Real Life PUBG? This Japanese High School Class Was Forced To Fight To The Death On An Island
In a wild case of life imitating art, a new delinquency act put into effect by the Japanese government requires that a random high school class be dropped onto a secluded island and forced to fight to the death once a year, while the rest of the country watches on, dulled to the horror of the situation as intergenerational conflict causes a divide that has made this seem, over time, like a reasonable way of curbing rebellion.
As pundits have been quick to point out, the battle royale that these children are forced to endure closely resembles the video game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which undoubtedly served as inspiration. Of course, some elements of this real-life deathsport are different–the children are, for instance, greeted by their furious and vindictive homeroom teacher before being let out with a duffel bag full of equipment, rather than parachuting onto the island empty-handed. And although the game never requires its participants to wear explosive collars that will go off at the first sign of disobedience, the influence of PlayerUnknown’s classic shooter is obvious.
Fans who watched the action streamed live to Twitch were shut down in the comments whenever they tried to argue that this was “just like Fortnite,” as other viewers pointed out that most of the building was limited to campfires and grave sites. Snider comments accused the Japanese government of “blatant plagiarism” as they began bombing portions of the island to force the children into vicious combat, and viewership peaked when one student beat his best friend to death with a frying pan.
But one insider has a different perspective. Goro Nakamura, the winner of this year’s skirmish (which was fought, thanks to the secrecy of the government, on an unknown battleground), believes that there was another, stronger influence guiding the architects of the killing field he recently drenched with the blood of his friends.
“There’s a popular book that many of us discovered in our teen years, one that was adapted into a cult-classic film, before all of this,” he said. “I believe that this book, in which the teenagers were eventually capable of a rebellion that I shamefully could not replicate, was the true inspiration for all of this.”
“It’s called The Hunger Games,” he announced. “I never got around to the third one.”
With the unspeakable ordeal of the battle royale behind him, Nakamura has now returned to his one true passion: competing at a professional level in Apex Legends.
