Heading into season two, Alice in Borderland has much to live up to. Its thrilling, highly bingeable first season hooked viewers with its perfect pacing, easy-to-root-for protagonists, and a shuffling cast of characters battling it out in life-and-death gameplay. That was more than enough to sustain the first eight episodes of this live-action manga adaptation, but fans are likely looking for deeper answers heading into season two.
Who is running the game? For what purpose? And is there any way back to the old world? These questions have been driving the story since the first episode, when Arisu and his friends ChÅta (RIP) and Karube (also RIP) first stumbled out of the subway station into a deserted, highly fatal Tokyo. The end of season one left us with the critical reveal that people who were seemingly players in the games could be involved in orchestrating them. In the finale, Asahi (RIP) and Momoka (also RIP) were revealed to be dealers, people who helped run the games in exchange for visas. In season two, we meet people involved in running these games at an even higher level: the Face Cards.
It’s hard to fight armored blimps in the sky, so the game-makers make it a bit easier for our players (thanks!) by giving them human foes for each face card. In video-game terms, these are the final bosses. We meet the King of Spades first as he guns down players the anti-tank cannons sniping from above can’t get. It’s a two-pronged attack, leaving those stuck in the roaming gameplay zones with little chance of survival. Most of the first third of the episode is devoted to our wide-eyed gamer Arisu, stoic mountaineer Usagi, terminally underwhelmed Chishiya, trans badass Kuina, forensics expert Ann, and the behatted Tatta’s sprint to escape the clutches of the King of Spades, and it’s proof that this show still has it. As no-names get struck down viciously and viscerally around them, our protagonists duck, weave, and commandeer a classic Toyota Crown in an attempt to avoid the King of Spades.
It’s that last move with the Toyota Crown that makes for the best part of the episode: a seven-minute car chase with the King of Spades through the streets of Tokyo that starts with Chishiya getting left behind (he’s fine — probably) and ends with our crew somehow walking away from a rollover. The chase itself, though, is breakneck and boldly shot. We’re given POV shots from the car as it fits between seemingly impossible spaces and takes out pedestrians, never once slowing down. When we’re not in the car with the characters, we’re racing behind with the camera, fitting through even smaller spaces at just as fast a speed. It’s an impressively executed action scene that would be a standout in a big-budget Hollywood flick and is a reminder that director Shinsuke Sato has been adapting manga and anime — stories that don’t have to adhere to the same logic and logistics as live-action — into movies for a while. Baby Driver, eat your heart out.
The group does eventually crash, though, taken out not by the King of Spades directly but by an abandoned car driver Ann doesn’t see in time to avoid. In the aftermath, Ann gets separated from the rest of the group, with Arisu, Usagi, Kuina, and Tatta finding time to regroup at an empty office building. One of the elements of Alice in Borderland I’ve always appreciated is the pacing between the high-octane gameplay and the quieter moments in between. Here, Kuina and Tatta have time to pick out an impractical new car from a garage of abandoned vehicles. “I bet the rich were hurt the most when they came to this world,†Kuina ponders aloud to Tatta, finding empathy or something like it for those who never had to fight for comfort in the real world.
Meanwhile, Arisu and Usagi get a moment alone with their sweet, awkward, burgeoning feelings for each other. In a convenience store, they pick out questionable instant soba, and Arisu fondly remembers his friends. Usagi not-so-fondly remembers her father, or at least the chaos that rained down on her because of his scandal and apparent death by suicide. She wonders to Arisu if the old world is even worth returning to.
But these quiet moments of maybe-rest are only coming-up-for-air, gasped breaths between the sprinting. And the players have a foe to escape or defeat, so Arisu comes up with a plan: They can’t effectively fight the King of Spades with the resources they have, but they may be able to avoid him by joining a different game. He leads the group to the outskirts of Tokyo to start a new game with the King of Clubs. His theory? The organizers of a game will not interfere with another game. Also, club games emphasize teamwork, and Arisu has a team he trusts at his side, right? Enter Niragi, the trigger-happy psychopath we met at the Beach in season one. Yep, he’s alive — and so is his fierce giraffe-print fashion game. Niragi was set on fire by Chishiya and tackled over a railing by Aguni in last season’s finale, but he’s still kicking and is looking to join the King of Club’s game with Arisu and his friends. So much for having a team you trust. Arisu and friends are understandably not excited about the development, but Usagi is done with the discussion. She slaps the game’s band on her wrist and enters the King of Club’s cargo container-labyrinth domain, and the others follow.
The King of Spades was a major dick, but the King of Clubs seems like he could be fun to hang out with. Sure, Kyuma’s “wearing clothes is a social construct†makes him come off like a bit of a paleo-libertarian, but his friends seem cool, and he doesn’t just start shooting, which pretty much makes you a sweetheart in this world. The episode ends without revealing much about who the King of Clubs is and what his game might require of Arisu and his friends (um, and Niragi). For now, we’re left with the promise of more answers about the organization of this world and the possibility of escaping back to our reality — should these characters want it. “I want to know why all these people have had to die,†says Arisu at one point in this premiere. In some ways, it’s a simple motivation, but it’s also a highly moral and relatable one. It’s what much of the audience is looking for too: an explanation of why this world was constructed and to what end. With this premiere, which brings us deeper into the culture of this hyperviolent gameworld, season two seems poised to offer some real answers. Time to level up. Things can’t get worse, right?
Expired Visas
• The second season of Alice in Borderland begins in the same place as the first: with pregame Arisu passionately playing a first-person shooter as his disappointed and judgmental father reminds him he has a job interview to get to that day. In season one, this is where our story begins. In season two, this is a flashback. I appreciate the reminder and Alice’s prudent use of flashbacks in general.
• We get some more glimpses at Mira, one of the executives we met at the Beach who was implied to be a game master at the end of last season. The characters are as interested in finding out her deal as I am.
• Season one said skimpy bathing suits, and season two answered with full-on naked dude.
• I’m showing my generational affiliation here, but did anyone else get Scream vibes from the King of Spades? The way he climbed onto that car of Red Shirts, the audience totally knowing what was coming, and then murdered them one by one? Slasher.
• Arisu and Usagi’s convenience store heart-to-heart reminded me of this iconic scene from Battlestar Galactica when Kara tells Helo: “You know, everyone I know is fighting to get back what they had. I’m fighting because I don’t know how to do anything else.â€
• But is shortcake-flavored yakisoba any good??? The show better not leave me hanging on this important plot thread.
• Usagi tells Arisu her dream is to work in a convenience store and get really good at scanning barcodes. Usagi, babe, you don’t have to dream of labor.
• It’s always been wild to watch Keita Machida, whom I first saw in the role of mild-mannered, endlessly empathetic Kurosawa in the Cherry Magic TV show, play Arisu’s macho and misogynistic friend Karube in Alice in Borderland. Still, the cognitive dissonance hit new heights in this episode, which has Karube repeatedly using the social construct of virginity (I bet Kyuma doesn’t have a problem with this one) to “tease†his two best friends. Acting, it’s a thing!
• “Living life in our natural state is humanity’s true form.†That is spoken like a man who has never cooked anything splatter-able on a stovetop.