Alice in Borderland: Season 2

Join Arisu and the rest of the Beach remnants as they search for the answers as to where they are and how to get back to the real world in Alice in Borderland: Season 2.

To get a better understanding for those that haven’t seen the first season of Alice in Borderland, I will first give insight about the first season for better context, spoilers, and all, you have been warned.

Alice in Borderland is a Japanese suspense manga series written and illustrated by Haro Aso, which was first serialized in Shogakukan’s shōnen manga magazine Shōnen Sunday S from November 2010 to March 2015.

It follows the events of obsessed gamer Arisu Ryohei played by Kento Yamazaki, who suddenly finds himself in a strange, emptied-out version of Tokyo in which he and his friends must compete in dangerous games to survive.

The difficulty of each game is measured by the number on the card that appears before the match starts: the higher the number, the harder it is for the players to come out alive.

Clubs are games of teamwork, heart games presuppose betrayal, diamonds stand for a battle of intellect, and games of spades measure the players’ physical abilities.

After collecting all the numbers cards at the end of Season One, the remaining face cards such as Jack, King, and Queen finally reveal themselves followed by their signature blimps, and the first episode of season two wastes no time in reminding us of how desperate the situation is.

The King of Spades unlike other face cards has no designated location assigned to him and can roam as far as he wants whenever he wants, killing and leaving a lot of corpses wherever he so appears.

And finally, one of the biggest mysteries is answered when it’s revealed that Alice in Borderland is the state between life and death, and players are given the options of either fighting for their lives by completing the games and choosing between staying there and becoming a citizen, or returning to their real-world without any memory of what happened, and lasting dying from losing the games or letting your visa run out.

You see, during the first season in episode one, there’s this brief moment while Arisu and his friends are in the real world, they see fireworks in the middle of the day, in broad daylight, and shortly after that, they arrive in the borderland.

Well it seems, that those were no ordinary fireworks to begin with, in truth, Arisu and everyone that arrived in the borderland are unaware that Tokyo was hit by a meteorite, killing many in the process, and leaving many in a coma, a state of death though not completely dead, thus enters the place called Borderland.

This second season has been long awaited, and to finally get the answers that we so desperately wanted to be answered little by little yet still trying to lie and deceive the audience at every turn has been one hell of a rollercoaster ride.

What I love about Alice in Borderland aside from its original idea of people in the state between life and death having to play a bunch of games for their survival are the complex characters it has and how it chooses to use these characters.

Arisu has always kept himself closed off from interacting with others, he never felt accepted by his father and considered spending more time gaming as a way to keep his mind busy from reality.

Usagi, on the other hand, had to live with the resentment of having a famous father who one day disappeared while mountain climbing and being punished by the media daily by accusing her father of being a liar, sadly enough, she’s the only one around to take the blame even though it has nothing to do with her.

It takes all these interesting characters, puts them in a single room with only one plate of food to spare, and watches to see what the people will do.

In a sense of exploring what drives people and what people are willing to do for their survival, Alice in Borderland truly exiles in this field. It shows us that people are more than just their appearance, their education, and their social status.

People can change, we’re not all tigers that can’t change their strips. Even though we all grow up differently, there is a fundamental aspect to human beings that we all share, we all want a better tomorrow.

For this, I give Alice in Borderland 4.2 out of 5 ratings.

Let me know in the comments below whether you agree or disagree with my review, I’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this series.

Thank you for reading another review from, LSR.

Stay Blessed.