Written by: Safal Gautam - 22016, Grade XII
Posted on: 24 November, 2021
Here, the review of “Alice in the Borderland” does not mean the netflix adaptation of this story
but it's Manga. This manga goes straight into the question, What do we as a social being live
for? Neither the question nor the answer to it might particularly interest you, yet reading this
manga's attempts at trying to give you answers to this very question proves it to be a great
investment of your time.
I think many of us who are unfamiliar with this story may have gone to look back as to whether I
had made a mistake in the title or if the story they thought was different from what I have shortly
described. ‘Isn’t it supposed to be Alice in Wonderland?’ Well, you have not read it wrong but
The story does contain references to the Children novel Alice in Wonderland.
As you may have already guessed, the Main Character of this story is Arisu, a japanese spin-off
of ‘Alice’, who in fact is portrayed as a Male Character. The main character, Arisu, is the person
you'll be following throughout most of the story. If you're into badass main characters, this story
will probably not be for you. The main character's attitude throughout the story fits the atmosphere of the manga very well, which is melancholic. So don't expect some ruthless guy finishing off adversaries in cold blood.
Going into other characters, we have the Female Lead of the Story, Yuzuha Usagi, better known
as Usagi which translates to Rabbit in english, the Depressed kid in simple term, Chisiya which
means the Cheshire Cat, one of the Main Antagonists of the story, Mira which mean ‘the queen
of’ as she is the queen of hearts representing the playing card of the same type, Hatter, the
a former Yakuza(Japanese Street Mafia) who wants to make a utopia in hell. Just from the
characters name and descriptions we can see similarities between the characters and their
personalities from Both Alice in wonderland and Alice in borderland.
Borderlands primarily targets 2 kinds of audiences. The first one being people who enjoy
reading stories with games of life and death and an abundance of characters that make these
sorts of games interesting to spectate. The second types are people with a very reflective or
depressed personality.
The story manages to find a good balance between keeping dark and serious topics with drama
and feels at the core and still keeping a very friendly atmosphere that manages to turn heart
tearing stories into heartwarming experiences.
This story is rich with consequences. You'll see people die for taking wrong steps at every turn.
The characters have heart and are relatable to a certain extent which shows that the writer did a
good job trying to portray people that you could possibly meet anywhere.
The weakness in the writing for this work shows when characters start to act overly corny or
when characters start to emotionally overreact at times. It makes you question whether the story
even knows where it wants to go or if it doesn't know which audience it wants to target.
