Alice in Borderland Recap: A Tale of Two Games

One does not simply bounce back from chopping one’s hand off in a shipping-container door. That’s one of the things I learned in this episode, which saw Tatta sacrificing his hand and life to ensure his team’s victory. As compensation for the death, our behatted Tatta finally gets a flashback. We learn about this life before coming to the game, which also involves mangled hands. Tatta worked at a garage, trying to repair cars — emphasis on the trying. As Tatta’s co-worker points out to him over an after-work drink, one can lead a perfectly fulfilling life as a mechanic. But not Tatta. Tatta not only looks down on it but also sucks at it. He doesn’t even know how to properly set up a jack, an essential requirement in his line of work.

Tatta’s negligence leads to an accident that seriously injures his co-worker, who is forced to quit. Tatta feels terrible but doesn’t seem to take accountability in any real way, nor is he offered support for the psychological repercussions of being responsible for another man’s disability. (Though, also, who hired an in-over-his-head Tatta?) It’s an interesting backstory for a character who loves and seems to know cars. (In the season premiere, it was Tatta who found both of the team’s getaway vehicles, choosing a classic Toyota Crown and then a convertible rather than more practical rides.) The backstory’s workplace accident also foreshadows Tatta’s choice in the game…

The previous episode ends with Arisu’s team 500 points behind the King of Club’s team with only minutes left in the game. If we didn’t know Arisu was the protagonist, it would seem impossible for his team to think their way out of this one. But, spurred on by Niragi’s cruel barbs, Arisu’s kind comments, and presumably the regret he still feels over his co-worker’s injury, Tatta comes up with a plan. Nothing in the game rules says a player’s wristband can’t be carried by someone else, and while the wristbands can’t be unlocked, there are other ways to get the band off of a wrist … chiefly, removing that wrist’s hand. Arisu, who has rescued Usagi from Niragi’s sexual and physical assault, comes upon Tatta trying to do just that. Because no metal objects are allowed in the game arena, Tatta is attempting to use one of the shipping containers’ doors to do the bloody deed.

Have you ever accidentally slammed a finger in the car door? It hurts, right? Imagine doing that to your entire hand. Tatta can’t do it alone, so he begs a reluctant Arisu to help him. “Let me be the guy who does something cool for once,” Tatta asks, promising he will be fine. (Spoiler: He won’t be.) Post-amputation, Arisu barely has time to stop the blood flowing from Tatta’s appendage before rushing off to goad Kyuma into a battle.

As you may recall, players from opposing teams battle by touching one another. The player with the greater point total wins 500 points, and the player with the lesser point total loses 500 points. In this case, a 1000-point change is enough to tip the game in Arisu’s team’s favor. Kyuma doesn’t know that Arisu has Tatta’s wristband — and therefore his points — and assumes that, if they battle, he will win. Still, it would be pretty dumb to risk the lead by shaking Arisu’s hand. Rather than trying to force the battle, which could result in Kyuma running away and eluding Arisu for the rest of the game, Arisu appeals to Kyuma’s sense of honor. “Since it’s my rival’s final request, I will shake hands with you.” Boys can be so dumb sometimes!

The King of Clubs isn’t a bad guy — he’s sad to see Arisu and the others die — he simply wants his band to survive more. Even when Arisu tricks him into shaking his hand and losing the game, Kyuma doesn’t get angry with him. Sure, he laments breaking his promise to Shitara (RIP) that the team would win the game, but he claims to die without any regrets. More than that, he wishes Arisu well: “I hope you find it soon. I hope you find your own true reason for living. Not just someone else’s.” Rather, Arisu takes Kyuma’s death the hardest, telling him in an almost childlike way that he doesn’t want him to die. But Kyuma and Arisu don’t get to make the rules here — at least not the big ones. Kyuma and his band have played their last song and go out with class. (Except Kanzaki — I haven’t forgotten him chasing after Usagi.) And Tatta dies in Arisu’s arms, bleeding out from the amputation that saved his friends’ (and Niragi’s) lives. Like Kyuma, he doesn’t seem to have any regrets. As the sun sets, his friends bury him by the water, and even Niragi is a little angry about it.

But this episode doesn’t just belong to Tatta. The second half is devoted to the beginning of another game: Prison Cell, set in a penitentiary, run by the Jack of Hearts, featuring a familiar face: Chishiya! We last saw our Cheshire cat not running fast enough to jump into Tatta’s getaway vehicle in episode one. He’s dodged the King of Spades’ bullets and is back in a hearts game — historically, not his favorite of the suits. What emotional manipulation does he face in this one? Prison Cell consists of 20 players (one of whom is secretly the Jack of Hearts) outfitted with Borderland’s favorite accessory: explosive collars. On the back of every player’s collar is a small screen with a suit that changes every round. Each round lasts for one hour, at the end of which players must go into an individual prison cell and guess which suit is on their collar. If they guess correctly, they survive; if they guess incorrectly, boom! Paddington 2, this is not.

As you may have surmised, players need to find someone to trust in the game, but not every player can be trusted. The Jack of Hearts can’t be trusted because they are tasked with killing the other players, but — as it quickly becomes apparent once heads start exploding — neither can many other players. People are panicking, scheming, and lying to ensure their survival. Like the Ten of Hearts’ Witch Hunt game that led to so many deaths at the Beach, people are willing to kill the “wrong” person on the slight chance they are killing the “right” person, trying to ignore the reality that they might become the next target. The players don’t need to lie to one another. Even the Jack of Hearts could choose to stay in Prison Game indefinitely, as the prison is stocked with snacks. But once heads start exploding, people start leading others to their slaughter.

The game strategies fall into three categories: Some join a group spearheaded by saccharine-voiced mean girl Urumi. Some partner up. And some choose not to trust anyone. The loners die first. Then, the group begins to fall apart as Urumi then other members use their social influence to target potential Jack of Hearts. By the end of the episode, the partnered players are the only ones left standing: domineering businessman Mr. Yaba and the woman he domineers, Kotoko; convicted killer Banda and his banged teammate Matsushita; Chishiya and Ippei, a man “too kind for this world.” That is until Ippei succumbs to the stress of the game and lets his collar explode. Chishiya doesn’t seem to hold it against him, even though this leaves Chishiya with no partner and more or less screwed.

This episode is structured nontraditionally, giving us the end of one game and the start of another. In addition to building out the world and these characters, it highlights the complexity of the face-card games and the relative arbitrariness of who is “innocent” and who is “guilty” here. While it may be tempting to see the face-card players or the citizens of Borderland as the bad guys here, Kyuma and the players we meet in Prison Cell complicate that judgment. Overall, Kyuma was a pretty honorable guy, and many of the players in the Jack of Hearts game will kill others, even if they don’t explicitly have to in order to survive. Like the “real” world, the morality of Borderland is rarely as simple as it seems, and even those with relative power (the dealers and citizens of Borderland) still have to play deadly games. No one can escape the rules of Borderland.

Expired Visa

• “You act so goddamn righteous. You and I are the same. But I fucking hate how you’re so full of stupid hope. If I can watch you die while tasting utter despair, then I’ll be glad to die here with you.” Niragi really wants others to admit that they are just as despicable as he is, but other characters prove again and again why that isn’t true.

• “The ocean sure is large. At the end of life, we humans want to see something big.” Kyuma gets existential near the end of the game, notably before he finds out that he will be the one dying.

• “Remember how you said thank you to me earlier? That made me really happy.” Tatta appreciated Arisu’s heartfelt compliment. It’s moments like this one that keep this show from being tonally flat.

• Arisu guesses that Kyuma and friends were once players, which seems to track with everything we’ve seen of this world so far and makes Arisu’s chances of heading back home feel slim.

• While the players could stay in the Prison Cell game forever — a life sentence, as Chishiya calls it — it would get very exhausting having to wake up every hour to go into the prison cell to guess your suit.

• I like that this episode communicates that torture and bullying don’t often work. One of the first people to die in Prison Cell is a man who tries to beat his suit out of another player.

• While this manga and show are inspired by Alice in Wonderland, the similarities come up in character inspiration more than visually. But, in this episode, Urumi dons a very Alice-like outfit: a frilly blue dress with white accents.

• Honestly, regarding how one can die in Bordlernand, a head explosion doesn’t seem so bad. At least it’s quick.

• In the manga, Chishiya doesn’t participate in the Jack of Hearts game, but I am glad we get to spend more time with his character here. He remains as mysterious to us as he is to the other players. He observes so much without taking action and rarely does what the non-manga viewer might expect. From offering Arisu up to the executives in the Beach last season to choosing not to intervene when “innocent” players are heading to their deaths in Prison Cell, he is not always the good guy. But unlike Niragi, he doesn’t go out of his way to be the bad guy, either.

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