Tao Tsuchiya and Kento Yamazaki in Alice in Borderland Season 2 (Kumiko Tsuchiya, courtesy of Netflix)
Grim survival games will be back in style this Christmas. At least that’s the prognosis I’m anticipating for the next few days. Because after the success of squid game, the catalog of Netflix restores the trend that has given it so many benefits during the pandemic by celebrating Season 2 of Premiere Alice in the Borderland The Japanese series of a similar cut that many users discovered thanks to the impact of the octopus on the world.
How to forget the anger we are experiencing in 2021. That is, no matter how much Merlin continue their expansive wave as a seriéphile addiction of the moment, the series created by Tim Burton doesn’t quite match the furor, trend and success it’s had the squid game. No series yet. What we experienced last year with this South Korean survival story was from another world. A rage aroused thanks to word of mouth from the public and which did not stop growing for several months. We were suddenly hungry for series and films in the same subgenre, with an unexpected interest in works similar to Cube/The Cube (1997) and Battle Royale (2000), while many of us discovered a series that had gone unnoticed for almost a year: Alice in the Borderland. This adaptation of the famous Japanese manga by Haro Aso had been released on the same platform in December 2020, about nine months before The Squid Game, but few had noticed its existence.
It was another dystopian series so violent, gory and dramatic that it took us to a city of Tokyo deserted by humanity, save for a group of supposed survivors who became obligated pawns in a constant game of death as punishment.. Through youthful protagonists and with lighter dramatic arcs hovering around friendship and guilt, the series served as an alternative to The Squid Game for a less sophisticated or youthful audience. However, the truth is that without the success of the Korean children’s icon and game series, Alice probably never would have made the impact she did.
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Now the second season of Alice in the Borderland lands on Netflix two years after its premiere with ten episodes that not only expand the universe and the plot of the characters, but also try to give some answers to all the mysteries that surround this endless game. who drives it When does it end? Can you return to the real world?
Nijirô Murakami in Alice in Borderland Season 2 (Kumiko Tsuchiya, courtesy of Netflix)
The action, drama, camaraderie, mind games and macabre return with a more interesting season that allows us to meet Arisu (Kento Yamazaki), Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya) and the huge crowd favorite Chishiya (Nijiro Murakami). But also by taking us out of the dystopian enclaves of the big city and into corners of this so unknown “frontier country”. All this accompanied by games that infect the excitement, adrenaline and drama of those who experience them, without glorifying violence but emphasizing the human side of all the victims who fall along the way.
Virtues aside, however, the series also makes the same mistake of the past and resorts to over-the-top sentimentality when explaining its characters’ emotional intentions. Because not all feelings, fears and feelings of guilt have to be developed in such detail and a drama that sometimes leads our commitment to the trail of doubt in the face of unnecessary and exaggerated sequences. However, it’s in moments of survival that the series shines through the games’ excitement, fast-paced music, and plot design of each challenge with unexpected twists around the corner.
But no matter how effective it is as an action series, attractive and even if we are in a game addictive, called a problem The Squid Game. That said, before it was his salvation and the perfect showcase to make himself known, but now it’s the opposite.
When we saw the first season, many of us just wanted to explore more dystopian universes and relive the adrenaline that Hwang Dong-hyuk’s series gave us. And Alice in Borderland was a good alternative as a temporary replacement. But now The Squid Game has gone down in history as the most watched series Netflix (cumulative 1.65 billion watched hours if Merlin either Wednesday At the moment it is the most watched in English, but with 1.2 billion hours) and it remains a phenomenon that has marked the world’s collective memory, it is inevitable to see Alice in Borderland and feel that it is not quite fair to it.
Yes, it’s a good second season, but it has the inevitable handicap of comparison. Now, as much as they try to avoid it, all survival game series and movies are compared to The Squid Game, with its sensationalism, suspense level, drama, adrenaline and narrative intelligence with social, political and classic messages from over . And in that comparison, Alice in Borderland doesn’t fare well because a narrative doesn’t dare the same path in terms of revelations and answers, bogged down in a haunting drama of guilt and a will to survive with gaps in dialogue that do nothing but do the same thing out loud to say what the sequence conveys. Because other than action, drama, and macabre games, there’s no clear message that takes it away from the impact The Squid Game had.
Anyone who wants to see a series about survival games, gets nervous for a while and is willing to play the macabre game of understanding what it’s about, has a good alternative in this second season. However, I suspect that anyone who’s experienced the fury of The Squid Game won’t be able to avoid a certain level of disappointment or feeling like some steps are missing before we have the same type of experience .