(TV SERIES) Alice in Borderland Season 1 - Dark, Dramatic & Disturbing Series of Game of Life and Death based on Popular Manga

Again while looking for interesting new series to watch during last weekend, I found this one which seemed to be quite interesting. It was said to be based on a quite popular manga series and since I have not watched any Japanese movies for a while, I thought I'd like to give this a try. Now let's dive in to this series.

Brief Story Line

3 best friends that consisted of the unemployed & slacker Arisu (Kento Yamazaki - Death Note TV series, Kingdom etc), the tough & loyal Karube (Keita Machida - High & Low TV series & movies etc) and the kind hearted & religius Chota (Yûki Morinaga - Little Love Song etc) were just having fun on a normal day in Tokyo. But soon they found themselves in a world where they seemed to be the only ones left. Still confused on what happened, they were caught in the middle of a game of life and death where they have to win and extend their lives just for few more days.

During these endless games, Arisu and friends realized there were other survivors as well, such as a female employee Shibuki (Ayame Misaki - Cutie Honey: The Live TV series etc), an expert mountain climber Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya - Rurouni Kenshin movies, Orange etc) and few others. At latter stage, they also met with a large group of experienced players led by Hatter (Nobuaki Kaneko) and his right hand man Aguni (Shô Aoyagi). There were many others in the group with their own agenda such as the mysterious Chisiya (Nijiro Murakami) & his "partner" Kuina (Aya Asahina), the extreme militant Niragi (Dori Sakurada), the intelligent Ann (Ayaka Miyoshi) and Mira (Riisa Naka).

So what would happen to Arisu and friends? Find them all in this suspense thriller series.

End of Brief Story Line

You know when I watched the pilot episode, I was surprised by the intensity of this series and was very excited as it has been a long time since I was entertained with such premise. Then as the story progressed, I was continually in awe of how each episode seemed to increase their level of intensity, suspense and drama. And by the time I reached half way through the first season, I was ready to brand this series as the best one I had seen in a while.

However, the second of half of the season took a rather different approach and I personally was a bit disappointed with it. I thought it deviated from the simple game of life and death and drama suspense to a post-apocalyptic story involving a large & powerful survivors group. Luckily its story development was better and it did not take long to to pick up the pace, which culminated to a full of twist and amazing climax. It was definitely worthy of being a season finale as it set up to an intriguing & exciting second season.

Now despite seemingly having a generic "escape room" style of game, you would be shocked by the surprising twist & turn during the games as they were absolutely thrilling and have different characteristics which would be explained more later. However what I loved the most was not just the game, but the wonderful close friendship between Arisu, Karube and Chota. It was soooo emotional watching these three's relationship in here. Of all the 8 episodes first season, I loved the 3rd episode the most as it was full of everything from the suspense, surprise,  shocking conclusion and emotional moments.

The cast in here were quite large with some people have longer screen time than others. They performed their roles convincingly & of all the cast, I like the character Karube whom I thought was the embodiment of a best friend you wish to have in your life and I also like the character Kuina for reasons that you could only understand if you watch the series. Other character who left quite deep impression to me was Aguni. Btw, the lead characters in here were Arisu and Usagi who were played by more familiar names of Kento Yamazaki and Tao Tsuchiya respectively.

This series has a lot of extreme violence and brief sex scene which might be disturbing for some audience. The special effects were pretty decent with nice music. I loved how they were able to make the crowded Shibuya in Tokyo became so empty. The whole 8 episodes were directed by Shinsuke Sato who has vast experience in directing live action manga and anime adaptations such as The Princess Blade, Bleach and Inuyashiki. So there is no need to doubt the quality of the series. As I said earlier, this was a manga adaptation of the same title written and illustrated by Haro Aso.

Overall this is a fantastic series with some interesting, suspenseful, dramatic and disturbing scenes. It has enough thrill and even a bit of mystery solving to keep me intrigued. The first half was definitely the best part of the series for me personally, though it has an awesome ending which made me impatient to wait for second season (hopefully not too long). So if you are into a series where the characters have to play games of life and death & combined with some drama & suspense, then this one is definitely for you. But if you are easily disturbed by heavy violence, you might want to rethink about watching it. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars