Something that ‘dropped’ on Netflix this last week that might be of interest to punters, Alice in Borderland, an eight episode Japanese mystery drama based on a popular manga. It’s a little bit like Cube, a little bit like 3% and little bit like Lost (the mysterious island TV show rather than the reality show). It’s also *quite* violent, it’s rated 15 but I reckon it’s on the cusp of an 18 really.
Loser Arisu and his loser friends are larking about and hide from the police in a toilet stall. Suddenly all the lights go out, and when they come back they discover that (almost) everyone in Shibuya has suddenly disappeared, the streets are deserted, all they see is a screen light up telling them in which direction the Game Arena is located. Without spoiling too much, everyone in this world is forced to play cruel and unusual games – winning a game earns days on a “visa” where they don’t have to play, but not playing means laser death from above and losing games mean death by other means. What are they prepared to do to stay alive, and how will this affect them? And what IS going on?
Some of the games have entertaining Mole-like elements, but none of the “a-ha!” moments are as strong as something in Liar Game, for example (please buy up Liar Game Netflix, thanks). Still if you, like me, are a fan of This Sort Of Thing and you have the stomach for some exploding bodies then it’s well worth a watch.
I need to get round to watching the second series of Kakegurui at some point as well, which is something else you might enjoy.
Liar Game is available on Crunchyroll, I think. It certainly used to be anyway.
In other news, had no idea Bradley Walsh’s How To Win A Gameshow was on ITV tonight.
Everyone looking at Osmosis from Series 2 and going ‘hmm, I wonder if that could work’.