The group remain stuck in the deathtrap-laden Borderland but they’re also slowly figuring the world out and might’ve even discovered a way to escape once and for all. All roads lead to the mysterious Beach - will Arisu and co. find the answers they’re looking for there?
Most mangas that have cracking first volumes tend to fall apart by the second book and, unfortunately, Alice in Borderland follows the same pattern with a very lacklustre follow-up (although these new editions are two-in-one omnibuses so I suppose this would be the case for Vols 3 and 4, collected in this book).
What I loved the most about the first book were the great death games - the temple and the apartment complex - which were so exciting to read. The games included in this book were either convoluted, nonsensical, unimaginative or a combo of those things.
Shibuki’s flashback game with the train carriages didn’t make sense to me. She’s stuck on a train with four carriages, one of which is filled with poison gas, and she has only three oxygen canisters, each with a limited amount of oxygen, meaning she has to guess which one contains the gas.
Considering the doors between the carriages had see-through glass windows and the carriages had flowers in each so you could see which ones were ok and which one was the poisoned one - the flowers were wilted in that carriage - then couldn’t you just look through the window beforehand? Or, if the flowers are hidden away from view, why not hold your breath, go into the carriage to see the flowers, then, if it’s the poisoned carriage, put on your mask and use the oxygen then?
I like the idea of the game but it wasn’t explained very well. It’s also, disappointingly, the only half-decent game in this book. The next one is the group going into an arboretum to play hide and seek where three of them are sheep and one of them is a wolf. They have these DBZ-style scouters and, if they look at someone long enough, they become the wolf. At the end of ten minutes, if you’re a sheep, the neck thing you’re wearing explodes, so only the wolf lives.
I didn’t think it was a very well-conceived game and just seemed like an easy way to whittle the cast down now that the story didn’t seem to need them anymore.
Usagi (“rabbit” in Japanese) makes a reappearance with a rather melodramatic backstory and then we’re pretty much done with the games as Haro Aso focuses on The Beach instead. I can understand why he’s done this - after a certain point, you should try to explain and build up the world some more - I just didn’t like what the Beach was.
A new character calling himself Hatter for no reason is also introduced - so our main character is Arisu (“Alice”), another character is Usagi (“Rabbit” like the White Rabbit) and now there’s Hatter (like “The Mad Hatter”) in a place called Borderland (like Wonderland), just to keep the Lewis Carroll theme going? That’s a bit contrived.
The train game wasn’t bad and the arboretum game was at least unpredictable, and I appreciated learning more about what Borderland is, but overall I found most of the games and the world-building in general lacking in both excitement and imagination. Alice in Borderland, Volume 2 is an underwhelming continuation of the series - if you liked the first book like me, don’t expect the same fun ride from the second.
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