Netflix Has Done it Again: Alice in Borderland Review
Warning: Season 1 spoilers ahead
Based off a Japanese manga by Haro Aso, Alice in Borderland is one of the newest Netflix Original sci-fi thrillers to land on the site. The brilliant 8-part series was a rollercoaster, but definitely did not disappoint!
Before jumping into the Netflix show, if you are from Australia, I definitely recommend switching the audio to Japanese and watching English subtitles. I personally always avoid dubbing because not only will the audio match the mouth, but you can appreciate the characters more by hearing their true voice.
In the first episode we see three friends Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), Karube (Keita Machida), and Chōta (Yûki Morinaga) hanging out in the city of Tokyo. After emerging out of the bathroom, the three men find that every single person has disappeared and the Shibuya Crossing is completely empty.
Eventually they are led into a game arena where they soon find out that they must compete in dangerous and life threatening games in order to stay alive. When participators survive the challenge, they get their ‘visas’ extended for a few days. Failure to win or an expired visa means death by a laser from the skies above.
The structure of the series is something I loved, as each episode would include a thrilling game, but still plenty of other time for plot and storyline. You get a decent balance of high intensity and sweating on who survives, and then mystery through hints and character backgrounds.
As all friends make it to the next challenge and pick up another member on the way, it is revealed that these games are categorised by a deck of playing cards. This represents the difficulty and what will be required. Spades is strength, clubs are team games, diamonds are wits, and hearts are games of betrayal.
This leads us into episode 3, which completely destroyed me and was nothing short of heartbreaking. Being a 7 of hearts, I was anxious to see where it would go.
In this challenge each player was given a headset with a camera and face recognition and was told there would be three ‘sheep’ and one ‘wolf’. To switch from wolf to sheep the player had to lock eyes with the other and it was transferred. Being revealed that at the conclusion of the game, only the wolf would survive.
In what was completely shocking to me, Arisu became the wolf, and was the only friend to make it out alive.
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This was an aspect that made me so frustrated but respected it at the same time. The show was not afraid to make the hard decisions of removing main characters and not giving you the expected result by letting you believe that it would all work out in the end.
Even though it was a thriller, in no way did I ever think that his good friends Karube and Chōta would die. I assumed that they would just find a way to beat it, but was severely disappointed.
If the show included a bit more backstory of their prior friendship, the effects of their deaths would have impacted us way more as the viewer. Although, that definitely didn’t stop me sobbing during and after episode 3, wondering how Arisu would continue.
What the show did really well was finding these perfect supporting characters for Arisu that didn’t leave a massive hole after the loss of his friends. New characters were introduced or focused on more, who all had flashback origin stories from prior to the games.
It allowed us to not waste anytime mourning but completely projected the story and had characters that demanded our interest and attention. In particular Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), who Arisu becomes extremely close allies with.
The storyline continues to dive a lot deeper and provides so much more mystery and layers than what it originally starts as. There was constant development which always defied my expectations of what would occur next.
Through the games, Alice in Borderland was able to explore moral and ethical concerns as well as what individuals were willing to do for survival. Especially if that meant sacrificing an ally for yourself.
It showed that there was no one type of person that could succeed, as you needed to be physically fit, intellectually smart and ultimately willing to betray.
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Watching this at times was quite intense and was such a weird hypothetical to imagine the choices you would make or how well you would go in this alternate version of Tokyo.
The answer for me is obviously very, very bad.
But it gave it a strange realism and believability due to the fact that not everyone one would make it, people did die, even if it was the characters you may have had a connection to.
Without touching too much on the ending, it is a very intelligent and exciting series that you will definitely want to keep watching.
I was extremely surprised how well the show was produced and how invested I became as it is definitely outside of my typical Netflix viewing.
It has really influenced me to want to explore other Japanese filmed series and this genre because I was so impressed.
While this show is incredibly easy to fly through in 2 days, don’t stress for too long. After being on Netflix for only 2 weeks, Alice in Borderland was approved for season 2! There is bound to be many more surprises to come, so now I just have to stop myself at looking for manga spoilers in the meantime.
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