Hello everyone. My name is Nazish. I am from Hong Kong. Digc330 course is all about Digital Asia. Looking at the outline I found out that every lesson will be of 3 hours’ lecture, I was pretty worried that it might be hard to digest a lot of information all at once. But today, the lecture was very interesting and different from other courses. First of all, I will start off with explaining what is Autoethnography, it is an approach to the research of human cultures, in which the researcher immerses themselves in that culture, and uses self-reflection to explore their own person experience, while linking that with other qualitative research (Moore, 2017).
We humans need to understand that whatever that has happened to us has shaped us in a way that we are today, it impacts us on how we see the world around ourselves.
In class we watched a Japanese movie which was released in 2003 “Battle Royale ll: Requiem”, it’s a sequel of Battle Royale. I haven’t ever watched a Japanese movie before, therefore some of the parts were very interesting.
Shuya Nanahara and Noriko Nakagawa are survivors of the first movie Battle Royale, they then form a team to fight the Japanese Government who are using a group of high school young adults and killing them brutally if they are not able to complete the missions on finding Shuya Nanahara, so they formed a team in a hope to have a better and fresh lives to start for all the younger kids who will become adults one day. The high school students were given 72 hours to complete the mission on finding Shuya, and they had no option but to fight, or else they will be considered as losers and will be shot anyways, and the pair partner’s head will explode once the collar starts beeping.
I noticed that in this movie Shuya had many identities, while Noriko showed up once which is for the ending scene only so I couldn’t distinguish much of her identity. Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that makes a person. For example, I am a University student, I am a friend to some, I am a daughter to my parents, I am a sister to my siblings, I am a Muslim, these are all my identities.
The same way, Shuya has many identities as well. Shuya is a #15 student, was known to be a leader of the group Wild Seven, he gave a speech to the viewers in the beginning of the movie where his team stands with him and he’s leading them along. He is known as an International terrorist in the eyes of Japanese Government, in the movie we could see that he was using a powerful weapon called AK47 which is usually used by terrorists. Shuya’s teammates are always there to fight first and protect Shuya, so he has also build a good friendship/team which is hard to forget, every murder or every friend that is killed will be remembered. Moreover, on the middle of the movie we could see that the high school students switched their side and became friends with Shuya, Shuya told them the truth that he is not the bad guy, he’s only in search of escape and to help all the young adults in this world. Also he’s partner of Noriko Nakagawa, and he was a killer of one of the students (Shiori Kitano’s) father in the first movie, and before dying she forgave him.
Whilst Noriko Nakagawa only shows up at the end of the movie, she’s a terrorist in the eyes of Japanese government as well, is a fictitious character throughout the movie and at the end we could totally see that she was so happy to see Shuya alive and to be back, So she’s the girlfriend of Shuya.
To conclude Shuya Nanahara have 7 identities, which are survivor of Battle Royale, student, A leader of the group Wild Seven, a terrorist, a friend, Noriko Nakagawa’s boyfriend and a killer of a transfer student (Shiori Kitano’s) father. Noriko Nakagawa have 4 identities, terrorist, survivor of Battle Royale, Shuya Nanahara’s girlfriend and a fictitious character.
Signing Off,
Khan Sultana Nazish
References:
Moore, C. (2017). DIGC330 Digital Asia Week One. https://prezi.com/ugc9ocn5_zjy/digc330-digital-asia-week-one/
Nazish.blog 
I do think that Noriko Nakagawa have more identities in BRII. Since you know Nakagawa is Narahara’s girlfriend, although she didn’t shown up much in BRII, I think she somehow acted as a fuse that triggered Nanahara’s decision to his goals and continue against the government.
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It’s interesting that not only do characters in a film have multiple identities, but we do as well even if we don’t realize it. With that said, I think that both protagonists have the potential to have more identities if we look below the surface especially Noriko Nakagawa even though it’s quite difficult with her as she does not appear too often. Great job!
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Interesting read! I like how you explained autoethnography so simply and defined things for us (the readers) to understand. Now I can reflect on how many identities I have such as I am a student and a young adult. Also I realised that Shuya Nanahara’s has so many identities but when I watched Battle Royale I, I did not realise Shuya played such a big role as he was just mostly a protector of Noriko Nakagawa. Now I would like to watch BRll, to find out more of Shuya!
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I like the way that you bold the key words of your blog, it helps me refresh what i learnt in the class haha. And yea, Shuya has many identities , but for me , identities are countless . Because in different places, we have different identities and what we saw Shuya in the movie is just one part of the identities of him.
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This post made me think about the fluidity of human character before anything else. Sure, the movie will normally get attention for how bloody it is, but its violence here shouldn’t be in primary focus.
We witness these kids (in both movies) being forced to constantly go through changes in their character or their role, so it made me wonder whether I would be able to do the same kind of shift.
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