Mitsuko Souma

"Two princes protecting you? A real princess!"

- Mitsuko planning the demise of Noriko

Mitsuko Souma is the secondary antagonist in the Japanese 2000 Thriller film Battle Royale. She was portrayed by Kou Shibasaki.

Film Version
In the extended version of the film, a flashback portrayed a young Mitsuko returning home from school. At home she found her mother severely drunk, along with an unknown man who had paid Ms. Souma to molest her daughter. Mitsuko, in self-defense, quickly pushed him down the stairs - the act happened to break his neck, instantly killing him.

In both the extended and standard versions of the film, she is depicted more to have been a socially awkward, anxiously vain outcast and loner with no friends who, upon provision of a lethal weapon and one very lucky encounter with a bitter classmate, broke down to desperation, madness and highly potentiated, wanton homicidality under the pressure of both the Program and her own mental disorders than the hyper-criminal, deeply feared school bully of the novel or manga (on the bus, a schoolgirl loudly and repeatedly, though not maliciously, disturbs her nap - Mitsuko says and does nothing; a scene depicting another female character being harassed by three female classmates at Shiroiwa High School does not see Souma as a perpetrator; additionally, she is herself terrorized at gunpoint by another female student, Hirono Shimizu, who lost her boyfriend to Mitsuko's seductive ways. She is also invariably referred to by classmates in the film simply as "Mitsuko", her given name, and never "Souma", her familial Japanese "first" name; this likely reflects a class-wide attitude of disrespect and dismissal toward her).

Mitsuko plays a major role in the second half of the film, being the most dangerous girl playing in the game. Off-screen, she managed to seduce 3 boys (Boy #13 and Boy #16) into having a threesome with her. All three were naked, then suddenly Mitsuko suddenly slaughtered the 2 boys with her sickle and she put on her clothes, going off to find more students to kill.

Mitsuko manages to catch Noriko at gunpoint. Noriko begs Mitsuko not to do so, and in the process Mitsuko hears Kawada's desperately screaming for Noriko where she is. Mitsuko, realizing that not just one boy, but two boys (Shuya Nanahara and Kawada) are protecting Noriko, quickly gets jealous of Noriko for being "a real princess" and is about to shoot her but runs away when Kitano walks into the scene. Kitano then offers Noriko an umbrella and reunites her with Shuya.

Later on, Mitsuko shoots Kayoko Kotohiki in the heart, killing the poor girl and sprawling Kotohiki's body over the body of Sugimura, a boy who had a crush on Kotohiki.

Seconds later, Mitsuko is gunned down with her own firearm by Kazuo Kiriyama in a particularly violent sequence, dying completely alone as a "loser" - which she "just didn't want to be... anymore." Her total of six killings made her by far the deadliest permanent classmate in 3-B. It was rumored that she slept with a few guys at school and stole Hirono Shimizu's boyfriend; in the manga and film Mitsuko is the last girl to die.

Trivia
In the manga for Battle Royale, there were illustrations of Mitsuko Souma being nude and performing graphic sex, which the film has not featured at all on-screen, most likely due to minimum age requirements for actresses to do so.