Battle Royale discussion

I should start reading older books and completely rip them off and take out all the good violence and gore to make them family friendly *cough cough Suzanne Collins*
This book was absolutely amazing! My only complaint was trying to keep up with the characters that had similar names. For example there was Yuka, Yukie and Yuko all in the same chapter.
I love how there were shorter stories of characters getting killed off and then there were main characters who you had no choice but to love, however in the back of my mind I was thinking "but only one can survive".
This was way different from the typical books where you already know what will happen and feel like you have wasted so much time because you were right. There were plenty of surprises and I was sucked into this world of disgust as if I were really there.
What were your thoughts or feelings and how did I just not discover this?