Imawa no Kuni no Alice
Alice in Borderland

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What do you live for?

Neither the question nor the answer to it might particularly interest you, yet reading this manga's attempts at trying to give you answers to this very question can still be a great investment of your time.
The name might strike you as very odd, "Alice" from Disney and in"the borderlands"? Will there be over-the-top humor and a little girl protagonist or what?

Audiences:
Borderlands primarily targets 2 kinds of audiences.
The first one being people who enjoy to read manga with games of life and death and an abundance of characters that make these sort of games interesting to spectate.
The second one are people ... with a very reflective or depressed personality. The manga manages to find a good balance between keeping dark/serious topics with drama and feels at the core and still keeping a very shounen-esque positive, friendly atmosphere that manages to turn heart-tearing stories into heart-warming experiences.

Don't mistaken this with material like One Piece or Naruto, just because it wears the shounen tag. This manga is rich with consequences. You'll see people die for taking wrong steps at every turn.
However, this isn't a Tokyo Ghoul or Re:Zero either. The characters have heart and are relatable to a certain extend. The writer did a good job trying to portray people that you could possibly meet anywhere.

The weakness in the writing for this work shows when characters start to act overly corny or when characters start to emotionally overreact at times. It makes you question whether the story even knows where it wants to go or if it doesn't know which audience it wants to target.
The truth of the matter is that Alice in Borderlands knows exactly where it wants to head with it's story and that it is doing what it is doing almost too well for it's own good, because what it is doing is neither popular nor wanted in most of the anime sub-communities. Alice in Borderlands applies a concept that is alien to most anime watchers and resented amongst many manga readers: The attempt to tell a story with a clear message through a storytelling that let's you look from different camera angles and let's you see the stories of different characters, distancing itself from being too judgemental or imposing and instead allowing readers with a free mind to think for themselves.

MC:
The main character, Arisu, is the person you'll be following throughout most of the story. He's not shounen-MC-level of stupid, but he's not a Yagami Light either. If you're into badass main characters, this manga will probably not do for you. The main character's attitude throughout the story fits the atmosphere of the manga very well, which is melancholic. So don't expect some ruthless guy finishing off adversaries in cold blood.

Plot:
Ever read one of those Battle Royale kind of manga, where a bunch of people are thrown somewhere and expected to kill each other off with certain rules in place? This is basically one of those.
The setting is some unknown, wide open area with certain places marked for games of life and death to be held there. None of the people there are forced to participate in these games. But finishing a game and surviving it extends the time on the victors visas, which will otherwise eventually expire, resulting in certain death.
To make the games more interesting, the manga introduces different game categories and difficulty levels represented through playing card symbols and it attributes characters that are especially suited to a certain kind of game with that category.
There are, for example, games that require intellect to survive or games that require physical fitness.

But it's more than just a myriad of death games following each other. The manga forces characters to face questions that you would typically try to avoid having to deal with. In that sense, you are being shown not only the ugly sides of the reality of the story and those questions, but also the brilliance that lies with all the different possible answers.
That's why the stories of these dozens of characters you'll be following are not just some decentralized, loosely tied one-shot stories to their own, but branches that come together at the end to form a whole tree.

Characters:
While there are a lot of great characters, there are also some very annoying ones. On top of that, the story burdens you with some very ugly, dislikable character designs for some characters. In the end, nothing I describe about the characters here will be on-point, because it's just too dependant on taste.
However, one thing that can be said about many of the characters is that they act very appropriate considering the circumstances they find themselves in and considering their states of minds.
And, I just have to say it, as if the constant whining of the MC wasn't enough during some chapters, they just had to add the probably most annoying side-character to tag along with him and become his mental and physical support.
At least in that regard this manga is very alike to almost every other manga you might've already read, with it pandering to self-absorbed hikikomori due to the relationship going on between that self-insert of a MC and his on-command make-up doll and inofficial girlfriend.

Conclusion:
I enjoyed this a lot, despite not being overly comfortable with many of the early cast and despite the manga sometimes giving you the feeling that it's trying to let the world revolve around that self-centered MC at times, with entire chapters contributed to nothing but whining from Arisu that I gladly skimmed through with a good fast-forward reading technique, called the autopilot. I wanted to read some manga with survival games going on, where there are stakes for the characters and not some illogical happy ends for the sake of letting friendship win. Alice in Borderlands delivered.
And it also made for a story with some depth to it, which I gladly took as the icing on the cake. It's far from perfect. There are just too many annoying and unnecessary scenes in this manga for a 10/10 and there are in fact so many of those that if you are either just enjoying to read for the brutality going on or just enjoy the story, but don't get enough enjoyment out of the action that a 7 or 8 out of 10 would be a fair rating. For me it's a 9/10.

If you are interested with the premise of psychological game, then turn away.

I’ll be honest in this review, the enjoyment you get from reading this depends on what you look for and expect from the manga.

If you’re looking for psychological drama about the concept of living and friendship then you are at the right place. There’s a lot of that here. Wall of text with sentimental monologue and backstory. Sometimes, I admit it was too much and thinking it was made with the reason to drag the chapters.

If you’re reading for the game, then you will be very very very disappointed. The Game design is ... quite good, it starts with a great premise and making the reader hyped but the games always ended in a really unsatisfying way. From the hype, the reader will expect something brilliant from the MC, but it never really lived up to it

My theory is that unlike any other similar manga, the author did not plan everything from the start but instead he/she created the game first, and decide later how to end the game in later chapters. This is supported by how the author drags the game plot by putting backstories and recaps in the chapters, while the MC keep repeating “I know how to win the game” in every last page for few chapters straight. This is to maintain the hype while thinking about ways to ending the game. Also, side stories within main story as plot dragging medium.

Besides, the game mostly ended in a convenient way. If you are from Liar Game, these here will look really dumb. The manga shows that the MC is a genius and think of a masterplan but in the end it always won due to luck, coincidence, enemy doing something stupid or something that was never there suddenly appear as a convenient way to end the game. So after every game, instead of “wow! never thought of that”, you just go “what? thats it?”.

I don’t know maybe others like the game but to me as a manga where its main selling point is about the game, the game to me is the weakest part of the aspects in the manga

Inglish is not my first language

I don't know if the Netflix series is different, but if it's the same as this manga, I want you to know that the hype is, without a doubt, 100%...undeserved. The hype this manga gained was 100% undeserved; he is surfing a wave that is not his. If you want to know why alice in borderlands is famous, go to the series, because the manga obviously doesn't deserve the hype and is nothing more than a generic psychological manga with substandard quality compared to its peers.

Alice in borderlands is yet another manga filled with expository monologues. Every action, ... every conflict, every development and every DIALOGUE is followed by an unnecessary monologue. a raindrop cannot fall or a stone cannot move without a monologue inside a introspective moment to explain it. You can even excuse some moments, since they serve as a tool for the characterization, by showing how smart a character is by having him explaining everything. But this goes beyond the limits when wanting to do the duty of the reader by analyzing the characters.

This just shows the author's inability to:

A) create a narrative/plot that clearly SHOWS what he want to tell us;

B) the fear of being misunderstood, which motivates him to explain everything.

Reason B is understandable but not acceptable. If he's scared, he should change his methods or just give a fuck to the idiots who don't understand what he is saying.

And the way the MC's past, and the psychological problems caused by it, is revealed to us is done in such a poor way that it almost seems that the author is simply adding things as the work develops. The MC of the beginning is not the Same of the middle, but not by development, but by this "alteration" (I put it in quote because maybe it really was just a bad characterization) of the concept behind the MC.

And wow, what a crybaby the MC is. The first few times are more than understandable, since he's going through a terrible situation and all, but as the work develops, he starts crying about anything, in a Steven universe way. And sometimes, even if the moment is justifiable for him to cry, his reaction is... exaggerated to the point of embarrassment. Many authors forget that crying character =/= emotional. Actually, everything in this manga is extremely exaggerated.

The maturity of the dialogue and how the themes are approached seem to come from a children's book. This is a common problem with mangas and I'm always wondering: does the author believe what the MC is saying (which seems like as it is the definitive moral lesson of the work) or is he just repeating what other works have spoken? because the way certain ideas are conveyed are so robotic, silly and shallow that I can't believe that the author really believes and understands what is being said, because, normally, when you believe in something, you usually have a basic understand about that, ESPECIALLY if you're going to put this into a story. Don't think I'm saying this because i disagree with what is said in this manga or others, because i actually agree with the majority of them, actually, it's because i believe and understand about it that's making me confused and asking myself if he really understand what he is talking about.

The art is very tough in the start, but it improves with the time and the plot is really interesting, despite how weak the revelations of vital information are and certain nonsensical, but on point, conclusions are made to solve certain question (something classic in these psychological mangas). Some characters are also interesting, so it really is a shame that the author approaches them with the classic Shounem way: scream, expository monologues, more scream, expository monologues during an introspective moment, expository flashbacks, screamed expository monologue during an introspective moment with flashes of the past passing through the frames and, obviously, an unbelievable character change (the character can spend entire volumes having the same dilemma/internal conflict, but he magically manages to change after hearing 3 or 5 little words that are a very simple/rase answer to a complex problem or a hard to get out mental state; which, again, makes me wonder if the author really understands what he's talking about).

There are a few more issues at times here and there, but I won't go into those, because they're just that: moments. I don't think you should use isolated issues that don't recur in a review. But dont think they are not bad and wouldn't make someone droppe this manga.

And the last thing I want to say is: the last game is disappointing. He takes a lot of the things I said and multiplies them by two. And what happens after all the games are done is also anti-climactic.