The Hunger Games

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It was around 2006 when I watched this Japanese movie titled Battle Royale, the one with all that post-war near apocalyptic world, where the government will be crazy and desperate enough to throw a full game of setting teenager out in secluded island and kill each other until only one remain and declare as winner. Fast forward to the beginning of 2012, with all the commotion about the upcoming movie, The Hunger Games, I force myself to read the novel with a pang of underestimate feeling caused of its similarity to Battle Royale.

Set in the alternate future of what today is North America, is the country of Panem. With its 12 districts that enslaved by the all and mighty Capitol. Each of Panem's districts is said to has specific characteristic that distinct one to another, which is also the characteristic that been assumed by most of the population of the district itself, from the fact that every character's ability  in the books is being defined by which district they comes from. On the other hand, all that districts share the same characteristic : poor, enslaved and dictated by the capitol, and has a life quality that maybe seems similar to what it's been told about the life in North Korea today.