The novel was entered into the 1997 Japan Horror Fiction Awards, but was eventually rejected in the final round with no winner that year. All three members of the final round's selection committee that year admitted "Battle Royale" was the best work, but declined to award it due to its controversial content. Hiroshi Aramata said that while it was the best nominee in terms of "story, structure, and subject matter," he felt it was too much of a "Kinpachi-sensei" parody and suspected its content would cause problems. Katsuhiko Takahashi felt that although it was the superior work as far as its construction as a novel, giving the award to a story about students killing each other at "this time" would hurt the reputation of the competition. Mariko Hayashi said that while she believed it was the best of the four novels, it was like reading an "unpleasant near-future manga" and "No matter how squarely it might be horror or how interesting it might be, I'm not so sure we should be writing stories like this." In 2001, Kōji Ōnuma wrote , a dissertation that explores the themes of the book.