バトル・ロワイアル 1

Harsh experience due to advanced vocabulary without furigana

I went into this series with insufficient japanese knowledge (just passed N3) because I stumbled upon the volumes. It didn't really matter most of the time, since there are long sequences of action with little dialogue. In general it has been very enjoyable for me: the pacing is fast, so I always felt rewarded without having to struggle too much. However, two instances were very painful:

1. Taking minutes to look a word up because it's written with uncommon kanji and still has no furigana (examples: 躊躇、揉む、怯える、疼く、啀み合う、対峙、非道い)
2. Encountering bubbles brimming with pecific vocabulary related to the government, the military, weapons, computers... again without furigana.

The no furigana thing applies also to names, and there are a lot of them. The pronounciation is shown once when the character is introduced, and then good luck remembering it. Actually it is also shown at the end of every volume, where the status (dead/alive) of each character is displayed, but of course you can't look the pronounciation up there, unless you don't mind spoilers.

The manga is very gory, also there is quite a bit of nudity and sexual content, which is kinda messed up when you consider the characters are 三年生中学生 (but really they are portrayed as adults, which i find silly).

In the end, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone really. Even if you're advanced enough to not get stuck on the difficult vocabulary, then you will get little to no practice out of this manga.