Shogo Kawada

**Shogo Kawada** is the tritagonist of the novel, manga, and film *Battle Royale*. He was the winner of the Battle Royale program a year before the story's events, and would have to relieve the nightmare of the program after he was kidnapped by the corrupt goverment of Japan alongside Class 9-B.

In the film, he was portrayed by Taro Yamamoto.

## Biography

### Backstory

Shogo was the son of a doctor, who lost his mother when he was young, and would help his father in treating the patients that his father would get. Shogo would also start dating Keiko Onuki, who he believed in the present that he didn't show much love towards her as he should.

Due to him seeing patients with injuries on a regular basis, Shogo would become pessimistic and not believe in consepts like compassion meant having a heart, and would not care much about people's feelings. This is batter seen when he didn't care much about a couple getting captured by the goverment and the two being forced to leave their infant child in the coffee they were in.

One day, he was kidnapped alongside all the other students of his class, Shogo decided that he would do everything to make sure Keiko would win the program, so he killed several students without any sense of mercy, although he would later regret killing most of them.

By the end of the program, a classmate named Nakata holded Keiko hostage to make sure he wouldn't get killed, but Shogo was able to trick Nakata and then kills him, saving Keiko in the process. However, Keiko desliked what he did to his fellow classmates, but she pointed a gun at a contestant who was behind Shogo. Believing Kaiko was about to kill him, Shogo kills her, although he imediatly regreted it and then killed the contestant she was aiming at who decided to taunt him.

After Shogo won the games, he was sent to a hospital to treat the wounds he got from the game. In the film, there is no indication that Shogo killed anyone outside of Keiko, whom he killed in self-defence and imediatly regreted.

He would later go to his father's house to see him, only to find out that he was killed by the goverment because he tried to go against the program. Shogo would then start using the gift Kaiko gave him once and would start to hack the program.

## Battle Royale

After Class 9-B was kidnapped and forced into joining the program, Shogo would help Shuya and Noriko survive during it and would save their lives on several occasions, developing a great bond between them and would become friends with the plan of going to the United States to reveal what was happening in the program and live better lives.

By the end of the game, Shogo would fake betraying and kill them, while in reality he was only tricking the people who were overseeing the program to save their lives and deactivate their collars. After this, he would go to meet the administrator only to reveal that they were alive and they are able to defeat them. While trying to escape, Shogo dies from his wounds that were caused during his fight with Kazuo Kiriyama, but not before teaching them how to use a boat and allowing them to leave the program and live a better life in the United States.

## Personality

Shogo is a cynical person who thinks logicaly rather than emotionaly, and has no problems with killing those who hurt him or his friends. He also has a very briliant mind as he is very capable of making traps and tricks that help him survive through the program, and by the end, ends up tricking the program into thinking he had killed Noriko and Shuya when in actuality they were still alive and hiding.

Shogo's cynical personality may come from how much death and pain he saw from a young life, as he took care of patients with his father, who was a doctor, and his mother died from a young age. By the time his first program was over, his cynical personality came to the point where he became a depressed person with a desire for revenge on the people who took everything from him.

Shogo, despite his cynical personality and lack of belief in the idea that emotions come from the heart, is very capable of understanding human emotion, he came very quickly to understand that Mitsuko was a victim of sexual abuse from how she acted, and also understood that Kazuo could not be reasoned with, since his inability to feel human emotions made him a worse threat than Mitsuko herself.

Despite his cold personality, Shogo truly cares for his friends, and has saved their lives on multiple ocasions, and sometimes putting them over his own needs and even desire for revenge. Shogo is implied to be deep down an insecure person who wanted to have a true friend, if his last thoughts are any indication of it.

## Shogo Kawada

### Occupation

Student of Class 3-B (formerly)Student of Class 9-B (currently)