Hey, did you know that Suzanne Collins's apocal-epic YA trilogy "The Hunger Games" is set to hit the big screen this weekend? Not a surprise? Maybe it's because, you know, it's all anyone's been talking about for pretty much forever.

What's ironic — and by ironic, we mean "Alanis Morisettian irony," e.g., not actually ironic — is how saturated the conversation around "Hunger Games" is with the language of one-on-one, winner-take-all violence: "'The Hunger Games' vs. 'Harry Potter'!" "Can 'The Hunger Games' crush 'Twilight'?" "Imax aims to kill with 'Hunger Games'!"

Why, it's almost as if the movie were…a teenaged contestant in a deadly populist amusement engineered by the leering master of a dystopian future world! Ha ha, that sounds familiar. You know, because it's exactly the theme of "The Hunger Games" itself? But wait, it's also eerily reminiscent of another book-turned-movie about kids violently murdering other kids: Japanese cult author Koushun Takami's "Battle Royale," which was published as a light novel in 1999, adapted into a hit feature film in 2000 and then turned into several equally popular manga series (the third of which, a two-chapter spinoff titled "Battle Royale: Angels' Border," just came out in January).

After all, "Hunger Games" is about adolescent boys and girls being randomly pulled into a gory deathmatch in an arena filled with natural and artificial hazards. Some of the contestants embrace the opportunity to cause mayhem; others try to navigate the situation with diplomacy, only to be ruthlessly murdered by more vicious players. The story ultimately focuses on a trio of protagonists, one slightly older and embittered by loss; the other two are younger and more innocent, and turn to their more mature peer for guidance and inspiration. "Battle Royale"? Same description. Collins herself has repeatedly denied having ever seen or even heard of "Battle Royale" until she'd already turned in the manuscript of the trilogy's first novel, at which point she asked her editor if she should read it. "He said: 'No, I don't want that world in your head. Just continue with what you're doing,'" she told the New York Times last April, and claimed to have still never read the book or the movie.

But that didn't prevent the similarities from predictably inflaming passions on the Interwebs ever since Collins's novel first hit bookshelves, generating, well, a battle royale between Hunger's tweenage girl army and Battle's manga-nerd suicide commandos. And over the past two weeks, with media hype over the movie blaring, the fracas has extended into the (largely clueless) mainstream, confusing some readers and viewers who still think "manga" is a where the little baby Jesus slept on Christmas day. (Not you! If you're reading this column, we assume you're up to speed on the whole manga thing. And if not, just go take a peek at the bookshelves of the nearest 13-year-old.)