Imawa no Kuni no Alice 2 (2022)

Worse than Season One, But Still Had Some Fun Parts

I loved AiB S1, rewatching it to completion three or four times, which I absolutely never do with shows. However, this season was muddled, the games weren't as interesting, I was bored a lot, and there were so many things that didn't make sense even within the rules of the universe. How the fuck are these people still alive for hours after getting stabbed or shot multiple times in their stomachs while others are shot once and killed instantly? Does anyone even mention their visas this season? There was no reason the military face card guy could have killed that many people, he had a massive fucking blimp following him the entire time, how did that sneak up on anyone? How was that even a game?

On top of that, Usagi and Arisu are (purposefully) the most bland, self-insert characters ever, which made me not really care what happened to them (though I was screaming at my screen when they meet at the vending machine and don't recognize each other, but this was more because of my hatred of the amnesia trope. That being said, 40% of it was still rooting for them to remember). Ann and Kuina had more chemistry and were way more interesting. Make season 3 only if it's them (and dare I suggest........ lesbian.......... ......)

Chisiya's games were interesting but the end of the number average one seemed like such a copout. And I can't ever care about Chisiya as a character because he shows zero emotion. I sympathized more with insane rapist incel Nigari than him.

A lot of character's acting is just really mediocre, if not straight up bad. Namely Usagi and Arisu, which was a problem even in season one, but it stood out to me even more now.

Ending has me so feeling so many different emotions. I can't tell if I love it or hate it. Meteor thing is cool, but I think I feel so ambivalent because it's not executed well, or maybe I wish more was explained about how the Borderlands function in parallel/relation to the real world. The game with Mira was executed so blandly, for a finale it should have been much more complex and grandiose. I DO like the concept of it seeming like a croquet game but being a psychological test. What I mean by complexity is it felt like Arisu believed her way too easily to the point where it was fucking ridiculous. Why would he believe her when she lied multiple times ten minutes ago, and he knows the point of the game is to psychologically break him? It's so unbelievable.

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Losing Games

Ah what a shame it is to report that I didn’t love Alice In Borderlands second season.
That’s right: Didn’t love. Not didn’t like, not hated. Just didn’t love.

I was tempted to write my review immediately after finishing the finale but decided that I had to read at least the last few chapters of its source material, to determine how much blame I could actually place on the screenwriters. So, have it confirmed that I am aware that this is accurate to the manga. Okay, that fact acknowledged, I am still unhappy with it.

Alice In Borderland continues to deliver outstanding cinematography. But it also seems to be a case of style over substance. While I wanted to happily welcome this drama’s entire change in atmosphere, many creative decisions invited more questions than answers. Back in 2020, when the first season aired, pictures of the almost empty modern Shibuya seemed to unintentionally mimic a COVID-19 reality. This second season was created during a period when deserted shopping malls and shuttered businesses were more current memories than fiction. Which is why the choice to move away from such images, even if it might be true to the source material, seemed a tad puzzling. While compositions of Tokyo in ruins were beautiful to look at and reminded of post-apocalyptic titles such as The Last Of Us, they failed to generate the familiar eeriness the first season provided.
I thought that at some point, there would be a point to this decision beyond aesthetics. Multiple characters comment on how weird it is, that nature has taken over the city this quickly. How the growth of plants seems impossibly fast. But we never get an answer as to why this development took place. It actually doesn’t do anything for the plot in the long run, except underline how this world “doesn’t seem to function like the normal one”. But we already knew that, because our world also doesn’t contain gigantic Battle-royal-esque games or killer lasers.
When Alice in Borderland featured more familiar settings such a courts, prisons or deserted halls, I found myself in awe of its picture compositions. Now that I have read at least a good bit of the manga, I can truly appreciate how masterfully this show recreates comic panels into moving images. During the games, every aesthetic choice taken felt very intentional.

I don’t want to compare this title to Squid Game because I feel like they both function perfectly as its own thing and they honestly don’t seem that similar to me. However, in my opinion, the deciding advantage this show had compared to the Korean title, was the thought and care put into its games. Squid Game never bothered to feature complex challenges, because that was never its focus. Instead, the games in Squid Game almost had to be arbitrary to highlight the random and cruel nature of capitalism. Alice In Borderland had the privilege that it could have complex trials where the players got a chance to outsmart the system they were up against. It’s thrilling, to watch Arisu come up with complex and clever solutions to challenges that are rigged against him.
While season two does have a few interesting concepts for games, quite a few of them are riddled with logistical errors. The show seems to be aware of that fact, so often the players only can win based on conveniences or by trying to gaslight their rivals. And a good chunk of the time, our characters play no real games at all. Instead of clever challenges, this season wastes a lot of time on action segments that get so repetitive that I almost started feeling bored with them. While these scenes were executed well technically, I found myself missing the days when we were provided with games that truly tested their players. I made the mistake of believing that this show was supposed to be about missed potential. Arisu spent his pre-Alice In Borderland-days, wasting his talents by sitting home and being a NEET, so now he gets challenged to show what he’s actually capable of. But he can’t do that when the majority of this season he is preoccupied with being chased by an almost omnipotent master-shooter.

So then, what is the point, really? What is it all about? When Arisu and Chishuya no longer win by making use of their talents and no longer get a chance to self-actualize themselves, what is this show trying to tell me, really?
The writers seem to wonder the same thing. Which is why we get a lot of dialogues of characters philosophizing out loud. A lot of subtlety is lost that way but Alice In Borderland has always been everything but subtle. What does it all mean? Why are we still doing this to ourselves? What is the meaning of life?
Those are all valid questions. Problem is, no one in Alice In Borderland seems to have an answer for anything that has been going on. While the drama's last episode got closer and closer and none of my questions got answered, I worried that I would be subjected to a finale of tiring exposition. But I didn’t even get that, or at least not really. Alice In Borderland fails to answer its biggest riddles, not only about its theme but also its logistics. Who is the mastermind? She’s just a random person. What was her end-goal? Who knows, she doesn’t even seem to be real. Who were the aces of the game and how did they even get to this position? I don’t know and it doesn’t matter because turns out that all of this has just been a mass hallucination.
When Arisu had his last conversation with the gamemaster and she gave him multiple possibilities of what the reality behind this world might be, I found myself preferring every single one of them to the real one. The one where all characters willingly put themselves through a cruel simulation in the future, because they were so bored with their lives, could have been a powerful commentary about how we the viewer also seek thrill in gruesome fiction to distract ourselves. A world where the rich and powerful bet on the players as a form of entertainment, might not have been particularly original, (hello Squid Game, hello Hunger Games), but it would still have had a tighter theme and message than the actual ending. Hell, even the visual of Arisu trapped in a mental hospital could at least have been haunting. But then the show's mastermind literally laughed in my face for believing that the finale could have been something cooler than what it ultimately was. I was a fool for thinking this show was about anything meaningful in particular. What is the meaning of life really? The gamemaster gives the answer to the viewer: “Life is a game. You should try to have fun.”
So there you have it, the theme of Alice In Borderland is to turn our brains off and have fun.

Arisu walks out of the experience and we have to just believe that he is a changed person. But even if that should be the case, the reason in his fundamental change does not lie in the things he learned while playing games, he doesn’t even seem to remember any of them. He’s changed because he lived through a traumatic environmental catastrophe that tragically killed his friends. He doesn’t get to remember all these times he has been clever or brave and he doesn’t learn about the potential within him.

Here you go, those are all the reasons I ultimately felt let down by this finale. Rest assured, I did find myself turning off my brain at some points and having fun. I loved the character King Of Clubs, I cried over Ann's and Hikari's tender moments of friendship. I found myself smiling at Arisu's and Usagi's blooming romance. But ultimately this show has been all spectacle trying to make up for its very apparent flaws. Like an elephant in a hot spring. It’s beautiful to look at, sure, but eventually, you ask yourself how it even got here.

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Chishiya’s show

When I first watched season one I immediately rated it a nine. However a few weeks before the release of S2 I decided to give it a rewatch and honestly I would probably rate it a six now. It had many flaws that I didn't really care about in my first watch but when I rewatched it, it was almost painfully bad at times.
After rewatching S1 and reading some of the comments here on MDL about S2 my expectations were low.
That being said, this time, probably once again, I didn't really think it through when I rated it a nine, because I had fun and that is the most important thing in my mind. That doesn't mean that it deserves it or that I won't criticize it in what will follow, so here we go:

What I liked:
- Production quality: Everyone knows what a good production quality means and you can see it here. It is expensive and it shows.

- The games: If you ask me they were much better than in S1. First of all, the characters that appeared in the games were extremely interesting. Besides that, the games were much more suspenseful, difficult and not as predictable comparing with S1. Lastly they were much more violent.

- Chishiya: Okay, I will be honest. This guy should have been the main character and he is caring this show on his smart brain cells. He is so fun to watch and Murakami Nijiro's performance is on point. He is intelligent, flawed and has the best lines in the entire series. He is just a pleasure to watch and I believe that without him the series would be half as memorable.

- Manga feeling: First things first, I haven't actually read the manga, but the series does give you a manga-feeling. The action scenes, the way the characters act and look and some specific scenes are like they came out from manga pages, something that is probably one of the biggest advantages this drama has.

- New characters: Even though our old fav characters like Kuina and An are still there and they have kept their awesomeness, new interesting characters appeared like Kyuuma or Akane.

- Easy to watch: Look, some of the episodes were very long (with the longest being 1h and 20m), but generally the series was very easy to watch. Yes, there were some draggy scenes and some boring moments, but I didn’t feel the urge to see how long it is left from the episodes.

- The ending: As probably all sane people that were planning to watch season two, I was very concerned -and I mean very- about the ending. Will it be nonsensical? Will I want to break my screen?
The ending surpassed all of my expectations and it was the perfect way for the final episode to end. It was so mind-blowingly good that I had to rate the show a nine. It was also unexpected -at least comparing to what I had in mind-.


Things I found mediocre:
- Philosophical aspect: In this season there were many philosophical questions regarding the meaning of life, justice, the ''price'' of humans etc. Even though I liked that they added these existential questions, sometimes it felt a bit forced especially since it wasn't that evident in the first season.

- Main leads: I know, I will get killed for saying this, but the main leads were just boring to watch. They were so uninteresting comparing to the rest of the characters and their plot armour was so huge that even with a nuclear disaster they would survive.

- Nonsensical stuff: I know it is based on a manga and to be honest I didn't really care because I had fun watching, but the amount of disbelief I had to live through was just unimaginable. I think that they could have handled it a bit better to make it more suspenseful and ''realistic'' before the grand finale.

What I disliked:
- Acting of the two mains (and some other characters):
I had a huge problem with the acting of the two main leads, especially with Yamazaki Kento. He was overacting most of the times and no matter how much I tried to feel for his character his expressions were so ridiculous that I had the urge to laugh than actually care about him. Tsuchiya Tao also wasn't that great and her way of talking in some scenes felt like she was pressuring herself to sound in a specific way.
Let me be clear about something here. I know that in many Jdramas actors tend to overact, but there is a difference between good overacting and bad overacting.
Even though this is based on a manga (so I can get the need to overact) the only character that was overacting badly was Yamazaki Kento (and another character that barely appeared). Acting is acting and to be able to succeed in this type of acting you must know how to pull it off in moderation, something that our main lead obviously did not know.
They both had their good moments though (thankfully) and most of the times their acting was bearable.

- "Romance": Once again it is ruining the show and it is just not there, I am sorry. I saw no chemistry between the mains even though it was obvious that their affection was building from season one.

- Emotional moments: this series is about death games and people will die, they will get hurt (physically or emotionally) and they will question their existense and values. Even though there were some scenes that made me emotional (which I won't mention because of spoilers) the majority of them didn't work. They even used sad music as background and managed to make it feel bland. The fact that some of these scenes lasted longer than what they should have, reduced the emotional impact to zero. Funny thing is that I felt so much more when it came to some new characters comparing to what I felt for the main leads.


All in all, I had fun watching this season and -even though this is an unpopular opinion- I believe it was much better than season one especially when it came to characters, pacing and games.

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a survival game done right!

This is one of the few shows that deserves a season 2. You will not be disappointed, it was so satisfying and it all does makes sense!

The story is well-written and hands down to the cast here. They delivered it well. Especially, kento yamazaki what a great actor still, he doesn't have a limit. Looking forward to your future projects sir.

Really recommended to watch this. It teaches us about life, family, and friends, also strangers that youve met in just even a minute or so might have an impact in your life.

I might rewatch this anytime. It is that good.

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“save best for last”

A common idiom to put it simply, but never wrong. Alice in borderland was one of the best series to end this year and definitely worth the wait and hype!

i loved the plot, acting, casting, the fact every episode was better than the last, the games being more and more intense & the explanation of the last episode.

i hated niragi character, but that was about it, a selfish individual with no sense of morale and just wanted to go back to his reality.

The series portrays the key themes of perception and morality from a philosophical point of view.
the characters questioning the existence of the game world, whether it was real or not, the scepticism of the last episode especially, one may argue idealism plays a part too, it says there is no mind independent external world and its just ideas (game world).
Characters are faced with complex situations in which they learn to be virtuous individuals, they also would decide whether they should save the majority at the expense of the minority (tyranny of majority).
In the prison game, they tested the virtue of generosity and those who were selfless won; in the queen of hearts game, saving a child from dying and nineteen people over one person, most games were about teamwork, as shown in the last game, those who truly cared would help to the end and chishiya sacrificing himself to save usagi posed virtuous values.

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More than Satisfying!

Things I loved this season:

* Unpopular opinion maybe : but Arisu and Usagi's romance was soooo cuteee. I looked forward for their interactions the most. In the last episode, where they lie on the ground and tell each other what they wished to do together was the only emotional scene that moved me this season.

* Everyone's acting was spot on. No flaw whatsoever. The audience could feel what each character goes through perfectly.

* Loved some of the gamemasters (yamapi as king of clubs was unexpected but his character was oddly touching). Also, loved the Queen of Hearts and King of Diamonds. Disliked the other two (king and queen of spades)

* Loved Chishiya this season. The games in which he was in were the only ones I enjoyed. He also had good character development towards the end.

* The action scenes were well done . Especially in Episode 7. That episode is sure to keep you on your toes. The CGI was also top notch and realistic.

* Near perfect ending. Everything made sense. I'm fine with them not remembering each other but wanted everyone of them to meet. It could have given more closure. But, this ending was beautiful too. Kuina is my favourite character in the whole series and seeing her father accepting her was so ?


Things I disliked:

* The games were not as interesting as the first season - they hyped it up to be tougher than the number cards but they were meh. Most (almost all) were predictable.

* Therefore, Arisu didn't use too much wit in the games (there was no need to imo, most games didn't need any kind of strategy - he basically didn't play any diamond games here). My main love for aib 1 was Arisu's intellect.

* I know it's necessary for the whole purpose of returning back to the real world, but there was too many emotional scenes that bored me. The dialogues in these scenes didn't make me feel anything (I just wanted them to end quickly)

* I still can't believe that asshole Niragi survived. Also, arrow girl and even Ann survived (which is nice). It seemed a bit unrealistic but still it made sense because they were in the Borderlands and had a strong will to survive. (I'm just mad that while these ppl survived, Chota and Karube still died)

Overall: 9/10 (the pros outweighed the cons and I was way too attached to the characters ?)

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far from any expectation

I was really looking forward to the second season. the first was great and imaginative.
but now that i've tormented myself through the last episode, what remains is pure disappointment about all the missed opportunities. Arisu and Usagi were cool in season one, but by season two they've become a whining, nagging couple. I couldn't stand them both and had to fast forward.
The secondary characters had so much potential and were interesting.
Chishiya, Kuina and An deserve better. Chishiya, my darling, I was hoping they had bigger plans for you. but his past was as boring as his end. who wrote that?
the ending didn't make any sense. nothing has been clarified for me... the alien variant would have been really better.
sorry for such harsh words, but the only glimpse was the sexy naked guy in the first game. I am infinitely sorry that more was not done with the possibilities. the cliffhanger was there, as was the potential of the characters. unfortunately the authors were unimaginative. too bad, because I would have given the first season an 8.5.
If I had known that beforehand, I would have kept my hands off the series and saved myself this huge disappointment.

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At the end of the cliff I find who I truly am

It could not have been any more perfect ending to this beautiful drama. The second installment of the drama begins from where the first left off . Our players searching for the whole truth while competing in the card games. The games this time a lot harder and have a lot of bloodshed (gore) like the first installment. This time our players face against the king and queen cards. And while clearing those games they find out who they truly are and what meaning do their lives holds.

This second installment of the drama has many characters getting a good screen time like Usagi, Chishiya and Kuina. I also loved the ending. It seemed quite believable and not forced.

Seeing as dramas like these are getting quite the warm welcome from the fans. It got quite a big raise in the budget of the drama. Which increased the quality of the drama. I loved this drama as it was something different from what the Korean or Japanese productions produce.

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binge watched 12/22

ill try to keep this as brief as possible but that might be hard to do but anyways. im glad i rewatched the first season right before i started watched the second as it picks up right after the ending of s1. i would say as an "overall" perspective this season passed my expectations by A LOT and it was very much more action and violent packed than the 1st season was. im glad they decided to add more time in the episodes, and it made things feel not so rushed and i thought the passing was normal even until the end. starting with characters, arisu and usagi remained the best characters no questions asked all throughout the show, the actors worked very well and were able to portray their own characters amazing as always. we got some new supporting characters (and returned as well) and i always love how they always show some backstory to them (and even included of some already existing characters) to already get a sense of how the character is and such. the games also felt more intense and longer this season (don't think that was a bad thing). i found them all to be interesting and whenever there would be a "twist" it was always a "woahh didn't think of that" moment lmao. im so glad we got to see some more romance between arisu and usagi (their kiss scene!!) and even until the ending i knew they were always meant to be by each other's side. one thing i did not enjoy was how niragi came back (and still decided to betray the crew twice..). onto the last episode: that was such a crazy rollercoster of emotions and i have a lot to say about it so.. picking up from when arisu and usagi went into the last game, i never really trusted mira (duh!) and the overall episode felt a bit slow but actually liked that. when arisu started to ask mira questions about what the world they were in really was and mira's first response on them being controlled by virtual reality kind of gagged me and was like what?? even the second time she gave an "answer" just showed how unserious she was LMAOO but when she said chota and karube 'died" before the fireworks went off in the beginning i was like HUHH? and she started talking about trauma and suddenly they were in a room together and mira was his therapist?? i know i should not have trusted her but she really does sound convincing and i started to believe her but the whole "this was a figment of your imagination" ending just didnt do it for me and im so glad that wasn't the case because i was lowkey going to throw some hands at the writer.. now onto the REAL ending. im so glad the rest of the crew was alive and chose to "decline" their stay at the other world but the explosion happening in the "real world" was so crazy and i would have never guessed it! the way all the characters were there all the same place at the same time just made so much sense and clicked like WOW. i can see why people weren't that pleased with the ending but i would rather them not suffer again with all the trauma they had in the "other world " and i would love to just assume they all became friends coincidentally afterwards. some things im still confused about (like who actually created the games, why bomb that specific place, who killed mira) anyways, the cinematography was amazing as always and i would rate a 9/10

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A Masterpiece

This series is the best thing that Netflix had ever made. It is Worth Watching. The Games are on another Level. Everyone has done so well. They put a lot of effort & hard work & The series is Insane. It is the best thing that I have ever watched. It really gives goosebumps.

The Story is Insane & the Plot is Huge.These Games are really deadly & it is difficult to survive. These games of survival are made so fine. The show is very unexpected. Difficulty level is very high as compared to last season because These games are based on the Face Cards which are the real deal.

All actors had portrayed each character well. I love the Cast, Story & everything about this Series. This Series is beyond your imagination. This Show has everything in it. It tells us about the importance of life. The Players played these games of life and death only to survive. They must win all the games in order to survive.

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