Alice in Borderland

Episode 2 Season 2 Episode 2 Editor’s Rating 5 stars *****

Alice in Borderland

Episode 2 Season 2 Episode 2 Editor’s Rating 5 stars *****

When Arisu decided to lead his friends into a game with the King of Clubs, he understandably expected they would have an edge against any random group of players unwillingly thrown together by the forces of the game world. He wasn’t expecting to face off against a close-knit band. While Arisu, Usagi, Tatta, and Kuina may have bonded while escaping The Beach, they haven’t lived together in crappy apartments and on tiny-venue tours. They haven’t stood up on a stage and bared their souls to a crowd of strangers as a music-making team. Kyuma, Goken Kanzaki, Uta Kisaragi, Sogo Shitara, and Takumi Maki — a band — have this advantage going into Osmosis, a game that requires players to survive or die together.

The rules of Osmosis are as follows: Each team begins with 10,000 points to be distributed across the five members at the start of the game; each player must have a minimum of 100 points. Whichever team has the most collective points at the end of the two-hour time limit wins and lives. Players can gain points via three methods:

Battle. If you touch an active member of the opposing team, the player with more points wins. The winner gains 500 points, and the loser loses 500 points. Members of the same group may combine their points in a battle by holding hands, which further obscures respective point totals from the other team. After a battle, players become inactive and must touch their base to become active again. If a player on the opposing team touches an inactive player, they are both shocked with an electric pulse.Items. Six items worth 500-3000 points are hidden in shipping containers throughout the gameplay area. Once players find and touch the item, they will gain the points it holds.Base. The most valuable and risky of the methods, players can gain 10,000 points if they touch the other team’s base — a tall, thick pole with a plasma orb affixed to the top. But there’s a catch: Players in contact with their base have infinite points. If they touch a player of the opposing team while possessing infinite points, they will gain 10,000 points, and the other player will lose 10,000 points. And if someone drops below 0 points — you guessed it — yer dead. Lasered from above.

Arisu comes up with the strategy for his team, splitting the group up into pairs composed of a faster player with fewer points and a slower player with more points: Kuina (fast) with Arisu (slow, supposedly), and Usagi (fast) with Niragi (slow, actively coughing up blood). Arisu’s game logic is that the pairs can hold hands in battle and beat opposing team players they run into while searching for items, which will also get them points. Meanwhile, Tatta will guard their team’s base.

It’s a solid plan and way better than Kyuma’s team strategy, which is pretty much no strategy; his team divides the 10,000 points equally and then … hopes for the best? When it becomes apparent that this will not win them the game, the band risks it all in an attack on the other team’s base. While Kisaragi guards their base, Kyuma, Kanzaki, Shitara, and Maki simultaneously charge it, knowing that Tatta can only battle one of them at a time. Shitara — he of the grunge rock mane — dies in the effort (RIP), but his three bandmates gain 10,000 points each, making them more or less undefeatable in battle and giving their team a substantial lead.

Kyuma, who loves to wax poetic about game strategy and the nature of humanity in between battles, tells Arisu the band is winning because they value each other equally and aren’t afraid to risk it all for one another. It prompts Arisu to recommend a similar strategy that almost works: Usagi taunts an easily-lured Kanzaki away from the base before Arisu, Niragi, and Kuina move in for the attack. They have two elements of surprise in their arsenal: Arisu intentionally failed to activate his bracelet after his last battle, which means when he touches Kyuma, they are both temporarily electro-shocked into submission. And, two, Niragi’s new ability to spit blood from his internal bleeding into others’ faces. They manage to get 10,000 points in the attack, but it’s not enough…

With 15 minutes left in the game and Arisu’s team behind by 3,000 points, morale is low. Only one item remains on the game board, and it’s worth 2,500 points. Kyuma’s team has no incentive to leave their base, which offers them infinite points and makes them undefeatable in combat. There’s seemingly no hope, and it’s fascinating to see how the members of Arisu’s team face an apparent no-win scenario. Usagi refuses to give up, going out to find the final item, bringing the team within spitting distance of the other team’s point total. Kuina finds a quiet space to be alone. Niragi reverts to his nihilistic, destructive ways, taunting Tatta for not doing enough and physically assaulting Usagi.

And Arisu? Arisu uses the final minutes of his life to thank Tatta for always cheering him up, and then he runs. Like Usagi, he’s going to fight until his last breath. While it’s been two years for the viewer since Arisu lost his friends in a game of hearts, it’s been mere days for Arisu. “I would risk my life if I could save all of you,” he tells his teammates earlier in the episode. If Kyuma is right and the games in this world reveal a human’s true nature, then Arisu shows us who he is: a team player. This episode is Alice in Borderland at its best. It is built around compelling gameplay, with viewers strategizing at home alongside life-or-death scenarios that articulate characters’ natures in the most invasive, intimate, and fascinating ways.

Expired Visas

• Kyuma is one part competitor, one part mentor for all. As Tatta remarks at one point, he is a cool, likable dude — even if he is low-key their enemy.

• “Let’s give a finger to the fear that’s holding us back.”

• I am a big fan of the one game = one episode format when it manages to maintain suspense, which this episode totally does.

• I really need to know the name of Kyuma’s band.

• Nope to depictions of sexual assault that happen for no good reason. We get it: Niragi is the worst. I didn’t need a second scene that involved him attempting to rape Usagi to get the point across.

• Kyuma and his bandmates are citizens of this game world, which in theory, gives them more rights and privileges but doesn’t seem to be helping them so much within Osmosis.

• On a related note, Shitara did come up with Osmosis, which you think would give his team an edge in the game. In this context, the fact that he is the first to die is pretty embarrassing.

• Shoutout to director Shinsuke Sato and his crew for the creative and various strategies they used to keep from showing Kyuma’s penis in all its naked glory: Other characters’ strategically placed hands in the foreground of the shot. Backlighting. Just-so framing.

• “You two, hold hands.” Kyuma inadvertently stumbles across Usagi and Arisu’s burgeoning love.

• While the main stakes of Osmosis are obviously the lives of the various players, Arisu also intends to learn what Kyuma knows about the game. His first question is: Can players go home if they win all of the games? It is strongly implied that if Arisu wins, Kyuma will tell him what he knows. “If you want to know the truth,” he tells Arisu, “then battle with all your might.”

• “I won’t forget you. Not even for a single second.” Kyuma, to Shitara. As far as comforting words to a dying friend, they’re pretty good ones.

• Props to Usagi for outrunning the parkourist and apparent asshole (who goes to kill someone who is going to die in 10 minutes anyway?) Kanzaki.

Alice in Borderland Recap: Never Bet Against a Band