Review by C.J. Bunce
Its first season aced its place on the borg list of the best TV series of the past decade. The second season of Alice in Borderland was brilliant, too. In a surprising return, this year director Shinsuke Sato brought an all-new chapter to his adaptation of Haro Aso’s popular manga, extending beyond the original content thanks to contributions by Haro Aso himself. I reviewed all nine volumes of the original here — check ’em out if you’re after the best of manga action, intrigue, and genre-mash-ups. The TV series is a Netflix production–its most successful Japanese entry so far–and its women leads netted three spots on our annual Kick-Ass Heroines list. In the final episode of Season 2 viewers actually got to The End–and learned the secret behind the entire series: An asteroid event hit Tokyo killing many and putting others into comas. Those were the characters fighting to live in Borderland. Kento Yamazaki as Arisu (Alice in Japanese) and Tao Tsuchiya as Usagi–the series leads who met in Borderland and fought together and grew to care for each other there–were drawn together back in the real world. And that’s the end of the nine-part story.
How could Haro Aso and Shinsuke Sato improve on that?
Unfortunately they didn’t. Despite a solid romance forming between Arisu and Usagi as the main storyline, the most fun of the first two seasons came from the other characters, each reflecting the look and vibe of unique archetypes of Japanese culture, each flawed in a fundamental way but also a fighter willing to work for a second chance at a good life. Only one of those characters makes a brief appearance on Season 3, Ayaka Miyoshi as An Rizuna, the savvy former forensics expert for the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who proved integral to the events at the Beach. But it’s barely a cameo appearance.
In Season 3 a few supporting players from the past intervene to completely derail all that the leads experienced in the first two seasons: Hayato Isomura is Sunato Banda. Also, Katsuya Maiguma is back as Yaba Ōki. Newcomer Kento Kaku is Ryuji Matsuyama, a manipulative doctor in a wheelchair, bent on learning the Dark Arts of medicine, he’s a mad scientist attempting to prove the existence of an afterlife. To do so he is manipulated into convincing Usagi into voluntarily returning to Borderland. Nightmares of her father make that easy for him–a strange twist on the heroine viewers saw previously. Married following the events of the end of Season 2, Arisu and Usagi were the happily ever after couple. And so Arisu, with An’s help, follows Usagi back to Borderland.
Along with forgetting about the fun, the series grows darker, with more violent games, more violent deaths, and a more vindictive nature to whoever is behind Borderland. Haro Aso and Shinsuke Sato also forget about the ties (albeit loose ties) to Alice in Wonderland, with a thin focus on the final playing card of a standard deck not unveiled before, the Joker card. The games involving math and statistics in the manga are replaced with more impossibly difficult to decipher strategy games, complete with overly complicated video graphics. You’d need to watch the episodes a few times to follow this, but it’s not worth it.
Arisu begins the story by himself, meeting new players, realizing he is back in Borderland. Four key games are ahead for him, and eventually he encounters Usagi, now working toward survival with Ryuji. It’s difficult to understand how Ryuji can survive physical movement games and a bingo game involving climbing a metal tower, even with the aid of Usagi. The drama doesn’t work because Usagi’s initial growth is thrown aside for poor choices in the final season. She didn’t know she was pregnant, which further raises the stakes and risks for Arisu. Following this creepy scientist back to the afterlife is as unforgivable a move as a writer has made for his formerly strong and wise protagonist.
Few twists and turns give way to an obvious effort for the show to be more like Squid Game, the Korean show that was actually created after the release of Haro Aso’s Alice in Borderland manga series. Squid Game was a pale imitation of Haro Aso’s riveting manga story, so the choice makes this season fall flat.
Only one new character fits with the original cast of characters–that’s Tina Tamashiro as Rei, whose blue-haired Joshi Kousei, Sailor Moon look and style would have helped this season if more manga, anime, or video game-inspired characters were introduced in Season 3. But despite the lack of character development of most of the characters in Season 3, Arisu’s growth changes from the first episode of Season 1 to the end of Season 3, revealing a true hero.
The live-action, dystopian, Japanese noir-meets-steampunk thrill ride of the books required its characters to play a game of survival loosely inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Doomsday, Tokyo-style, was surprisingly violent, surprisingly thought-provoking, as a city finds itself mostly vacated (as in The Quiet Earth and 28 Days Later) and the remaining citizens fought for their lives The Running Man or Hunger Games-style or they’d get zapped and killed The War of the Worlds-style.
In the first season the playing cards revealed the level of difficulty and “genre” of each game. A low numbered card is supposed to be relatively simple to survive, such as a locked room mystery, a 10 card far more difficult. The suits identified whether strategy and intelligence (diamonds), physical strength (spades), or teamwork (clubs) was needed, and, in the case of hearts, psychological games involving tricks and betrayal. Some players worked better alone, others worked better in teams. The worst battles required turning on whomever is also currently in the battle. The violence mirrored that of 1980s action movies. Shinsuke Sato worked all 52 battles into his first two seasons. So the fact this Season 3 did so little is a shame. The Joker is revealed in the last episode climax to be a major Japanese actor, but it is too little, too late. The Watchman is essentially Gene Hunt from the Life on Mars series, just a gatekeeper between realms. More of this character, woven into prior episodes or seasons, might have made the season better. The penultimate scene reveals Arisu’s new vocation, and makes for a really good wind-up for what happened to everyone else. And consistent with the up-and-down journey, the final scene is a puzzler, an extraneous flit to the Western world.
Season 3 drifts so wide of the manga and the first seasons it’s probably worth skipping. If you liked the first two seasons, don’t miss the manga originals. I reviewed Volume 1 here, Volume 2 here, Volume 3 here, Volume 4 here, Volume 5 here, Volume 6 here, Volume 7 here, Volume 8 here, and Volume 9 here. It’s an incredible, gigantic, and fantastic piece of storytelling.
We named it #26 in the best TV series of the past decade, a Best Horror/Thriller TV Series, Best Limited TV Series, and Best API/AAPI TV Series. Don’t miss those first two seasons–they don’t rely on anything in the third season. Alice in Borderland is streaming on Netflix.
