Alice in Borderland (2020)

High-Stakes Survival: The Thrilling Depths of Alice in Borderland

Alice in Borderland is an electrifying journey through a desolate, high-stakes world where each game becomes a life-or-death battle. Set in an abandoned Tokyo, the show captures a surreal yet visually captivating landscape that heightens the tension as characters rely on their wits to survive. Every episode introduces a new, twisted challenge that tests contestants’ intelligence, endurance, and loyalty, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats with each pulse-pounding reveal. This show hooks you quickly, with well-developed characters navigating unpredictable alliances, betrayals, and deadly puzzles.

What truly sets Alice in Borderland apart is its psychological depth. The series delves into profound themes, exploring friendship, sacrifice, and the human spirit in the face of unimaginable challenges. Each game is not just a test of survival but a reflection of what truly matters when everything is at stake. The intense action is balanced with thought-provoking moments that linger long after the credits roll.

For fans of survival dramas or anyone craving a show that merges thrilling action with deeper themes, Alice in Borderland is a compelling, unforgettable experience that raises the bar for the genre. It invites viewers to not only witness the games but also ponder the complexities of humanity when pushed to the brink. If you’re looking for a show that captivates both the mind and heart, this is one to dive into.

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Entertaining Action Spoiled by Inconsistent Writing

I was not impressed by Squid Game. With all due respect to the fans of Alice in Borderland, though, I have to say that for me this series is even worse than the South Korean one.

The first four episodes were great, almost on the same level as Squid Game in terms of gore and intensity, and the characters were just as interesting. I found the main character, Arisu, to be more likeable than his Korean counterpart. He is a good, principled, and smart person, so I cared about him and wanted to know if he would survive. Furthermore, the games seemed to me to be more clever than the ones in Squid Game.

Then, in episode five, the story started going downhill at a rapid pace. I felt like I was suddenly watching a different series. What should have been a survival story began to resemble a badly written mafia movie. Instead of games, I was fed tragic backstories and unnecessarily dramatic dialogues, mostly from characters whom I was given no reason to sympathize with. If the scriptwriters thought that I would feel sorry for a crazy mass murderer who tried to rape a woman because he was bullied at school, they thought wrong. They should have at least put some effort into making those tragic backstories less clichéd. At some point, I started skipping most scenes.

Aside from Arisu, the other character who kept me watching through these absurd episodes was Chishiya. Morally gray, charismatic, and smart, he was intriguing. The fact that the scriptwriters did not assign him a tragic backstory made him even more appealing. Murakami Nijiro, who plays him, is a great actor. He nails the Cheshire Cat smirk.

The last episode made a relatively successful attempt to improve the story and reach the quality of the initial episodes, but the plot twist in the end was neither emotionally devastating nor particularly surprising.
What made the final plot twist in Squid Game so memorable for me was that the character who turned out to be evil had convinced me that he was harmless and good, and I had come to care about him. I felt betrayed, and I had missed the clues, which had been in front of me the whole time, partially because I did not want to believe that this character was capable of such evil.
Things were not so with this series. The character who was revealed to be the mastermind behind the games had almost no screen time, so I did not care about them any more than about the extras. There were not any hidden clues that would have pointed to them. At the same time, though, every time this character was shown they looked confident and slightly unhinged. It was not difficult to figure out that they were plotting something.

Overall, I think that fans of Squid Game might not enjoy its Japanese predecessor that much. The production team of Squid Game learned from the mistakes of this series and delivered a story that, while flawed, is more consistent and thrilling than this one.

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Best adaptation ever.

this series has been in my plan to watch list for a long time, Since I had huch that this one is gonna be good. I definitely doesnt want to watch this partially, now second season about to come out I had to complete it. now i saw the mdl score im kind of mad this series deserve score over 9 honestly.
Story :
written by a fucking genius mangaka, then pictured and directed nicely as adaptation.
first of all the games, mechanism of the game is really good split in every each category spades, clubs, diamond, and hearts
spades games of physical and survival. diamond game of wits, hearts game of psychology, clubs games of balance of other three categories. each categories game difficulties pictured in numbers with the hardest numbers games showed with number 10, though too bad no aces game were showed since ace could be the hardest or the easiest. each game are meaningful on their own as a test if the player are worthy to lives longer, based on categories and numbers. unlike other death game that forces to have casualties, each game surprisingly fair there is actually a way for everyone to survive and hints to it. but of course not so easy.
spoiler alert if there are players of course there are dealers which revealed later on, both sides plays with their lives at stakes, really interesting.
Characters :
how work for every series, yet I pretty much like everyone. each one progressed on their own and has reasons to survive on their own each pictured really well not too long yet understandable. you'll care about every characters, every player will have regrets such as "things could have been better" as they plays every game and grow as a character.
Music :
its pretty much subjective for me, music fits well with the intensity even though none are really memorable. music fits, not too loud for you to have jump scare, thats it need to be for a good music in a mystery series for me.
Rewatch :
this is what so special, I believe you can watch this series multiple times as many as you want, especially if you are a locked-room mystery fan, there is so much solution in every game you can try to find the hints yourself. the characters that plays the game may or may not get the hints but there always is a way, spoiler alert especially in game 7 of heart.
INTP people I see you. you'll definitely love this series.

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Un piccolo capolavoro del genere

Uno dei miei jdrama preferiti, sì somiglia da altri prodotti televisivi giapponesi, ma questo non toglie nulla dalla sua validità e inventiva. Sì abbiamo già visto giochi mortali in tv, che indagavano la psiche umana e cosa sarebbe disposto a fare un uomo pur di sopravvivere, ma questo è comunque innovativo nel suo immaginario, nella psicologia dei personaggi e ha veramente un ritmo incalzante pur senza sembrare mai frettoloso. Anzi, queste 8 puntate mi hanno regalato le stesse emozioni di altri drama di 16 puntate. I cambi di scenario, i personaggi tuutto risulta interessante e coinvolgente.

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Inesperadamente atrapante

Primero de todo, yo había visto antes "El juego del calamar" por lo que tenía una idea preconcebida. Pero a todos aquellos que les pase como yo, les digo que borren esa comparación porque esta serie es cien mil veces mejor (sin desprestigiar El juego del calamar, la cual también es una buena serie).

Los actores hacen un trabajo increíble, en especial Arisu (protagonista) que es capaz de transmitiste y hacerte sentir igual que él. Además la trama te mantiene en constante alerta y atención a no perderte nada; sabiendo como mantenerte intrigado durante todos los capítulos. E incluso consiguiendo sorprenderte en cada uno de ellos. Al igual que al presentarte nuevos personajes te hacen simpatizar con ellos al instante.

Así que para terminar, a todos aquellos que os gustó "El juego del Calamar", sin lugar a duda le daría una oportunidad a esta serie, no os va a defraudar.

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I just watch it in 1 DAY

My sister reccomeded it to me but i was like ... 'i am not sure if its my type of drama that i watch usually', i had no expectations

BUT

I WAS WRONG

◇The story... the only word that come to my mind is WOW, ITS JUST DIFFERENT/UNIQUE it fantastic. I really loved the fact that the games were like riddle.
◇ It was addicted as you can see(when i finish it, i was like 'where am i - i want MORE')
◇It was like i played there, especially in the second episode which is my favorite episode
◇The acting was really good & the ost
◇The production was 🤌
◇FULL OF ACTION


YOU SHOULD WATCH IT !!!

(WHY NOBODY TOLD ME THAT THE GUY WITH THE YELLOW HAIR - one of the 3 friends- WAS KURΟSAWA FROM CHERRY MAGIC LIKE 🤯🤯🤯
AFTER I FOUND IT, I HAD 10 HEART ATTACKS but now i am ok )

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Don't get me started

Caution!: I never read the Manga nor watch the anime so this is purely based on this experience!

The Characters? Great! The actors did their job perfectly and the whole experience was great! I binged it right after I binged Sweet Home and both were the best thing I ever watched.

There is only ONE thing that bothered me. Nijiro's (Chishiya's) wig. Like whoever made that happen like THIS, jail time for you. But fortunately it didn't influence the top notch acting.

I was pleasantly surprised when I noticed the actor portraying Karube is the same as the one from Cherry Magic (watch it, it's great) and the one portraying Arisu is L from the 2015 Death note drama! (Must watch too ;3)

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Decent show, but falters badly after episode 3

This show is compared to Squid Game a lot, and as a fan of SG, I gave it a shot only to realize the comparisons make no sense whatsoever. The two shows have nothing in common other than having death games as a major plot point.

Overall AIB is entertaining with lots of fantastical elements. It starts off strong, and some early episodes hit me in the gut, mainly due to excellent acting. But the story takes a weird turn around halfway through the season, and, in my opinion, loses its appeal. Plot twists are cheapened and unnecessarily confusing, and the character development is shallow and uninteresting.

It's a good show for a weekend binge, but not one that left a deep impression on me. That being said, I'll still be watching season 2 :)

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Don't watch Squid Game first.

Ok, i liked the series it was really good but there's just something missing.
I know there's a manga about it but i never read it and i don't plan to honestly.

I came in here with really high expectations because people in my entourage and people on the internet said that Squid Game was over hyped and that Alice in borderland was in fact better. I watched SG when it came out and really, no death game, no series of that genre was better than this... STILL.

Maybe if SG never came out AIB would've been the best series of that genre out there no discussion, but SG ate AIB up sorry not sorry.

First off, how the story takes off makes no sense. Literally no sense. Arisu doesn't even really go at it with his brother or father to leave, he just finds an excuse to get off the game and leave. And then he says that he got "kicked out"... What ? No, your spoiled ass didn't get kicked out, you ran away like an ungrateful kid.
Then you got Karube kissing his boss wife, seems like it's not the first time but oh my oh my, he suddenly gets beat up and fired THAT day. At least with Arisu we somehow got a hint of his background but with Karube it was like "ok, he has a job but we need to make him leave the job and show that the 3 bestfriends are all losers in some way"???? A whole bunch of nonsense put together.

Talking about their friendship, it was boring. Really boring. None of them are funny or interesting. The only one that was at the very least charismatic was Karube and I think he made the whole friendship.

It took half of the first episode to really get into it and i don't mind taking time to really set the story up. But now stories were boring, briefly cut to let place to 3 boring guys struggling to find something to do (pretty sure the director did that just so he can gain more minutes because he didn't know what to do). Then the story starts with electrical power just cutting off, phones too, people disappearing. To me that was really unrealistic and it's an overused method to start a death game story. It's always either you see people but they don't see you or people disappear. Always that "isolating" start.

Arisu is the character that pissed me the most off, especially during the 7 Hearts game in the botanical garden. He ran away with the wolf "mask/title" and then hid and acted like he was sorry and then when only 3 minutes were remaining, he suddenly "changed" his mind. But at the same time i was glad he was there during certain games. And also can we talk about Shibuki? She was so useless omg. Can somebody just tell me what did she do for the story? Except explaining some of the rules they could've figured out themselves ? If the story went without her, it would've made absolutely no difference.

In my opinion, the series got interesting only from episode 7... meaning the end since there's 8 episodes. I just feel like the rest was so passive, nothing was really happening. Chota was a really passive character, if the friendship was just Arisu and Karube, it would've made no difference as well.

Japan really has a thing for sects. Chota's story was about that, and "The Beach" was definitely a sect or just had a sect-ish vibe.
The way you would see every other girl in bikinis, being victims of attempted rape really made me uncomfortable.

This series felt like there was no story whatsoever, especially for the main characters. I don't even like any of them. Like i said it got interesting from episode 7 to 8 and the male lead wasn't there for most of it. That tells a lot.

The set up was good, i can't really say anything on that. It's just Tokyo streets, they are really cool. Fortunately we got to see other players because if it was the 3 guys from the beginning all along... i don't know.

The actors did really bad acting in my opinion. They succeeded to carry the show but I wasn't really sold about it.

I'm definitely going to compare this with Squid Game because almost every AIB fans i talked to literally DRAGGED it.
I think Squid Game was better. First of all, in AIB, Arisu is from a rich family, he can stay home and not do anything, it won't affect anything, so i don't feel bad or any type of way for him. In SG, the game was made for the players to naturally reveal their true self, while in AIB it felt like they had no choice but act evil. The story of each character in SG was meaningful and left a memory on you, while in AIB you could get stories about a girl that loves her father??? Ok? Or a bullied boy that grew into a villain... Ok?? Still want you dead tho. Unnecessary moments like that made me mad. Or you could get sex/nudity scenes that absolutely nobody needed to see. Like wtf does it add to the story? I'm talking about you Shibuki.
The series (AIB) lacked action and suspense in my opinion. During most of the games i wasn't really impressed. I had a little tension because the games were difficult to clear but that's it. I didn't sweat, I wasn't stressed out, I didn't feel any pressure. It was just like watching white wall, not impressed. And it's really sad because i LOVE feeling stressed out and pressured because this indicates that the show is really good to me.

On the overall, I'll leave a 7.5/10. The show is definitely good but if I recommend this to someone that seen Squid Game first, they're definitely going to be disappointed. So i suggest watching this first and then SG.

Oh and if in season 2 it happens to be all a virtual game imagined or being played by Arisu or anothe person it would be the most boring series i've ever seen hands down.

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Disappointing

Being very honest, as a manga reader, I didn't enjoy this drama that much.
They failed in a lot o aspects in compariso to the source material.
I couldn't bring myself to care for any of the characters. On episode 3 (which in the manga is the part that absolutly destroyed me) the only feling I had towords the characters was desapointmant, it wasn't nearly as emotional as it should have been.
Not to mention the rest of the games and how they changed them, making them simpler and less interesting. Also putting the main characters in games they didn't participate in the manga, basically ignoring Arisu's traumatic experience in the hide and seek game and the ways it affected him psychologically.
Though I liked some especific changes, like the addition of celphones and the aged up main character(witch are teenagers in the manga).
But in the end it wasn't enough to make me enjoy the story.
I will give it someo extra credits for the production, which was quit impressive for a J-drama.
In conclusion: Wouldn't waste my time re-watching and don't know if I would watch a second season.

*Just want to end apologising for any gramatical mistakes*

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This is me mostly talking about s2 lol

This goes in the same category as squid game for me. It really is well done and i enjoyed every episode that aired. I cant help but think there will be another season even if the show was technically concluded but also that joker card at the end... if it actually ended then why would they show that and leave the ending so open? Its not a solid ending, even though i actually love the plot that this was all just borderland between life and death, its so clever and i loved that so much. People fighting for their lives for 1 minute...while it felt like an enternity for them. Wow. Jaw dropping.

Hope there will be another season just to solidfy everything again!

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