The battle royale concept has been executed and repackaged in many forms over the years. The Hunger Games pits kids against each other in a mandatory deathmatch, while Battle Royale sent high school students into a fight to the death. Most recently, the hit Netflix sensation Squid Game saw players risk their lives for a prize pool of 45 billion won, once again bolstering the enduring popularity of the genre.
Alice in Borderland, in a similar vein, shares many of the same elements. With traces of influence from William Golding's allegorical novel Lord of the Flies and Battle Royale to works focused on psychological puzzles like Saw and Cube, the first season transported audiences to an abandoned Tokyo, where people are forced to compete in dangerous games. The difficulty and type of each is determined by the poker cards and their suite, and those who survive receive extensions to their "visas" which, upon expiration, will result in execution with red lasers shot from the sky.
Stars: Kento Yamazaki, Tao Tsuchiya, Nijirô Murakami
Returning to the dystopian fold after a two-year hiatus, season two ramps up the intensity of these games and raises the stakes to even greater, often terrifying heights. The series begins from the end of the first season, where the protagonist Arisu (Yamazaki Kento) and the remaining survivors, Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), Chishiya (Nijiro Murakami) and Kuina (Aya Asahina) learn about the existence of the "masters of play". ”, who are also gamers, after winning the Witch Hunt game on the beach.
However, it is later revealed that they are dead in an underground lair and a woman named Mira appears. She introduces a new set of games to collect Face Cards, effectively kicking off the second and final stage of the contest for survival. What happens then is a high-octane tapestry of individual character experiences that culminates in a thrilling climax and decent character study, but not without hitting a few low points along the way.
Going into the sequel, it's important to catch up on the events that happened in Alice in Borderland. There's no recap sequence here, as the show dives right into the action, uniting familiar characters almost from the start. A shooting massacre takes place a few minutes after the pilot episode, announcing that the Face Card games have begun. The shooter is revealed to be the King of Spades, prompting Arisa, Usagi, Chishiya, and Kuina to run for their lives as all 12 Face Card blimps go flying.
While escaping, the group meets up with returning characters Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi) and Tatta, who turn the chase into a high-speed car chase. Things quickly get rolling (pun intended), and some members end up being split up, forcing them to go their separate ways to complete as many games as they can.
Thus, the series leaves little room for reintroduction, which means viewers will have to refresh their memories, especially as it revisits several key moments and brings back some familiar faces from the first season. As before, the second season of Alice in Borderland deviates quite a bit from Haro Aso's manga of the same name, and it's a commendable effort that, at times, fails to land.
The devil is in the details: The overarching narrative and world-building elements are mostly faithful to their source material, but a few changes have been made to the roster. For example, the Hayato Dodo character was removed entirely, while a little boy was added to the roster for one of the games in the live-action version. The order in which some of the games take place is also slightly different, though that doesn't really affect the outcome much.
The additional scenes are more of a mixed bag. While some sequences accentuate the characters' desire for a sense of normalcy in a desolate world, others feel out of place, wedged into the story to create unnecessary drama, or dragged along to make the episode seem longer.
However, there are some of these extended moments that inject more personality into the characters, and in different ways. The Queen of Spades challenge, mentioned only in passing in the manga, brings out the heart that Usagi has buried inside her, while the Jack of Hearts game quickly shows off Chishiya's intelligence and resourcefulness; in the original, she did not participate in the game.
As for characterization, Alice in Borderland season two still falls into the same trap of having too many cooks spoiling the broth, but it does a better job.
Watch Alice in Borderland Tv Series Season 2 Trailer
Comments
Post a Comment