Alice in Borderland: How does it reflect on culture today?
One of my favorite ongoing series is "Alice in Borderland". It's not even in English, but somehow I'm able to enjoy it so much more than american shows.
I originally watched the show in 2024 after seeing people compare it to another foreign show I watched the year before, "All of Us Are Dead". Both are apocalyptic thriller series on Netflix but they are drastically different and from two different countries. However, recently I've been rewatching "Alice in Borderland" because I enjoyed the show so much and I wanted to rewatch it with my friend before the third season comes out.
My favorite episode is by far, Episode 7 of Season 1. All of the characters are in a big resort known as The Beach which is used a gathing point for people who plan on working together to beat all of the games in the Borderland to collect all the cards that are given after surviving each game. However, the leader of this place, The Hatter, is killed and his partner takes over. While this place used to be a carefree safe-haven for survivors, this new leader has an entirely different approach to handling the place, one that only causes chaos for our main characters. However, in the midst of this chaos, or characters find out that The Beach was secretly set up to be a game arena and now none of them can leave until they survive the game. The game is called Witch Hunt. A girl is found dead in the center of the lobby. She's been stabbed. Now it's up to all the residents to find out which one of them killed her and throw that person into the fire outside within two hours, or they'll all be eliminated. The new leader decides that the best way to solve this mystery is by killing everyone one by one and throwing them into the fire until the game is announced finished because they found the right person. Of course, no one else wants to go along with this because it's wrong to kill countless innocent people just to win the game, but the leader and his gang don't care whether the residents cooperate or not, because some of them find it more fun to chase them all and gun everyone down.
This is by far one of the most eerie and yet one of the coolest episodes. Up until this point, for the past few episodes, I started to feel that everything was moving too slow because they killed off half of the main characters in the third episode and they had been using the past episodes to introduce new characters I'm supposed to care about and villains that pose threats. However, at the moment when Kuina sees the lasers guarding her from leaving The Beach and she realizes that she's inadvertently stepped into a game, I physically got chills.
The lead character in the series is Arisu, played by Kento Yamazaki. (Fun fact, Arisu translates to Alice in Japanese, hence the name and themes of the show.) He was a loser who had no job and only two friends, bad boy Karube and softie Chota, played by Keita Machida and Yûki Morinaga respectively. The three were hanging out in Tokyo City, when they ran into the bathroom and left to find that everyone in the bustling town square had disapeared. Once night hits, they are drawn to an building where they are forced to play a deadly game, where they meet experienced player, businesswoman Shubuki, portrayed by Ayame Misaki. After surviving their first game, they form a group and Arisu and Karube compete in their second game to see if they can find a doctor to help Chota, who got injured. In this game, we meet a few more main characters. Usagi, a skilled climber played by Tao Tsuchiya, the intelligent and laid back Chishaya, played by Nijirô Murakami, and tough military man Aguni, played by Shô Aoyagi. After they all survive this game, but without finding a doctor, Arisu and Karube regroup with Chota and Shibuki to play their third game, where they finally are forced to turn against each other. The others are forced to sacrifice themselves to save Arisu, who is the only one to get out alive.
Arisu is devastated after this. Usagi finds him lying on the ground, giving up on life, and she starts to take care of him and work with him to find a way out of these games. Together, they make their way to The Beach, where they meet the leader of the organization/resort, The Hatter, played by Nobuaki Kaneko. They also meet and work together with Chishaya and his friend Kuina, played by Aya Asahina. They find that Aguni is the Hatter's partner and among the leaders of The Beach are Ann, Niragi, and Mira. After the Hatter is killed, people scramble under Aguni's new leadership. Chishaya works with Arisu, Usagi, and Kuina to find a letter that Aguni saw when he was becoming the new leader, but he ends up betraying Arisu in order to find it, leaving Arisu to get tied up. Neither Usagi or Kuina are okay with this, but with Arisu out of the way, the new staff of The Beach take Usagi and attempt to take advantage of her, but right then is when the game starts.
The show is definitely targeted towards a Japanese audience because it takes place in Japan and they make references to Japanese pop culture, but because it was produced by Netflix and intended to be released world wide, you will very easily forget the characters are in Japan. They really make it applicable to any country because half the people in the city have disappeared anyways.
This show was often compared to Squid Game, a Korean show that started a year after this one, simply because they both involve life or death games. While they have that similarity, they are very different. One major difference is that the characters chose to play the Squid Game and the characters in Alice in Borderland were forced into this situation against any possible will.
The show has an extremely interesting take on society. I never even considered what it had to say before, but it really reflects how certain people would react when they don't need to abide by the rules society has put in place. The three friends we start the show with think they've stepped into a paradise with no one to tell them what to do, but Karube knows that his friends aren't seeing the full picture. We need people in our lives and to take them away so suddenly, we would fall apart. When The Hatter is running The Beach, there's no structure and instead just laid back fun. When Aguni is in charge, a complete 180 happens, where they implement ridiculous rules all punishable by death. However, they both are doing these things so that they can get what the want, because we as a society are very individualistic.
The show really doesn't have any stereotypes I can think of, because they seem to break all of them. The main character, Arisu, is described as a "loser gamer without a job" and yet his friend Karube constantly tells him how smart he is and Arisu manages to use his intelligence countless times to survive the games. Karube is a hardened bad boy, but he's the most responsible and most level headed character, constantly caring for his friends and wanting to keep them safe. Usagi is extremely independent after the death of the disappearance of her father, assuming the world and the people in it failed him, yet she saves Arisu and helps him get better after the loss of his friends. Kuina is revealed to have been born a boy before transitioning to a girl and being disowned by her father, and although this is a major piece of her character in Episode 8, it's never actually brought up by anyone other then her having her own flashbacks, which I find amazing because I wait shows feel the need to point out things like that in dialogue. Overall it's just a really good show.
The show is completely fictional. Half the stuff in the show wouldn't even be possible in real life, but it does I think reflect a serious issue in society and the individual person. When stripped away from everyone and everything we rely, can we really trust ourselves or others? That's what the show is constantly testing.
From a visual standpoint, "Alice in Borderland" is beautiful, especially the nighttime scenes. They use so many glowing lights that you almost forget someone's about to die in twenty minutes. The acting is also amazing. It takes a lot of talent to pull of a good "horrified" scream. Not very many people can do it convincingly, but these people can. When you watch your friend get killed, you'd definitely be screaming a guttural scream, not some high pitched movie scream. That's just one of the main things I thought about with that. Also, when looking at the behind the scenes footage, they use a lot of real stunts and I think that's really amazing in comparison to doing CGI stunts.
I love everything about the show. I love how it makes you think. I love how you get attached to the characters in such a short amount of time. I love how it looks and how it feels. I love how it isn't afraid to create high stakes situations. I like how you feel truly horrified when there's no gore. The show has gore, but not nearly as much as some other shows, which is why I say I think it's impressive how it can imply an image without showing it sometimes. Whenever I like a show, I really want to show it to all my friends because I want them to enjoy stuff with me and I want to see their reactions to moments that shocked me. I always find that fun. For example, the fact that three out of four of the main characters die in the third episode, despite them building so much connection between all of them so you don't predict it. I mainly talk with my friends about how much I love certain characters.
"Arisu in his second game... is faced with numerous corridors lined with doors. This is where he meets Usagi, where she’s incredibly impressive with her athletic prowess. When she first meets Arisu outside the games, she acts as a guide and support to him, as the White Rabbit did to Alice when she was lost." (Jay Knapp, The Dakota Planet)
Besides that, they also complimented the way the series used the character Kuina, similarly to how I did. Overall, they enjoyed the series, saying it is "easy to get obsessed" with it.
I originally watched this show by myself and after finishing the first season, I waited months before watching the second, even though it was out. Why did I do this? Well, I must've known that when I started watching it, I wouldn't be able to stop, because I binge-watched most of the second season. After watching it, I went to follow the cast on Instagram and found that all of the cast were followed by a close friend of mine and so we started bonding over the show. Now I've a got another friend of mine to start watching it with me and my boyfriend wants to watch it with me eventually too, so I think I'm growing a fan base. The show doesn't actually have a promotional Instagram page, but all of the cast have accounts and they will post when an update is announced and sometimes behind the scenes photos.
I had never thought before about what this show says about society, considering society itself disappears, but in a way I think that also has proven to show me how individualistic we all are and yet we'd be in chaos without the people around us. In the end, "Alice in Borderland" is an amazing show that had amazing Season 2 finale, so I am excited to see where it chooses to go in Season 3 releasing this year!
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