Mitsuko Souma

nihongo|Mitsuko Souma|相馬 光子|"Sōma Mitsuko" is a fictional character in the novel "Battle Royale" and its manga and film adaptations. In the English language manga she is nicknamed Mitsu, Mi-chan and "Hardcore" Souma.

Mitsuko is the second most dangerous person on the island next to Kazuo Kiriyama. She killed a total of eight people. Mitsuko as a teenager is portrayed Kou Shibasaki in the film; the young Mitsuko in the flashback is played by Suzuka Tonegawa.

She was officially designated Shiroiwa Junior High School, 9th Grade, Class B, Girl #11. Mitsuko has blood type A.

Early life

Mitsuko had a traumatic childhood in all versions of the story, but the details vary:

*In the novel, not much is known about Mitsuko's life until she was nine years old, when her mother took her to an old building in a run-down neighborhood. In the building, three men paid her mother to gang rape the girl and videotape it. When Mitsuko told a teacher what had happened, instead of getting the help she was seeking, the teacher raped her in the reading room after school. Mitsuko's friend at the time witnessed the rape and spread a rumor around school that resulted in the teacher getting fired. Mitsuko's mother tried to take her again to be raped for money, but Mitsuko accidentally killed her. She cleaned up the scene to make it look like a robbery and sat on a swing in the park. Afterwards, she was taken to live with distant relatives, whose child bullied Mitsuko. When the kid fell off the roof, Mitsuko was wrongly accused by the mother but was defended by the father — who soon began molesting her. Being repeatedly violated in her youth shaped Mitsuko into a manipulative young woman with a twisted child's psyche.

*In the manga, When Mitsuko was young, her real father, who truly cared about her, divorced her mother (it's implied that the government chased his father, and he divorced his wife to protect Mitsuko). The Magical Emily Ring he gave her is always with her. Before her father left, he tells a tearful Mitsuko that she would always be "Daddy's girl", a phrase that Mitsuko has a habit of repeating out loud or to herself, usually when she is seducing others. Mitsuko, who missed her father, then lived with her mother fairly happily until she was nine years old. At that point, her mother met Mitsuko's stepfather. On their first meeting, he gave a cloth doll to Mitsuko; this was the only time he ever showed her kindness. The man violently abused Mitsuko's mother, and after brutalizing her he turned to Mitsuko and subjected her to horrible physical and sexual abuse. Eventually, even Mitsuko's own mother began to physically abuse her. Having reached her breaking point, Mitsuko organizes her parents' murder with a man she met in an alley way and had an affair with; he breaks into the home and stabs Mitsuko's mother and stepfather to death. While he committed the murders, Mitsuko stood outside and called the police, leading to the man's arrest. While on the streets, she worked as a stripper, seducing men with her body before having sex with them and then robbing and murdering them to fuel her own lifestyles.
*In the film, the audience sees a flashback scene of young Mitsuko (played by Suzuka Tonegawa) going home from school and saying goodbye to her friends. She then walks into her house and finds her mother drunk and a strange man sitting in the kitchen. It seems he had paid Mitsuko's mother for sex, and she runs upstairs in disbelief. He then follows and presents Mitsuko with a doll, saying, "This little girl's name is Mitsuko too. Isn't she cute? And she’s really fun." He then pulls the doll's head off and proceeds to remove all the doll's clothing, finally saying, "Now all her clothes are off! It's the other Mitsuko's turn, let's take them all off." She resists his advances and pushes him down the stairs, killing him.

In the novel, Mitsuko convinced some boys to arrange a "hit" on a rival female gangster who had connections with the Yakuza; a car hit the woman and nearly killed her.

In the manga, Mitsuko sets her sights on a rich, famous boxer (who is also known for being incredibly mean and arrogant). After one of the boxer's matches, Mitsuko sneaks backstage and seduces him. During their one night stand, Mitsuko slips the boxer a powerful hallucinogen, and while he's in a drugged stupor, she robs him and makes her getaway. The next day, the boxer attempts to find Mitsuko in order to "beat [her] face in" and take his money back. While he is driving, Mitsuko calls him, sending him a naked picture of herself with the words "Where you been, big man? How much you got to lose if I decide the cops should know? I'm only 15!" This triggers further hallucinations from the drug that Mitsuko gave him the previous night, and he ends up driving off a cliff, killing himself. Satisfied with her work, Mitsuko then takes her "earnings" and goes on a shopping spree with her gang.

At school

Mitsuko is described as very attractive and having a shapely body, which aids her in her schemes. She is considered the most beautiful girl in her class but she also (deservedly) carries a bad reputation. Mitsuko has no real friends except for Yoshimi Yahagi and is hated and feared by most of her fellow classmates.

*In both the novel and manga, Mitsuko controls a gang of delinquent girls consisting of herself, Hirono Shimizu (Girl #10) and Yoshimi Yahagi (Girl #21). The three of them regularly engage in activities such as prostitution, mugging and larceny. The gang's victims are almost always older men, whom the girls seduce before taking advantage of them. Mitsuko's crimes earned her the nickname "Hardcore" Souma in the English-language manga. Since she's been using her sexuality to get what she wants for most of her life, Mitsuko's idea of sex has been warped to the point that she believes it's the answer to all problems. This is made apparent when, in the manga, she rapes Yuichiro Takiguchi (Boy #13) in an insane attempt to save his life as he lays dying from a bullet wound that he took for her. When Yuichiro pleads for Mitsuko to stop, she ends up killing him in rage because she takes his "rejection" of her sex as a sign that he didn't truly care about her, instead of realizing that she was actually hurting him.

*In the film, the only background information given is that she has slept with a few of the boys at school. She has stolen Hirono Shimizu's boyfriend, creating animosity between the two girls. A passing reference is made to her pimping Yoshimi Yahagi, but it is never elaborated. She was one of several students who bullies Noriko Nakagawa.

During the Program

Mitsuko is one of the story's main antagonists. When her class is drafted into the Program, Mitsuko, being no stranger to murder, becomes fully intent on winning. She is provided with a kama sickle and in the original novel kills seven students:

*Girl #3: Megumi Eto - slit throat with a sickle.
*Boy #8: Yoji Kuramoto - stabbed in the head with a sickle.
*Girl #21: Yoshimi Yahagi - shot in the head with a Colt M1911.
*Girl #13: Takako Chigusa - shot in the back with a Colt M1911.
*Boy #18: Tadakatsu Hatagami - beaten to death with an aluminium baseball bat.
*Boy #13: Yuichiro Takiguchi - shot in the chest with a Smith & Wesson Model 19.
*Girl #8: Kayoko Kotohiki - shot in the right temple twice with a Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum.

In the manga:
Same as in the novel except she shoots Takako Chigusa only once, she eliminates Yoji Kuramoto with Yoshimi's gun, stabs Tadakatsu Hatagami in the head repeatedly with a sickle and does not kill Girl #8: Kayoko Kotohiki. Also Yuichiro Takiguchi does not die from his gunshot wound; Mitsuko finishes him off with her sickle after she rapes him.

In the film:
Same as in the novel with following additions and changes:

*Girl #10: Hirono Shimizu - shot in the back with Colt M1911.
*Mitsuko does not kill Boy #8: Yoji Kuramoto or Girl #21: Yoshimi Yahagi.
*In the film Mitsuko shoots Takako Chigusa four times in the back instead of three.
*In the film Mitsuko stabs Tadakatsu Hatagami and Yuichiro Takiguchi in their hearts. Note: the fact that both boys are naked, their clothes are nearby, and she changes back to her uniform may imply that she seduced and/or had sex with at least one of them before killing them both.
*In the film Kayoko Kotohiki is shot in the heart once instead of the head twice.

Mitsuko's weapons

Mitsuko acquires several different weapons from the different people she kills and uses them on others.

*Her original weapon is a kama, or hand scythe, which she never loses.
*After killing Megumi Eto she acquires a knife in the novel and manga, in the film a stun gun.
*She then acquires a Colt M1911 in the novel and manga after killing Yoji Kuramoto and Yoshimi Yahagi (the Colt is Yoshimi's weapon - she ignores Yoji's weapon) but in the film she gets this after killing Hirono Shimizu; she later (in the novel and manga) loses the Colt M1911 after an encounter with Sugimura.
*She then takes a small razor blade from a house (in the novel, it is said that she carries this with her at all times).
*In the novel and manga, after meeting and seducing Tadakatsu Hatagami she throws away the razor blade and beats him to death with Yuichiro Takiguchi's aluminium bat although she does not take it with her. She takes Yuichiro's Smith & Wesson M19 .357 Magnum (a Colt Anaconda in the manga) to replace her lost Colt M1911. In the film, neither Yuichiro nor Tadakatsu are supplied with a gun, and as such, when Mitsuko stabs both boys to death, she does not gain a gun.
*Later, in the novel, she takes back her old Colt M1911 and dies afterwards. In the novel and film she dies after killing Kotohiki.

Fate

In all versions of "Battle Royale", near the end of the Program, Mitsuko loses her life in a brutal confrontation with Kazuo Kiriyama, another of the story's main antagonists. The exact details of her death scene, however, vary:

*In the novel, Mitsuko is collecting the weapons dropped by Hiroki Sugimura and Kayoko Kotohiki, the latter of whom she had just finished off. Suddenly, Kiriyama sneaks up behind her and shoots her several times in the back with a MAC-10. Despite her wounds, Mitsuko manages to raise her gun and shoot him four times in the chest. Much to her dismay, however, Kiriyama's bulletproof vest saves his life. He then fires off another round of bullets at Mitsuko, this time directly in the face, killing her. Her corpse is described as if a strawberry pie had been smashed into her face.

*In the manga, Mitsuko rests in a house, giving herself a bath, masturbating, and changing her clothes. Unknown to her Kazuo Kiriyama has also taken refuge in the same neighborhood, recuperating from his brutal fight to the death with Hiroki Sugimura. While leaving the house, Mitsuko spots Kiriyama walking by and tries to shoot him down while she has the element of surprise. She misses, and Kiriyama throws a bag of glass shards in her face, stunning her long enough so that he can draw his gun and shoot her through the shoulder. In desperation, Mitsuko tries to use her wiles to seduce and kill Kiriyama. This doesn't work, of course, since Kiriyama is incapable of feeling emotion. Kiriyama then tortures Mitsuko with strategically-placed gunshots, and she slowly loses her sanity until he finally kills her. His final shot destroys her face. Before Mitsuko is killed, she cries out for her father and calls herself "Daddy's girl". She also grasps onto the "Magical Emily" ring her gave her.

*In the film, Kiriyama ambushes Mitsuko in an abandoned warehouse, shooting her with his Uzi. The gunshots are not fatal, but Mitsuko plays possum as Kiriyama loots her body, taking her Colt M1911 and holstering it in his belt. When Kiriyama turns to leave, Mitsuko springs to life, jamming her stun gun into his ankle. As Kiriyama is thrown off balance, Mitsuko gets up and overpowers him, knocking his Uzi out of his hands and pinning him against a catwalk. Mitsuko then goes for what she thinks will be a killing blow, slashing Kiriyama across the chest with her sickle. Kiriyama's bulletproof vest saves his life. He then kicks her away, draws the Colt M1911 and shoots her three times. Despite her wounds, Mitsuko keeps fighting; she lunges at Kiriyama with a savage warcry, but only to be shot one last time. Her final thought just before she dies is, "I just didn't want to be a loser anymore."

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