By Rachel Cheng, Staff Writer
With the foreboding cliffhanger of its first season, many fans are highly exhilarated to watch the upcoming second season of Netflix’s hit show Alice in Borderland.
Alice in Borderland, a thriller, survival, and sci-fi Japanese drama, stars actors Kento Yamazaki as Alice (Arisu), Tao Tsuchiya as Usagi, Nijiro Murakami as Chishiya, and Aya Asahina as Kuina. The series had its first appearance as a manga book series written by Haro Aso, which was then adapted to a 3-episode original video animation. With Netflix’s cooperation, the show went on to premiere as a live-action drama, with wild success in Japan as well as worldwide. With only eight episodes, the first season debuted on December 10, 2020; it didn’t take long for the writers to have audience members on the edge of their seats for a second season on December 22, 2022.
Alice in Borderland has quite a few parallels with the famous stories of Alice in Wonderland, written by Lewis Carol, as many of the characters are based off of the classic novel. Arisu is based on Alice as the main character; Usagi, which means rabbit in Japanese, is based on the White Rabbit; Chishiya is based off of the Cheshire Cat; Takeru Danma has the alias of The Hatter. In the beginning of the first season, Arisu finds himself lost in his life and living with his parents as a gamer, when he suddenly gets transported into a dystopian version of his hometown in Shibuya, Tokyo. There, he encounters an escape room-resemblant environment where he goes through deadly game-like challenges to survive. Arisu continues on to meet Usagi, a strong, athletic, and independent woman. Together, they work to stay alive along with a clever and mysterious man named Chishiya and an easygoing woman named Kuina. However, players soon realize that this new reality has more surprises in store than they expected.
An ongoing discussion about this show is how it is similar to the extremely popular Korean Netflix show “Squid Game”. Although Alice in Borderland aired almost a year before Squid Game, it did not reach the same amount of international attention and success as its counterpart. However, with similar concepts of escape rooms and games to face deadly challenges, many fans believe that Alice in Borderland deserves more recognition amongst the media and general public. With the upcoming release of the second season and its already loyal fanbase, enthusiasts of the show predict that Alice in Borderland could even match Squid Game in popularity. With the release of the new season, Netflix has announced that there will be new characters and actors, such as Yuri Tsunematsu, Tomohisa Yamashita, and more. Many fans anticipate that the show will have a higher budget than the previous season and are eager to compare the new content.
