of exactly this - Aubrey Plaza's best role in fact.

""Saddled with student debt and unable to find work, a college graduate becomes involved in a credit card scam, acting as a dummy shopper and buying increasingly risky products with stolen credit cards.""

For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance.

""Set in the near future when artificial organs can be bought on credit, it revolves around a man who struggles to make the payments on a heart he has purchased.""

by piltdownman

1/10/2025 at 3:52:34 PM

> You've never heard of Breaking Bad?

Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs that fhe character does not have ready access to funds to pay.

It does feature hubris, the traditional central feature of tragedy, though.

by dragonwriter

1/10/2025 at 4:00:11 PM

It's been a while since I watched it and I'm pretty sure he wasn't in debt but I thought the reason he decided to do it was to help pay for the treatment so he didn't go in debt and to leave a nest egg behind for his family when he died. It may not be exactly what the OP stated but it's a pretty similar situation.

by tarentel

1/10/2025 at 4:08:30 PM

That’s the reason he states but he was given multiple opportunities and chances to have his medical care covered for but opted for continually selling drugs instead.

Every goal he wanted (getting enough money to pay for college for his children, paying living expenses for a decade, etc) he met and still continued.

He even says so in the last episode, he did it because it made him feel alive.

by azemetre

1/10/2025 at 4:35:20 PM

He absolutely becomes that person by the end, but it's unclear whether it would have happened were it not for mountainous medical expenses for treatment.

by croon

1/10/2025 at 4:50:04 PM

Elliot Schwartz offers to pay for all of Walter's medical treatments in episode 5 and Gretchen does the same in episode 6 of season 1. The show is about pride, not desperation

by derektank

1/11/2025 at 7:18:54 AM

True, but government provided affordable healthcare is different from charity. Turning down your friends' donations out of pride is one thing, refusing your healthcare provider covering your expenses I would find hard to believe.

by Tainnor

1/10/2025 at 5:00:14 PM

I think it's about megalomania. Walter White is entertaining but deplorable.

by Clamchop

1/16/2025 at 10:36:52 AM

I'm not convinced that changes my point. Whether you look at it as an excuse to become that person or not, the excuse would not exist in an alternate version where healthcare was not ruinously expensive.

by croon

1/10/2025 at 4:58:29 PM

> but I thought the reason he decided to do it was to help pay for the treatment so he didn't go in debt and to leave a nest egg behind for his family

The initial diagnosis is that it is terminal and without useful treatment options and his rationalization for cooking meth is to leave a nest egg. The high cost treatment comes up later and he immediately turns down an offer of no-strings payment in favor of cooking more meth to pay for it (Epsiodes 4-5).

The only medical service he pays for out of drug money before turning down the offer to pay for all treatment is the initial evaluation with the highly-rated oncologists that his wife schedules on her own without a clear plan of how they’ll pay for it from which the treatment plan originates.

by dragonwriter

1/10/2025 at 4:58:06 PM

I watched the first 4 or so episodes and got to the one where the rich friend offered to pay for everything but he declined. I was like "this guy's an ass." and didn't have any motivation to keep watching.

by jccalhoun

1/10/2025 at 5:04:45 PM

You have understood the point correctly then.

by nancyminusone

1/10/2025 at 6:48:23 PM

"Walter, diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, conspires with Jesse to cook crystal meth to pay for his treatment and provide financial security for his family."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_Bad

by brandall10

1/10/2025 at 8:02:05 PM

Watch the show. He is given multiple opportunities to walk away while getting everything he wants but continues making meth because he is an arrogant man.

All the despicable actions he did during the show (watching his partners GF OD and not intervening, running over two people with a car, poisoning a child, letting a child get murdered, collaborating with neo nazis, and selling Jesse into slavery) were not done to help his family but for his own selfish gains.

That’s like the entire point of the show, selfish man wants his own nut at the cost of his loved ones.

by azemetre

1/10/2025 at 8:36:13 PM

I've seen it three times beginning to end, most recently during the pandemic.

I get his evolution as a character as that's the primary theme, but it never would even be a thing is he didn't have cancer.

You remove this factor, no Heisenberg. Full stop.

by brandall10

1/10/2025 at 8:47:42 PM

meh, you see this is where I disagree. We know how slighted Walter feels about leaving Gray Matter. A company that only succeeded due to his ideas. He wanted something himself to control, the cancer was just a catalyst. If it wasn't that it would have been something else.

by azemetre

1/10/2025 at 8:57:15 PM

The Gray Matter storyline happened at least 20 years before the events of the show began. There's no indication he would have broken bad/lashed out due to this, by all indications he led a normal life since then and is seen by everyone he knows as a upstanding, somewhat meek but respectable person with no outward character flaws.

The cancer diagnosis and its implications for him and his family is what sparked this. And he continued further down that path due to believing he was going to actually die. If you recall when he decided to get treatment and found out he was in remission, there was a moment of "wtf have I done" for his character.

The Gray Matter backstory, and his former cofounders re-entrance in his life due to perceived medical bills explained the peeling the onion that led to his shift.

by brandall10

1/10/2025 at 8:21:39 PM

He started out on that path because of the medical issues, but it's absolutely true that he continued it because of selfish reasons (that grow larger until the very end of the show).

Admittedly, the focus on debt was very small. The Korean shows put a lot more emphasis on it.

by lawn

1/10/2025 at 4:23:38 PM

> Breaking Bad does not feature medical debt, or even medical costs

But it is the story of a father doing everything possible to make sure his family is taken care of after he is gone.

by rs999gti

1/10/2025 at 5:06:40 PM

"Everything" except allowing help from the people who want to help, I suppose.

by nilamo

1/11/2025 at 3:38:41 PM

Found Gus Fring's account.

by triceratops

1/10/2025 at 5:42:45 PM

> For the medical debt angle, the macabre and outrageous 'Repo Man'(2010) is a pitch-dark and fascinating examination of the end-game of medical insurance.

I really hate the twist ending in that movie. Please, screenwriters stop doing that, it ceased to be original like 30 years ago. Aside from the ending, good movie.

by throw_m239339

1/10/2025 at 9:29:12 PM

I'll have to check out Emily the Criminal, because I'm convinced her best role was as Lenny in Legion.

by sudosteph

1/11/2025 at 3:36:48 AM

Repo Men is the 2010 film; Repo Man is the 1984 one.

To stay on topic, Repo! The Generic Opera (2008) is another film - a musical, even! - that covers a very similiar topic.

Zydrate comes in a little glass vial...

by pavel_lishin

1/10/2025 at 3:57:19 PM

Debt is a common trope in Korean shows and establishes the characters are destitute and answers why they would become contestants in this show. Then the show creator has the set up that allows them to start poking at class hierarchy.

In asking for a critique of debt in general, you are asking for a different show.

Squid Games is gets a lot of attention from the games and mass deaths of the contestants, but ultimately it is a Korean show using a different "language of film" than international audiences might be used to. Think of how silly a lot of hollywood tropes are if you stand back and look.

Try "My Mister" if you want a different take on a destitute character.

by wanderingmoose

1/10/2025 at 5:02:36 PM

Reborn rich

by fennecfoxy

1/10/2025 at 11:23:34 AM

Do Korea or Japan even have student loans or medical debt?

I think you are confusing these US specific phenomenons with global ones.

by ralfd

1/10/2025 at 3:36:29 PM

At least for Korea, both exist. Tuition debt is almost a non-factor though. Medical debt can be, but of course nothing like the US

On the contrary, debts from failed businesses (as used in the series) are incredibly common here - probably the most common kind of debt that makes people spiral out of society. Korea has a very high percentage of people who try at some point to start some kind of small business, much higher than the US or Western Europe. Of course this can easily go wrong.

So yes, the debts used in the series are apt for Korea.

by maeil

1/10/2025 at 3:26:47 PM

That's kind of interesting that you say that, since multiple characters are raising money due to medical reasons.

Technically it's not debt (treatment hasn't occurred, no money is owed), but medical issues are still a big deal even in countries with more accessible healthcare.

by atrus

1/10/2025 at 7:03:27 PM

Wouldn't Korea have medical debt for the cosmetic surgery which is very popular there? Or is that sort of thing free too?

by lupusreal

1/10/2025 at 11:45:51 AM

Not sure it really matters that much. Squid Game is a global phenomenon and even though it’s ostensibly a Korean series, it’s pretty clearly funded by the very American corporation Netflix.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 3:19:11 PM

Its a korean show, created by a korean under a korean production company with the rights purchased by Netflix. It matters a lot and is a really weird take to think it is not Korean.

by infecto

1/10/2025 at 3:22:05 PM

As far as I can tell the show only got made because Netflix specifically developed it and funded it.

Of course it is “Korean” in that the employees and actors are all Korean, but the show seems to be entirely funded by Netflix. Which means Netflix obviously had a say in the content.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 6:37:34 PM

Netflix obviously wanted a Korean show, otherwise they wouldn't have funded Koreans to make the show in Korea, they would have funded Americans to make the show in Hollywood.

I applaud Netflix for actually embracing diversity of content and having great shows produced outside Hollywood, and the results speak for themselves (not just Squid Game).

by wongarsu

1/10/2025 at 6:54:23 PM

Yes netflix funded it but its still a korean written and produced show? It just seems like a weird take that because Netflix is paying it should somehow be Americanized/Globalized.

by infecto

1/10/2025 at 3:29:27 PM

Give it up

by tucnak

1/10/2025 at 3:32:22 PM

?

Everything I read about the show indicates that it was directly a Netflix production that didn’t exist until the writer brought the script to Netflix’s office in Seoul. Do you have information that says otherwise?

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 6:19:30 PM

Saudi Oil finances half the things in your life; it doesn't make any of them Saudi in nature

by tucnak

1/10/2025 at 4:45:35 PM

I’m just butting in here and I thought you were wrong. However I looked it up and indeed you are right. The creative talent are all Korean but they couldn’t get a studio to fund production for their show. Netflix was approached and liked the script and funded them. It’s all in the wiki and pretty easy to catch up on the info.

I also think you’re right about the global resonance. If this was purely a Korean issue I don’t think it would be as darkly appealing as it is. As an American who is almost done paying off a lot of student debt - I definitely identify with the characters, although their desperation is much worse than mine. I absolutely remember believing that if I didn’t succeed I would have to cut life short. If a few things hadn’t broken my way - I’d probably be in that squid game too.

by Pigalowda

1/10/2025 at 3:40:21 PM

This is a strange hill to die on, Squid Game is a global phenomenon because it's good, I posit that if Netflix had stamped AMERICA all over it, it may not have been good.

For the other 50% of Netflix's users outside of the US, they can relate to your problems as much or as little as you can relate to those of Koreans in the show.

by alias_neo

1/10/2025 at 2:05:00 PM

Netflix might be American, but making Koreans have specifically American problems would ruin the suspension of disbelief.

by Tade0

1/10/2025 at 3:00:32 PM

Netflix is specifically buying local productions. Changing them on fundamental levels just to cater some us-viewer seems pointless.

by slightwinder

1/10/2025 at 3:23:09 PM

That is true in some cases, but not Squid Game, which was specially produced by Netflix.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 4:06:30 PM

Which is what I meant. They look for promising projects in other countries and finance them partly or even buy them as a whole. But those projects usually already existed before Netflix came in, meaning they are not specifically designed for Netflix and the US-market. Squid Game for example was written 10 years before Netflix started financing them. And this is even more obvious when they finance sequels to old series which were already running decades ago.

by slightwinder

1/10/2025 at 4:08:32 PM

I’m not sure how that really is an argument against my point. Thousands of scripts exist, and in the process of them getting made, the funders and producers have influence on the content.

The idea that fully-written scripts are just made without any input or pushback from the funders/producers is not how the film industry works.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 4:58:07 PM

No, that's exactly how the Industry (also) works. There are different styles of projects, but scripts being finished before any money flows in, is pretty common. And at those point changes are usually small. And usually they also don't plan ahead to become some global hit.

But the point is that Netflix specifically buys productions from different countries, to cater to the fans of those cultures. If they wanted to have a US-ified script, they wouldn't need to go to such lengths, they could just hire some us-asian writer to get another ethnic US-series.

by slightwinder

1/10/2025 at 5:57:09 PM

Please detail some of the specific things that Netflix influenced to make Squid Games less Korean.

by monkey_monkey

1/10/2025 at 5:50:51 PM

I think they're making a <valid> claim that funding creates a bias. Netflix funding squid game created a bias to rewrite a potentially-done script for US audiences.

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 6:44:42 PM

Yes. No one else seems to be able to read the comments up thread.

Netflix funded the production. Netflix has an influence on what the script is.

At no point was I interested in arguing about whether it was a “Korean show” or not.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 7:37:45 PM

Netflix wants subscribers in Korea so they have every motivation to create content that Korean people want to watch. If Americans like it as well that is just a bonus.

by tuna74

1/12/2025 at 3:24:56 AM

Netflix funds and produces lots of local productions targeted at local markets, with zero eye towards the US market[0]. They still get international subtitles because that's cheap enough. If those shows turn out to have a more global appeal than expected, great, but they were still only originally targeted at the local market. It makes no sense if Netflix is trying to gain subscribers in Korea to make a Korean show targeted at US audiences.

[0]Example: https://about.netflix.com/ja/news/asura-trailer-special-art

by kalleboo

1/10/2025 at 6:01:05 PM

> credit cards with 25% interest rates

This is actually illegal in South Korea

> medical debt

South Korea has a single-payer system

> student loan debt

I think this is much less of a problem in S Korea than in the US.

by KPGv2

1/10/2025 at 11:06:01 PM

This is the answer, you're expecting a South Korean show to depict US problems, because culture is invisible if you're in it. These problems don't exist in many countries (e.g. here in Greece we have free education and healthcare, so you can't have student loans or medical debt).

by stavros

1/10/2025 at 9:08:07 PM

South Korea ranks near the top in highest amounts of consumer debt. Significantly higher than the US.

by tootie

1/11/2025 at 7:22:19 AM

I did't say anything about consumer debt, did I? And I didn't respond to someone talking about it, did I?

by KPGv2

1/10/2025 at 6:20:54 PM

Yeah, we really shouldn't ask a South Korean show to depict American problems

by wongarsu

1/10/2025 at 3:51:03 PM

> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions, but it would be more interesting IMO if the contestants were in debt from student loans, credit cards with 25% interest rates, medical debt, and so on.

Student loan and medical debt don't have the kind of ticking clock that the issues in Squid Game (whether its payments on debt to gangsters, anticipated costs without which a loved on won’t get medical care, or whatever) have.

by dragonwriter

1/10/2025 at 9:21:04 AM

I'm in your camp. Media like Squid Game annoy me to no end because they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual, rather than circumstance. And this, the system that continues to create student loans debt, housing debt, etc, goes relatively unacknowledged for another day.

As a result, I have trouble having any sympathy for characters portrayed in stuff like Squid Game. They brought it on themselves through their own greed, right? That is what we are supposed to think, I suppose. The show touches only mildly on why Player 456 needs to gamble on horses, showing that his mother is sick and that he is rather destitute after a failed marriage and being laid off, presumably unable to find different work. We're supposed to empathize with that position, but it certainly does not reflect my own debt struggle, nor that of anyone who is suffering the same fate I am which is driven by a lending system that turns us into indentured servants. I don't gamble or take any real financial risks. I just made the mistake of being born with a lifelong medical condition, trying to buy a house and a decent car, and put my kid through college, and I suddenly find myself in a very deep hole with zero chance of escaping before I die. Of course, on screen, that's not as sexy as debt from crime and gambling.

by 0xEF

1/10/2025 at 3:33:51 PM

> Media like Squid Game annoy me to no end because they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual, rather than circumstance

You didn't watch the show then? This simply isn't the case.

by wavemode

1/10/2025 at 11:41:50 PM

they perpetuate the idea that any severe debt someone might be in is always the fault of the individual

Irresponsibility -> debt is just one of the multiple motivations for the fictional contestants. Others include medical costs for family members, being impoverished by someone else's bad actions, being threatened for a debt incurred by someone else, and so on. You're arguing against a simplistic and inaccurate summary of the story by generalizing from the main character.

by anigbrowl

1/10/2025 at 3:12:12 PM

One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into debt because of a failed business venture, and several of them are there because of medical debt caused by others in their families.

by nunez

1/10/2025 at 5:53:00 PM

In the script it could look like:

One of the contestants in Squid Game fell into [AFFLICTION] because of a [FAILED ACTION], and several of them are there because of [AFFLICTION2] caused by [FAILED ACTION2].

Then you just find/replace for internationalization

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 3:26:54 PM

I don't see it that way.

Squid Game is taking advantage of indebted people. It is an evil organization taking advantage of circumstances and human flaws. That is why gambling should be heavily regulated, and that slot machines shouldn't be appearing in convenience stores.

Just because someone self inflict a wound on themselves doesn't make it OK for an organization to make the wound worse.

by kiba

1/10/2025 at 5:40:48 PM

>Just because someone self inflict a wound on themselves doesn't make it OK for an organization to make the wound worse.

Unfortunately this does not seem to be a belief held by everyone. In the US, it seems there are millions who believe being born dumb or poor or getting addicted to gambling is a valid reason to suck the life out of your for profit.

by mrguyorama

1/10/2025 at 4:03:20 PM

Student loan is usually your fault. You had the choice to not believe what society told you about education Except for highly regulated jobs where there are no alternative

by ttoinou

1/10/2025 at 2:59:42 PM

You're annoyed that a Korean show isn't about your American problems? Good grief.

by bongodongobob

1/10/2025 at 5:16:27 PM

The wealth gap and the exploitation of the lower class is a highly visible global problem. I'm a bit blown away that your take just assumes my position on that is US-centric.

by 0xEF

1/10/2025 at 5:00:39 PM

Korea has the problem even worse.

by immibis

1/10/2025 at 5:21:33 PM

For such things to be plausibly popular, the contestants cannot elicit sympathy in the (fictional) audience: “It’s their fault they are in debt, but not my fault I am in debt.”

For the same reason (wanting someone to look down on) the one group that reliably votes against minimum wage bumps is the group whose pay is below the new minimum wage, but above the old minimum wage.

by hedora

1/10/2025 at 4:45:20 PM

I think a pretty salient line from an organizer of the games in ep 2 of the new season is "the games won't end unless the world changes."

The show doesn't really interrogate that beyond that point, but if anything honestly points to a future where something like it is real - except it will be televised and everyone will watch and it won't be secret.

by kkukshtel

1/10/2025 at 6:59:18 PM

Not all the characters in season 1 had debt problems; the main girl for example wanted to bring her family from the north. Also have you seen Parasite by any chance?

I think you’re wrong, anything can be used for making money. I don’t think any major studio would refrain from funding anything if they felt it would profit.

by low_tech_love

1/11/2025 at 1:03:49 AM

My country tried student debt. The experiment was ended after a few years. As many things American politics it should stay on that side of the Atlantic.

Turns out saddling young people up with 50k debt for a mediocre degree is rather demoralising.

by Neonlicht

1/10/2025 at 5:28:21 PM

I love this take, and it is something that can be seen in real life as well. It is particularly apparent on a show like "Alone" where people try to survive in the wilderness for $500k. Most of the contestants are professional survivalists who need the money to get their own land to build and farm on.

I love watching it for the survival strategies and the human endurance aspects, but it does feel a bit dirty when they start talking about how badly they need the money as they try not to starve for a few more days.

by ericmcer

1/10/2025 at 3:40:37 PM

> But I guess a show making that particular social critique isn’t going to get funded by a major studio or tech company.

I don't really get this point (which I often see repeated online). There are tons of TV shows, books, movies, songs, etc, which include scathing critiques of various aspects of "the system" (government, the financial sector, the medical sector, the class system generally, etc). Many of these are produced and promoted by "big business". There is no centralised control over what gets funded, businesses will fund and produce what is likely to make them money. If shitting on capitalism will make them money they'll happily sell you that.

by NoboruWataya

1/10/2025 at 11:51:43 PM

Fringey political theorists like the Situationists have a concept called recuperation which suggests that capitalism doesn't just do these things to make money, but to perpetuate itself by giving people a safe method of blowing off steam, much like the 'bread and circuses' idea of Roman imperial governance. You could argue that the second season of Squid Game is specifically about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)

by anigbrowl

1/10/2025 at 4:21:42 PM

Squid Game actually only makes sense in the context of Korea which doesn't have robust bankruptcy laws like the US. Student loans are the exception, everything you could just walk away from in the US.

by bpodgursky

1/10/2025 at 5:55:13 PM

You can't walk away without repercussion, through, and from my understanding it becomes very difficult to attempt to collect the things you walked away from again. E.g. no one will give you a loan to start a business after declaring bankruptcy.

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 9:31:11 PM

Sure (for 7 years IIRC). But that's hardly a blocker to a dignified life.

by bpodgursky

1/10/2025 at 11:53:21 PM

I think you should talk to more homeless people.

by anigbrowl

1/10/2025 at 5:24:54 PM

That doesn’t work though.

The people in the games are there because they are gambler types on some level. A person with student loan or credit card debts wouldn’t be a very interesting player, a person with medical debt might not even care about paying back their medical debt enough to risk their life.

These people want to make a fortune to pay off their debt and live lavishly.

by deadbabe

1/10/2025 at 3:51:13 PM

Why is that odd? People like to watch shows about a topic but don't necessarily want to take action in the real world about issues depicted therein.

by satvikpendem

1/10/2025 at 4:06:25 PM

This is kind of why I can't watch Squid Game. I just can't convince myself to watch it since it's probably going to be depressing.

by diob

1/10/2025 at 3:57:19 PM

Student loans isnt much different than gambling though, except it’s socially accepted and higher education isn’t seen as the scam it really is

by ttoinou

1/10/2025 at 6:01:30 PM

The shows are made for the average person and the average person doesn't understand the insidious effects of interest

by asdasdsddd

1/10/2025 at 3:48:56 PM

> I suppose most of the contestants in the shows are in debt because of gambling or overtly irresponsible decisions

It's depressing that we're still stuck framing gambling as "irresponsible decisions" as online gambling becomes more and more ubiquitous and deliberately drives addiction.

by banannaise

1/10/2025 at 3:54:16 PM

Offline gambling also deliberately drives addiction, and has for much longer.

by dragonwriter

1/16/2025 at 3:43:42 PM

Yes, but that's why we find it important to limit the number of places you can access it. There's a reason nearly every state in the US restricts offline gambling to specific gambling houses (if even that) and nowhere else.

by banannaise

1/10/2025 at 9:04:07 AM

Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

And if you disagree that they were all very left wing: college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take! So either side will happily highlight that, although perhaps only one will suggest why that is.

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 9:49:38 AM

> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

You Americans really have lost the touch of reality with regards to politics, that's for sure.

Tech companies are the wealthiest and most powerful companies in the world. They do what they do in order to increase profit. Nothing left-leaning about that.

In a few days your new president and his gamer buddy takes office, and they both have their own social media networks.

by powerhugs

1/10/2025 at 10:42:57 AM

[flagged]

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 3:45:40 PM

... and if companies support, for example, LGBT rights (not that it should be political or left-wing, but here we are in such times...) - because ultimately it profits them. If you compete for engineers or skilled workers in a place where there are no LGBT rights, they will go somewhere else if it can be helped if they're LGBT, most likely. Or even if not, still may apply.

Works the same for other things too ;)

Not that it's a necessarily bad thing (invisible hand of market of Smith goes as an example), but it's a thing.

by StefanBatory

1/10/2025 at 9:32:16 AM

They're liberal on cultural issues, because it's an easy marketing win, (or at least was), they're not interested in any left-wing ideas that would give greater ownership of these companies to their employees for example.

> college being an overpriced scam is a conservative take!

Sure, the left wing take is to have high quality education paid for via tax dollars and thus being universally available, same as healthcare should be.

by Matl

1/10/2025 at 4:12:14 PM

Some tech companies have been liberal on cultural issues in the past for promotional and branding reasons, like you suggest. Some, more recently, have promoted conservative talking points and ideas for the same reason. Those political positions and policies should not be seen as anything other than profit seeking and are almost completely disconnected from any ideological positions held by the leadership of those companies. If pretending to be MAGA creates engagement, they will all be MAGA.

by ecocentrik

1/10/2025 at 4:13:35 PM

> Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

No, none of the big for profit, often venture-capital funded or publicly traded, firms in the tech industry have been advocates for any of the pro-labor and anti-capitalist ideologies that define the left. Being (often only performatively) on the Democratic side of some of the culture war issues between the centrist Democratic Party and the hard-right Republican Party while spending lots of money to keep the Democratic Party strongly committed to corporate capitalism doesn't make them even slightly left-leaning.

by dragonwriter

1/12/2025 at 2:57:23 AM

Of course it does. "Left" describes more than economics. You might say, that makes left-right a bad range, and you'd be right at that point, but I think it's pretty obvious what aspects of left/rightism I meant.

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 9:12:23 AM

I think the other commenter is right in calling them neoliberal, not left wing. An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility…but I don’t want to veer into that debate here.

To answer your question: because a good portion of a company like Netflix’s annual revenue is derived from credit card payments that are sort of “forgotten” monthly bills. These companies don’t benefit at all from a financially-literate and secure customer base.

by keiferski

1/10/2025 at 3:49:39 PM

Mondragon in Spain is an example imo

by StefanBatory

1/10/2025 at 3:39:52 PM

> An economically left wing corporation is sort of an impossibility

There have been many, and still are, under the most common definitions of left-wing.

Of course you'll find zero of them on the NASDAQ. That indeed is a modern-day impossibility.

by maeil

1/10/2025 at 4:18:05 PM

To put a finer point on it: Instruments that exist to enable the owner class to buy and sell control of the means of production are incompatible with systems that don't distribute control of the means of production to an owner class.

by InitialLastName

1/11/2025 at 6:41:03 AM

I'd very much count employee-owned businesses as corporations. In certain jurisdictions they may or may not meet the legal definition of a corporation but that feels like semantics.

by maeil

1/11/2025 at 5:11:48 PM

Employee-owned businesses are certainly a coherent left-wing concept. On the other hand, NASDAQ is an organization built around exchanging money for ownership of businesses, which tends to concentrate ownership in the non-employee direction.

by InitialLastName

1/10/2025 at 9:28:02 AM

That's such an American thing to say. Tech companies are better described as neoliberal

by netdevphoenix

1/10/2025 at 2:05:20 PM

> Why wouldn't it be? Tech companies, perhaps until very recently, have been extremely left-leaning.

No. They have their own thing going on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology.

> During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs together based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism.

by tivert

1/10/2025 at 9:07:05 AM

Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing." They are just boring old neoliberals.

by __alexs

1/10/2025 at 10:39:58 AM

> Only a person who has no idea about left wing politics could describe tech companies as "extremely left wing."

I don't see the need for this sort of poor attitude in phrasing. I have some idea about left wing politics, and also have seen a lot of very left-leaning policies enforced at social media companies and other related companies. You might say some people are neoliberal, or being very left wing (or perhaps "progressive") between 2010-2020 was just the most money-making stance for a neoliberal, but that doesn't seem particularly relevant.

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 11:57:02 PM

Why don't you actually firm up your original claim with examples, because as stated large numbers of people disagree with it for good reason, and it's not clear what you mean by 'left wing'.

by anigbrowl

1/10/2025 at 9:12:52 AM

Fabian socialism is all about wearing a neoliberal mask.

by rgrieselhuber

1/10/2025 at 10:20:12 AM

America's corporate seemingly managed to convince y'all that identity politics are "left".

First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that. In fact it's the epitome of individualism when you're focused on what makes you different from them instead of focusing on what is common between the general population (which they are part of). Labeling it as left has been a very successful psy-op to create a controlled dissidence (which is not dissident at all).

Why do you think megacorps like Disney et al are so adamant on pushing this agenda? Everything a company does, everything, is calculated. This is not "neoliberalism" like sibling comments are mentioning. This is a very calculated power move to shift the narrative (and how it's labeled as "left" is proof that it succeeded).

The only alternative explanation would be that they're trying to capture a greater market share, but it has been proven time and time again that it has only led to flopping (by pushing away the majority of non-identitary people while not even capturing the already small minorities) and yet they still push for it. Why?

By making vast swaths of "revolutionary" youngsters (as all youngsters are) fight for this nonsensical cause, they have effectively suppressed any possibility of a real struggle for power that might topple the actual elites.

And as a neat side-effect this identitarism has managed to make the everyday man focus on their peers as the source of all their woes. Corpos like that. It prevents Mangiones that might take action against their actual oppressors. Energy is finite, so they're trying to make it be wasted on intra-class instead of inter-class politics.

Stop playing their game.

by kaoD

1/10/2025 at 11:46:05 AM

> First of all: identity politics are extremely right-leaning (for lack of a better term). Focusing on identity means focusing on the individual. There's nothing left-leaning on that.

Identity politics, at least as I've seen them over and over again, look at identifying an individual's struggles / privileges / speech rules / etc through their membership of groups, not their individual struggles or advantages.

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 3:03:08 PM

Ah, so if a political party spent several election cycles emphasizing how the opposition was ignoring the problems of "rural Americans," or "parents," for example.

by BryantD

1/10/2025 at 6:53:11 PM

If you're treating an individual as a member of a group, you're doing it. If you're treating a group as a group, you're not.

by robertlagrant

1/10/2025 at 11:54:38 AM

Yes, groups so fragmented they consist of exactly one individual in your state. You might be gay, but are you gay-hispanic like me? Then we're not in the same overlap of the intersectionality Venn diagram. Sorry.

Have you considered why the pride flag (a rainbow, metaphor for inclusion of all "colors", has no need for extensions) now has so many additional flags superimposed on it?

Wikipedia's "List of gender identities" has dropdowns for letters of the alphabet (and growing).

None of this is accidental.

by kaoD

1/10/2025 at 9:03:14 AM

Criticism of usury is a sensitive subject because it has in past unfortunately been associated with extreme racism.

by logicchains

1/10/2025 at 7:12:39 AM

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.

by forgotoldacc

1/10/2025 at 8:17:52 AM

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

That being said, many gladiators didn't really have the skills to pursue a different career after retirement.

by jjmarr

1/10/2025 at 8:55:51 AM

>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.

by alterom

1/10/2025 at 9:29:14 AM

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.

by 0xEF

1/10/2025 at 8:16:57 AM

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/

by lynguist

1/11/2025 at 8:39:24 AM

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

by glandium

1/10/2025 at 5:34:17 PM

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.

by throw4847285

1/11/2025 at 12:01:12 PM

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.

by wruza

1/13/2025 at 2:59:40 PM

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.

by throw4847285

1/10/2025 at 3:18:28 PM

> 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.

by slightwinder

1/10/2025 at 3:32:04 PM

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.

by nextworddev

1/10/2025 at 9:12:44 AM

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.

by arkh

1/10/2025 at 8:07:58 AM

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.

by imgabe

1/10/2025 at 8:32:08 AM

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.

by forgotoldacc

1/10/2025 at 9:23:44 AM

> only real difference is the language

Kaiji is amount my favorite anime (I haven’t read the manga). It is very obvious the Squid Game creator borrowed heavily from Kaiji, and ripped off the overarching theme, but aside from the glass platform game was there really a lot else taken from Kaiji? Were there any other games or story arcs in the manga that were stolen?

(I haven’t seen season two of Squid Game yet btw).

by JoeyJoJoJr

1/10/2025 at 8:47:43 AM

Star wars is inspired by Dune quite directly.

by gostsamo

1/10/2025 at 3:04:41 PM

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.

by jerf

1/10/2025 at 9:19:02 AM

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

by MattPalmer1086

1/10/2025 at 8:53:23 AM

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.

by saberience

1/10/2025 at 9:58:29 AM

Kaiji is a fantastic manga!

The atmosphere is quite unique and for 1996 it was so innovative.

by kreco

1/10/2025 at 7:28:33 AM

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

by silisili

1/10/2025 at 7:15:42 AM

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.

by dudisubekti

1/10/2025 at 7:29:58 AM

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.

by peteforde

1/10/2025 at 8:46:09 AM

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.

by ajmurmann

1/10/2025 at 9:48:56 PM

cough Oldboy cough

by peteforde

1/10/2025 at 9:10:32 PM

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.

by gamblor956

1/10/2025 at 6:15:33 PM

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.

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 9:45:43 PM

Sounds like you might enjoy the 1999 movie After Life. A+

by peteforde

1/10/2025 at 9:36:20 AM

> 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).

by JoeyJoJoJr

1/10/2025 at 10:46:46 AM

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.

by dudisubekti

1/10/2025 at 8:17:44 AM

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.

by hmcq6

1/10/2025 at 3:36:36 PM

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.

by hibikir

1/10/2025 at 8:09:18 PM

There's "Death Race 2000" then from 1975 (from a short story from 1956) where the killing is televised.

Love that film.

by JKCalhoun

1/10/2025 at 8:50:30 AM

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.

by ajmurmann

1/10/2025 at 9:24:27 AM

I wanted to add in BR the schools selected are the ones with the worst academic scores, IIRC.

by mejutoco

1/10/2025 at 9:57:43 AM

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

by hmcq6

1/10/2025 at 9:22:52 AM

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.

by Propelloni

1/10/2025 at 7:27:01 AM

Because Kaiji is just less popular

by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF

1/10/2025 at 7:24:15 AM

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.

by echelon

1/10/2025 at 8:42:14 AM

If we're talking about the movie, RPO is roughly 40% Summer Wars.

by macleginn

1/10/2025 at 10:49:38 PM

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

by foresto

1/10/2025 at 8:58:52 AM

Lord of the flies is related too.

by mejutoco

1/10/2025 at 8:50:22 AM

While the comment section seems hell bent on pointing out other deadly game themed shows and movies, let's just take a moment to appreaciate how great a movie this is.

The setup is absolutely bonkers: Something, something, things are going bad in the future so we have children battle each other - even a seemingly well functioning class.

But to hell with that. It is quickly forgotten, once the game starts. Why the kids starts killing each other is much better shown in Battle Royale than why contestants in squid game accept the game.

by wodenokoto

1/10/2025 at 9:13:30 AM

Sort of explains in the book that Battle Royale was a bureaucratic fuckup. Battle Royale takes place in an alternate reality where Japan didn't lose WW2 and the fascist government continued into the 21st century. Some time around the late 1940s, some politician facetiously suggested forcing the kids of Japan to kill each other as a kind of legislative poison pill, and through a series of parliamentary procedural events that nobody alive can particularly remember, it got passed into law. 50 years after the fact, it kept going simply because they had accepted it as a fact of life, which I think is a critique of how entrenched some of the more fucked up aspects of Japanese culture are

by shortrounddev2

1/10/2025 at 9:45:45 AM

A lot of stuff is apparently explained in the book that just happens for no reason in the movie. Especially the whole ending seems to be missing quite a few scenes to make any sense (I've read online that in the book it is actually explained)

My point is, those things actually don't need an explanation for the movie to be good. The director just said "fuck those details, let's get to where these kids gets weapons in hand"

by wodenokoto

1/10/2025 at 10:16:47 AM

Indeed. I think focusing on the social commentary in these kinds of films is kinda missing the point: it's simply one kind of setup to get to the premise of the film, a deadly free-for-all with arbitrary rules. It can hit or miss the mark on that without really affecting what the actual focus is.

by rcxdude

1/10/2025 at 5:20:39 PM

I didn't read the book but it seems like a hand-wavy justification for having kids kill each other and the movie is better for not having it.

It is actually a good one from a storytelling perspective. The entire point of the story is that kids kill each other for no good reason, so give a reason that is not good. Not giving a reason would have the reader wonder about the "why", which is not the point.

by GuB-42

1/11/2025 at 6:32:16 AM

I didn't get that point at all, I thought it was more about how elders in society exploit the young, which is doubly true in a country like Japan with its poor birth rates

by shortrounddev2

1/10/2025 at 9:02:46 AM

FWIW, dealing with misbehaving kids was a pretty serious issue in Japan at the time. A ton of pressure were put on them, and they diffused that pressure upon other kids, with pretty dire consequences (including deaths)

Of course the core issue isn't the kids, but that's not what the system was trying to solve. It evolve in a less bloody way (by instituting a system where teachers can basically dictate grades independent of test results), but Battle Royale is definitely a product of its time, and some teachers would probably have been totaly fine with that solution.

by makeitdouble

1/10/2025 at 9:11:07 AM

You don't remember the first episodes of Squid Game then - it's very clearly explained to you. The main character has a gambling problem, lost his job and has taken money from loan sharks who threaten to take a kidney and eye to sell if he doesn't pay up. He also has a mum who is late stage diabetic who can't afford amputation surgery or treatment, particularly as he cancelled the insurance for gambling money.

The antihero used Futures and committed fraud in a company, with the police after him and significant debts to repay as well.

That's why contestants in squid game join - they're all in so much debt that theyve even signed away rights to their body. That's why the contestants can get in and choose to stay.

by VierScar

1/10/2025 at 3:19:40 PM

I think the point is that the build up of why they are there is pointless fluff. The subject matter is the game itself, so it's better to rush through the setup and have more action.

by TheBigSalad

1/10/2025 at 4:47:42 PM

Yep, and Battle Royale inspired the Hunger Games. Arma 3 created a Battle Royale mod that Lystic (Keegan Hollern) wrote most of the scripting for which won the Make Arma not War contest. Playerunknown then made PUBG which lead to Fortnite etc. being created. Playerunknown scammed Lystic out of like $5k and blocked him on X after they won. Lystic works at Tesla now and makes tons of money anyway.

by b8

1/10/2025 at 4:54:38 PM

Another part of this history is the Machinima "Minecraft Survival Games" youtube series (Inspired by The Hunger Games) and the Hunger Games minigames that popped up in Minecraft servers in the early 2010s in the wake of that.

by Centigonal

1/10/2025 at 7:25:21 AM

Regarding gameshows in which you have to pay with your life there was a mockumentary called 'Das Millionenspiel' [0] from 1970 . People where rather shocked at the time.

[0] https://m.imdb.com/de/title/tt0066079/

by riedel

1/10/2025 at 9:56:05 AM

Sounds a bit like The Tenth Victim, a delightful specimen of 60s Italian science fictiony pop weirdness.

by euroderf

1/11/2025 at 1:32:37 AM

I saw the world premiere in Edinburgh, Scotland when I was 18. Audience really had no idea what we were getting into. I had met a girl at a summer art program in France and she invited me to the festival so I got a eurorail pass and headed up there.

The premiere was so cool. They served Red Bull and vodka with these little commemorative battle royal cans. Some people got plastic umbrellas like the one in the movie.

At the time I feel like it was the most mind-blowing movie experience I'd ever had. Nobody was expecting what was coming, and there's something extra special about experiencing that together with a theatre full of people.

by gdubs

1/10/2025 at 7:29:29 AM

no

before Squid Game there was Liars' Game

and that one teaches muuuch better lesson - that players can cooperate so that nobody loses, no matter how much organizers want to make players clash with each other

by NooneAtAll3

1/10/2025 at 8:55:48 AM

There’s literally hundreds of shows and movies.

What some people have missed is that this is its own sub-genre of horror.

You have shows like Alice in Borderland that doesn’t get nearly enough love (and is far better than Squid Games in my opinion).

Cube is a late 90s movie that’s on this theme too. You could argue the SAW movies are too, though I’m not personally a fan of those.

There are also plenty of comics on this theme too. The aforementioned Alice in Borderlands is based on a manga by the same title.

by hnlmorg

1/10/2025 at 9:56:51 AM

Cube is a great lesson in budget filmmaking.

by euroderf

1/10/2025 at 3:15:48 PM

I came here specifically to recommend Alice in Borderland. I believe season 3 is due out soon this year.

I just watched season 2 of Squid Games and whilst it was fun and I enjoyed it, it didn't really seem to add much to the series.

by ndsipa_pomu

1/10/2025 at 1:03:09 PM

...horror?

by NooneAtAll3

1/10/2025 at 7:17:31 PM

…yes…

by hnlmorg

1/10/2025 at 3:19:50 PM

I've been waiting for someone to mention Liars' Game! When I started watching Squid Game that's the direction I hoped it was going in. Still good, and season 2 seems to be more in that vein than the first was. But in general I'm a huge fan of stuff that makes you wonder "how are they going to game their way out of it this time?"

by flocciput

1/10/2025 at 3:20:52 PM

[..]Squid Game’s creator Hwang Dong-hyuk openly admits to taking inspiration from Battle Royale[..]

To be fair, they seem to also name Liar Game, as also Kaiji.

by slightwinder

1/11/2025 at 2:21:35 PM

Lair’s Game was like a decade after BR

by charlieyu1

1/10/2025 at 7:40:26 AM

And very shortly before the first season of Squid Game there was Alice In Borderland, which I enjoyed more.

A quick search shows me S3 is happening this year which makes my mind boggle because I though S2 wrapped that whole thing up nicely and completely.

by Nursie

1/10/2025 at 7:56:43 AM

I always thought AiB was inspired on Squid Game, surprised to hear it predates it! Love the series, it doesn't get the attention it deserves in the genre.

by pandemic_region

1/10/2025 at 8:15:02 AM

Pretty sure S1 of AiB was out around a year earlier than SG, in 2020.

They both seem to go back a ways though - AiB is based on Manga that was serialised starting in 2010 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_in_Borderland

And SG was apparently first written in 2009.

And yes, I agree it should get more attention! There are obvious similarities, but AiB appeals to me more in its mysteriousness.

by Nursie

1/10/2025 at 8:03:45 AM

It's based on a manga. Or whatever the Korean equivalent is.

by ludston

1/10/2025 at 3:36:44 PM

Alice in Borderland is based on a manga (Japanese). Korean “comics” are called manhwa.

by Cyph0n

1/10/2025 at 9:17:23 AM

They left a pretty heavy cliff-hangar in the very last few minutes of the last episode.

by 0xCMP

1/10/2025 at 3:22:13 PM

IMO it was less a cliffhanger and more a hard cut

by nunez

1/10/2025 at 10:05:26 PM

It’s been years since I’ve read the book or seen the movie, but I had the exact opposite impression of the book vs the movie. The book is very deep, I found it compared rather well to dystopian novels like 1984. The movie, by contrast, felt like a weird slasher film, more interested in gratuitous violence than telling a compelling story. The characters in the book felt more nuanced. For example, the main female antagonist (I can’t remember her name) was a victim of abuse, and her trauma motivates her drive to live and her lack of hesitation to manipulating others to survive. Maybe someone else who has read the book here has a different take away?

by openasocket

1/11/2025 at 7:01:38 AM

I read the book first and I've got the same impression as you, the movie felt lacking and certainly not as fruitful in fresh ideas as the book felt.

I'm very surprised the post's author finds the book shallow (he uses "lacking in depth" I think).

by nachexnachex

1/11/2025 at 3:19:49 AM

Also years for both for me (I probably read and watched them in 2003), but your impression of the two is the exact same as mine.

by achileas

1/10/2025 at 3:33:16 PM

There's not much relation to it. In Squid Game people play games and happen to kill each other in some of them, but not all the time, in order to make money because they are deep in debt. In Battle Royale, they just kill each other's, there is no real motive.

by ekianjo

1/10/2025 at 7:17:32 PM

The motive is "kill or be killed" and the only way to survive is to be the last one standing after 3 days.

by neogodless

1/11/2025 at 8:08:32 PM

Exactly. That's a very weak motive. Which is why most kids get killed because they have no appetite for murder.

by ekianjo

1/10/2025 at 8:41:55 PM

BR is a masterpiece. First pulled a rip of Battle Royale 1 + 2 off of Limewire back in high school. It became the underground "crazy" movie we'd burn to cds and pass around to friends.

by rglover

1/10/2025 at 7:21:04 AM

Wonderful movie adaptation. Remains so watchable, 3 decades afterward.

by hunglee2

1/10/2025 at 3:24:28 PM

"I tried to express a sentiment specific to Korean culture, [but] all the responses from different audiences were pretty much the same. Essentially, we all live in the same country, called Capitalism"

-Bong Joon-Ho

by Avshalom

1/10/2025 at 11:35:00 PM

his movie was very bad and simplistic while human nature is a deep topic. almost a caricature of a movie. the same year, on the same topic, in the same country, Burning was released. Highly recommend

by retinaros

1/10/2025 at 4:06:16 PM

There is also the manga "As the Gods Will" which is not only a similar concept but has the exact same first game. Strange that this is never mentioned as an influence.

by traspler

1/10/2025 at 8:17:23 AM

Running man (1987) was an important film in this genre

by Tepix

1/10/2025 at 9:20:48 AM

But it suffers from being an adaptation of a Stephen King's book.

King is really good at making you live through the eyes of his protagonists. Which is really hard to do in movies. Same thing with Shining were you follow Jack's fall to craziness from his PoV. And the same thing will happen with "The Long Walk", another great novel which I recommend if you like the death game theme.

by arkh

1/10/2025 at 3:13:56 PM

Both versions of the running man are very interesting. Whereas the book was more of 'we are all doomed' and the movie was more 'we can take control of this'.

by sumtechguy

1/11/2025 at 2:20:59 PM

BR was fun. BR2 not so much, very cringe when the director tried to include message about Afghan war

by charlieyu1

1/10/2025 at 5:55:23 PM

Great movie. I noticed the character Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill was actually stolen from Battle Royale.

by jas39

1/10/2025 at 6:19:51 PM

Isn't it the same actress?

by butlike

1/10/2025 at 6:43:52 PM

Yes.

by jas39

1/10/2025 at 7:20:26 AM

Check out Robert Altman’s Quintet (1979)

by rado

1/10/2025 at 7:27:44 PM

I like squid game better, the everyone for themselves is a bit chaotic

by m3kw9

1/10/2025 at 11:32:35 PM

battle royale is a masterpiece of filmmaking, acting, cinematography, entertainment and the last movie of a master of its craft. squid game is a fun tv show.

by retinaros

1/10/2025 at 7:16:27 AM

There’s also danganronpa, which I am always seeing fanart of

by valorzard

1/10/2025 at 8:13:51 PM

And the Zero Escape games.

by xlbuttplug2

1/10/2025 at 5:19:38 PM

Battle Royale is required viewing IMO

by nimish

1/11/2025 at 5:16:30 PM

Not quite the same by, but I believe a criminally underrated film sort of in this space is "Surviving the Game."

On it's surface, an absolutely wacky survival action film; but also subtly excellent commentary on class, race, crime and capitalism.

by jrm4

1/10/2025 at 4:54:48 PM

Squid Game s1 and Parasite took the world by storm in the same year. I thought we were seeing commentary on the horrors of capitalism and people were on the verge of demanding change. But no, it was mindless entertainment. People remain angry about their lot under capitalism, but they are successfully rerouted to place their rage with other targets that don’t meaningfully affect them.

Good job, elites. You’ve secured your place at the top yet again.

by alsetmusic