Netflix’s Alice in Borderland drops a video-game-obsessed young man and his two friends into a hollow, parallel Tokyo, where they must compete in deadly games to survive. The series premiered on December 10, 2020, and ran for three seasons and 22 episodes, ending on September 25, 2025. It is based on the manga by Haro Aso and directed by Shinsuke Sato.
It is a survival thriller with a clean hook and a sharp mechanic. It is also, across its run, a show that keeps mistaking noise for tension. Our score is 4.5 of 10.
Trailer, via Netflix.
Arisu Ryohei and the Empty Shibuya
Kento Yamazaki plays Arisu Ryohei, called Alice. Tao Tsuchiya plays Usagi Yuzuha, called “Rabbit.” The two are allies trapped in a desolate version of Tokyo, forced to compete as players in dangerous, fatal games.
That premise is the show’s best asset. Sato and his team build a Tokyo stripped of people, and the image lands. The first season filmed from August to December 2019, using Shibuya districts and a green screen studio replica of Shibuya Crossing. The visual effects came from an international collaboration between Japan’s Digital Frontier and teams from Singapore, the United States and India.
You can see the money on screen. The empty crossing is the show’s signature image, and it holds. A city with no one in it is a strong place to start a story about people who have to earn the right to keep existing.
The Playing Cards and the Visas
The games are the engine. Each one is represented by a playing card based on French suits, and the type and difficulty of the game is set by that card. Winning extends a player’s “visa.”
If a visa expires, the player is executed by lasers shot from the sky. That is the whole system, and it is a good one. It turns survival into a clock. It gives every episode a deadline and every character a reason to keep playing even when the games are monstrous.
The first season sets the terms. Arisu and his two friends are suddenly transported to the alternate, desolate Tokyo, and they must play life-or-death games to survive.
Face Cards and the Citizens of Borderland
The second season changes the board. Arisu and the rest of the players must fight against the face cards, the citizens of Borderland. They also seek to find out whether winning will return them to their own world.
This is where the show’s ambition shows and where its discipline starts to slip. The face cards are a bigger threat, and the season wants to be a war as much as a puzzle. The problem is that a war needs strategy, and Alice in Borderland mostly has spectacle.
The show was compared by critics to entries in the survival genre, including Battle Royale (2000) and Cube (1997). Those comparisons are fair, and they are not flattering. Battle Royale had a point about the systems that use the young. Cube had a tight, cruel logic. Alice in Borderland has the cards.
Dr. Ryuji Matsuyama and the Joker
The third and final season forces Arisu back. Usagi enters the Borderland again, convinced by Dr. Ryuji Matsuyama, a doctor obsessed with death who is part of Sunato Banda’s plan for Arisu.
While trying to save Usagi by playing the life-and-death games again, Arisu seeks to defeat the Joker. That is the endgame the show builds to, and it is the thinnest stretch of the series.
A final season has to pay off what the first two set up. This one adds a doctor with a death fixation and a schemer with a plan, and it asks the audience to care about a Joker who has been a symbol more than a character. The stakes get larger and the story gets smaller.
What the Cast Carries
Yamazaki and Tsuchiya are the reason any of this works. Arisu is a gamer who is good at reading rules, and Yamazaki plays him as a person who would rather solve a problem than fight one. Usagi is the counterweight, and Tsuchiya gives her a stillness the show needs.
The series received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised the action sequences, direction and acting. The published critical score sits at 4.5 of 10, with a 45% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
That split is the story of the show. The craft is real. The action sequences are staged with clarity, and Sato knows how to frame a game. The acting is better than the material in the back half. But a survival story lives or dies on whether you believe the people in it would keep going, and Alice in Borderland too often answers that question with a card.
The Three Seasons, Ranked by What They Do
The show’s run breaks down cleanly.
- Season one: the arrival, the empty Tokyo, the first games, and the clearest version of the premise.
- Season two: the face cards, the citizens of Borderland, and the question of whether winning sends anyone home.
- Season three: Usagi’s return, Dr. Ryuji Matsuyama, Sunato Banda’s plan, and the Joker.
The first season is the best of the three because it is the most contained. The second is the most ambitious and the most uneven. The third is the weakest, and it is the one the show chose to end on.
The Score, and Why It Is 4.5
Alice in Borderland is a Japanese science fiction thriller drama with a strong cast, a strong director and a strong central image. It is also a show that never quite earns its own scale.
The visa system is the best idea in it. A deadline that kills you from the sky is simple, visual and cruel, and it gives every game a cost. The playing cards are a clever way to label difficulty without explaining it. Those two things carry the first season.
The music is by Yutaka Yamada, who had worked with Sato before. The first season was announced in July 2019, and its strong performance and high viewership in many countries led Netflix to renew the series for two more seasons. That renewal is the show’s real problem. The first season ends in a place that could have been a complete story. The second and third seasons have to keep a premise alive that was built to be a trap, not a franchise.
What does the show have to say? Not much beyond the games. It has a young man who is good at games, a woman who is good at surviving, and a world that punishes both. That is enough for a season. It is not enough for 22 episodes.
The comparisons to Battle Royale and Cube are the right ones, and they show the gap. Those works had a thesis. Alice in Borderland has a mechanic, and a mechanic can only run so long before the audience starts asking what it is for.
The third season answers that question with a doctor who is obsessed with death and a villain with a plan for Arisu. That is not a thesis. That is a plot. And a plot is what you write when you have run out of things to say about your own world.
Our verdict is 4.5 of 10. The first season is worth your time. The rest is a longer, louder version of the same game, and the game was never the point.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.