The first season of Alice in Borderland was one of the best jdoramas of 2020. Sato Shinsuke showed what could happen when Japan's best action director was given Netflix money. As someone who has watched so much jdorama and jmovies and has lamented so often that Japanese action shows are crap, I was so happy that Japan can do world quality action.
WHAT I LIKED
+ The car chase scene in episode 1. So many times in jdoramas car chase scenes are in the dark without any other cars for budget reasons and there is one continuous 10 second shot where I am smiling to myself thinking about how much that would have cost and how long that would have taken to shoot.
+ The red/blue tag action scenes are done very well and the boss lady is good.
+ Love the CG especially the Last of Us look for Tokyo.
+ Tsuchiya Tao can do action unlike Takahashi Maryjun in Avalance. Her casting in Avalance made zero sense.
+ The action scene for the second last boss involving everyone was every exciting and traumatic. The tension of survival stories is when your favourite characters are in danger.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
- Felt like Arisu and Tsuchiya Tao had too much plot armour and it felt like everyone else was just there to die for them. Felt like Arisu does not do enough.
- Some of the wire work was too obvious.
- I didn't understand the ending of the scales (tenbin) game with Chishiya.
- Yamapi needs subtitles for his English singing. I could not understand a single word.
MEH
= The wtf ending made me think what the hell is the story for anyway unless of course we get a twist in S3.
SUMMARY
Great action dorama but story and games were not as exciting as the first season. As I said in my review for S1, it all depends of what the truth is because a bad revelation just nullifies everything. The huh ending of S2 was disappointing but it all depends on whether they will do a S3 and what the truth is. Maybe I should go read the manga. Watchable.
4 comments:
Did you watch “First Love”, “Smoking” and “Scams” from Netflix? First love might not be your cup of tea but the cinematography is really good. You might like the others 2 show more though.
@Anon: I will be watching First Love soon.
I'm totally agreed that the games are not as exciting as S1, the problems with S2 that I feel the most of the time is I'd constantly wait for Arisu and/or Usagi games, and I didn't care that much for that Chishiya guy, and his games takes too much of the runtime.
But still, it still makes up on how emotional invested I am for certain scene, especially on how brutal episode 7 is.
About the ending, I've read some comments on MyDramaList and it does make sense, but I'm not sure if it's a spoiler for the manga.
I agree the games were not as good as S1, and Arisu became pretty useless.
Some games had interesting setups which would get be thinking of my own strategy, only to see the characters use absolutely no strategy and just get lucky... But there were just enough clever moments to make it worth watching.
The ending is almost identical to LOST. The first chapter of Arisu came out a few months after LOST ended, so I am 99% sure the mangaka stole that concept.
Btw, First Love is a top quality drama. It is unashamedly romance, and kind of predictable. But the directing, acting and soundtrack are brilliant. Must watch.
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