Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Alice In Borderland’ On Netflix, A Thriller Where People Play Life-And-Death Games In An Abandoned Tokyo (2025)

Are we in the mood these days to see dystopian shows taking place in abandoned cities? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean that shows of this nature, produced pre-pandemic, won’t try to get our attention. Maybe they’ll even break through our ennui with plot or characters that will hold our interest. Is the new Japanese thrillerAlice In Borderland one of them?

ALICE IN BORDERLAND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young guy is intensely playing video games in his room, surrounded by monitors.

The Gist: Ryohei Arisu (Kento Yamazaki) is directionless and a little depressed, playing video games and ignoring the efforts of his brother to find him a job. His father decides to kick him out of the house if all he’s going to do is play video games all day. As he walks towards Shibuya station, he asks his buddies to meet him for a drink. His friend Karube (Keita Machida) is about to get fired for punching out his boss, who punches him for kissing his girlfriend. His other friend, Chota (Yuki Morinaga), wants an excuse to blow off work; he hates his job and isn’t good at it.

When they meet outside of Shibuya station, they goof around in the middle of the famous intersection in front, causing two cars to collide. To avoid the cops, they hide in a train station bathroom, then the power goes out. When they come out, all of Tokyo is empty; there are no people as far as they can see.

They figure they have the city to themselves, until a disembodied voice directs them to the game they are required to play. At a gaming center a few blocks away, the three of them get involved in the game, along with a young woman named Shibuki (Ayame Misaki) who seems to know the parameters, and a scared high school girl. In the first game, they are asked to choose a door marked “Live” or one marked “Die” in two minutes. If they don’t move, the room gets set on fire. The high school girl chooses the wrong door and is immediately killed. So when the rest of them go through the other door, Arisu starts to figure out the logic of the game, but not before some hairy moments that include Chota getting his leg severely burned.

When they come out of the game, though, they realize that it’s not the only game they’ll have to play in order to survive.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There are other apocalyptic shows with young adults or teenagers in them, likeThe Society, but none of them are as grim asAlice In Borderland.

Our Take:Alice In Borderland is based on a manga series that was written and illustrated by Haro Aso. It feels like a story that would work well in graphic novel form; Arisu eventually meets a girl named Usagi (Tao Tsuchiya), whose playing these games by herself, and they try to figure out how to defeat whatever is running this game. As a TV show, though, it feels like it’s going to be relentlessly grim, and we don’t think anyone is in the mood to see empty city streets and life-or-death games these days.

The first episode doesn’t start out so grim; when Arisu, Karube and Chota get together, they’re goofing around to an upbeat rock soundtrack, and it seems like the show is being set up as a coming-of-age dramedy. Then it shifts gears so fast that the sprockets almost come off; the game becomes this 50-50 proposition that just results in a lot of screaming, then the realization that winning this game means that they just have to play another game. Eight episodes of this feel like they’re going to be relentless, even though we know that Arisu and his friends encounter more people as they go along.

Maybe we’re wrong and things will get more hopeful as Arisu and Usagi try to figure things out, but this already has the feeling we felt during the third season ofThe Walking Dead, when there was no hope, the group was stuck in a grimy prison, and it just seemed to be one depressing event after another with no end. Given the tone the show tried to impart during its first 20 or so minutes, it feels like it could come back to it. We hope it does.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Parting Shot: After the surviving players get a 3-day visa for finishing the game, they realize that they’ll have to come back to play another game or be killed. In the meantime we see another person looking over the city from a rooftop; we’ll learn later that her name is Usagi.

Sleeper Star:This is a good spot to marvel at the scenes of downtown Tokyo where there is no one to be found. The intersection in front of Shibuya Station is one of the busiest in the world, and to see it empty during the day was eerie. Was that done via CGI? Shot early in the morning? Was the intersection actually barricaded for the shoot? However it was done, it was a very effective and creepy scene.

Most Pilot-y Line: Karube tells Arisu, “Stop hanging out with us and live a normal life. You can do it.” A bit of foreshadowing, maybe?

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re recommendingAlice In Borderland because, despite what seems like a depressing, dystopian set up, it shows flashes of having a sense of humor. Let’s hope that the show has more of it in later episodes.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

StreamAlice In Borderland On Netflix