Battle Royale is set in japan in an alternate terrible present day similar to our own where adolescents are behaving terribly. So the government devises a horrible yearly game where they take a group of students to fight to the death. Each contestant has a bomb strapped to their necks ready to detonate if they do not comply with the fights as well.
The Hunger Games is put on as a huge spectacle that the entire world sees while its challengers have the chance to train and tour the world to gain fans for themselves before they set of to fight to the death. In Battle Royale its not a huge spectacle. In Fact the students are completely unaware of what is going on until it happens and are forced to immediately fight fellow students who were either distant or close friends or even lovers.
You learn to care for many characters along the way as the movie goes on because most of them are given decent screen time and flashbacks. Giving you more to swallow before some inevitable deaths but it gives you some care for everyone as oppose to thinking of them as just another robotic victim. The Hunger Games is very much about Katniss Everdeen. She is the very main character of the story and those who follow her are equally important while her opposers are shown very little care for the right reasons.
She serves the purpose of saving the poor from the rich in an unbalanced world so it makes sense within the story. At the end of the day if thats the sort of story you want to see thats fine. If you're like me and like the idea of suspense/despair/violence then go see Battle Royale. By the way they are both on netflix so check it out.
