Arisu is 18 years old and aimless, unhappy with his life and wishing he could just go away to another world… and then, one night, he and his two friends witness a massive fireworks display and wake up in the same city they used to live in but nobody else is there. Everything’s covered in dust and all the food is expired - it’s like they’ve been magically transported to the far future. Wandering the eerie city, they stumble across a brightly lit area with food and working toilets - and are trapped. They must play - and win - a seemingly simple game. If they win, they get to live. If they lose, they die a horrible death. Welcome to Borderland!
Alice in Borderland came out over a decade ago but I’m guessing it’s being reissued now in fancy new editions partly because of Haro Aso’s more recent hit manga, Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, and partly because of the success of Squid Game, which this series is heavily reminiscent of even though it predates it by more than ten years and even the Netflix adaptation of this series came out the year before Squid Game. At any rate, this first book is really something!
The first fifty-ish pages are a bit of a slog mostly because the characters aren’t very interesting and we have to watch them putz around doing nothing until they make it to Borderland. Arisu (the “Alice” of the title - there’s no “L” in the Japanese alphabet so “Arisu” is the closest they can get to pronouncing “Alice”) is an unremarkable teenager, Chota is the annoying pervy mate and Karube is the strong silent type - all three are manga archetypes. It’s not a huge problem though because the strength of this manga is the story, not the characters.
It’s also not clear why Aso is making Lewis Carroll comparisons beyond having a punny title. A small rabbit appears in one panel when they first enter Borderland, the transition into Borderland is trippy, and one of the characters is called Usagi (“rabbit” in Japanese - ie. follow the white rabbit). Besides those small details, there’s really nothing else to connect this to the Wonderland books. Not that that really matters either - I wasn’t hoping to read a modern manga retelling of that story anyway, and there are other books to come so maybe it becomes clearer as the series progresses.
Where this book takes off is when the deadly games begin. Like Squid Game, benign and childish games are rendered extremely dark and bloody here. So the first game is the team having to read their fortunes at a shrine before the lanterns go out, and the second is a game of Tag - where the person who is “it” happens to be a serial killer wearing a horse mask and carrying a submachine gun! They must run around a large apartment complex, not getting killed, trying to find the one unlocked door before 30 minutes is up.
The games are really well-plotted, original, unpredictable and exciting. We find out details of what Borderland is at the same time as the characters - how the games are determined, how many others are involved, how the rewards work and what happens if you don’t participate - though, of course, this early on we don’t know who’s doing all of this or why. The Tag half of the book was my favourite - it was genuinely riveting and fun to watch, with different players attempting different strategies and Aso throwing in one twist after another right to the very end.
I had no idea Haro Aso was also a brilliant artist because he only writes Zom 100 so I thought he was just a writer but he writes and draws Alice in Borderland and he excels at both. He has a fantastic eye for action, knowing how to frame certain shots for best effect, like going to the character’s point of view when they’re hiding from the killer, or zooming out for set pieces so you can see characters doing daring things like jumping between floors. He really takes you there into the scene and makes you feel the tension. This creator is more and more impressive to me.
If you’re in the mood for a violently fun manga in the style of Squid Game, and/or you’re a fan of this creator, Alice in Borderland, Volume 1 is definitely worth checking out - a thrilling start to this promising series.
No comments:
Post a Comment