TW: violence, suicide, gore, sexual assault
Spoilers Ahead:
By now, most of us have heard about Netflix’s newest craze, Squid Game. It’s a series that centers around a contest in which players from different stages of life compete in children’s games with deadly outcomes for a huge sum of money. Although Squid Game has plenty of actors who aren’t new to the film world, many of them have tripled in popularity since the show has aired. Breaking records, Squid Game has helped to open viewers eyes to a wider range of film genres. Prior to the airing of Squid Game, another deadly game-based show was released, called Alice in Borderland.
Alice in Borderland, based on a manga by the same name, takes place in a parallel Tokyo, centering around gamer, Arisu, and his two friends, Karube and Chota. After being chased by the police in the middle of Shibuya Crossing, the group of friends find themselves hiding in the restroom of Shibuya Transit Station. As they are joking around about not getting caught, the lights suddenly turn off and everything goes quiet. No cars are heard, no talking echoing off the walls, and no ringing of any cell phones. Thinking that everyone left, Arisu, Karube, and Chota exit the restroom to find one of the most crowded places in Tokyo deserted. Trash litters the ground, and cars are stopped in the middle of the road. At first, the group doesn’t suspect much, but as they walk around and discover no one anywhere, they start to worry. Whilst joking out of discomfort, the 3 soon find themselves in front of a giant lit-up screen attached to a building. The screen read “This way to the Game Arena.” It pointed to the right, and the boys soon found themselves entering the first game they would have to complete, in order to stay alive.
In the first episode of Squid Game, the main character, Seong Gi Hun, finds himself in a tricky situation when he realizes he needs money to win over custody of his daughter as well as pay back loan sharks. When he misses the subway, a man offers to play a Korean game called Ddakji, where players take turns trying to flip over the other person’s folded paper tile with their own, for money. After many rounds, the man hands Gi Hun a card with a number and three shapes on it, saying he can make more money by playing more games they have to offer. That night, after calling the number on the card, Gi Hun meets up with a car, getting knocked out. He soon wakes up to find himself surrounded by 455 other people who are also on the verge of bankruptcy. The players soon find out that they are able to play games for an unknown sum of money. The first game they encounter is ‘Red Light, Green Light.’ After having the rules explained to them, they begin to play. Two players who didn’t yet take the game seriously, started joking around and made a bet to see who would reach the end first. In the first round, one of the jokesters gets caught and falls to the ground, a gunshot being heard. His friend thinks he is playing and waits for the cue to go again. Once he is close enough to his friend, he sees that he was shot and backs up, leading him to also get caught and killed. This is the moment where everyone learns how serious this game actually is. Players start running out of fear and many get shot.
Similar to Squid Game, the players in Alice in Borderland find themselves in games that deal with deadly consequences, if not played adequately. The plots of both shows are equally addictive, and they both create an urge in viewers to binge watch until they’ve completed the series. The game-like plots create a feeling of nostalgia for the viewers, which makes it easy for us to want to join in on the fun and try it out ourselves! Conversations and debates start between viewers about what they would or wouldn’t do to survive the game, as well as contests and games to see who would survive. The writers of both shows did a very good job creating plots that start talk and discussions.
Although released first, Alice in Borderland didn’t do as well in the international market. Squid Game, on the other hand, has plenty of popular actors who were already in the international scene, ranging from Korean model Jung Ho-yeon, to Indian actor Anupam Tripathi. Alice in Borderland also has quite a few actors who are already very popular within Japanese film, like Keita Machida and even Kento Yamazaki who is known as the “Prince of Anime,” which made them more popular in Japan. Due to the selection of actors these shows had, the quality of acting was amazing, and it set them apart from other films of the same genre.
Both shows are very successful and I can definitely see why. The storylines and acting had a lot of effort put into them. Squid Game and Alice in Borderland deserve to be talked about, whether it’s about the acting, or the plot, or even the pleasing aesthetic and color palettes applied to the film. I would highly recommend watching both shows as they open you up to a whole new genre of shows and movies.
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