Review by Ian Keogh

After the desperation concluding Alice in Borderland Volume 1, Haro Aso opens this volume with some stocktaking and appreciation. The four main cast members to date are seen separately, with the surprise being that Arisu, bored to distraction in the real life, finds himself really appreciating being alive despite knowing he may only have seven days to live. There’s also a refresher course for new readers on the significance of the playing cards dispensed to people who’ve successfully lived through a life-threatening game. Aso then has Saori tell Choda about the first game she survived.

It’s creatively designed by Aso, a game of deliberate psychological torture as well as being the set up to what follows, which is Saori and Choda having to participate in a game to earn more points despite his injury, as they otherwise only have a day to live. Daikichi is also carrying an injury and Arisu is appalled at the accusation he might leave the others to survive on their own as he has six days left to earn more points. The sample art shows their options, which seem to be easy enough, but Aso has a sadistic twist in store.

Sadistic twist it might be, but it’s a rather obvious means to an end. As in the first volume, the concentration is on Arisu, and the lengths he’ll go to with survival on the line.

So far Alice in Borderland has been almost non-stop action, so for much of the remainder of the volume Aso turns his attention to searching for the Beach, a clue to the world in which our protagonists have arrived. Before that, though, there’s a backstory for new companion Yusuha Usagi, all wide-eyed and button-pushing melodrama while also explaining her capabilities.

The search is deliberately designed to slow the pace from breakneck survival, and to throw a curveball. However, whether it’s what most readers will want to see is debatable. It’s certainly a change, but takes a series that until now has been one very original thing and forces it into being something else. Arisu and Usagi now don’t lack for company, but the desperation for survival and the games occupying half of this volume become a depraved Ibiza beach holiday.

It takes some research online to discover why the series is titled Alice in Borderland, but apparently Arisu’s name translates as Alice, Usagi is rabbit, and a character called the Hatter appears at the Beach. It’s all rather slim justification, and unless having some significance in coming volumes the strained connection to Alice in Wonderland would have been better dropped.

Some suggestions are supplied as to what may be behind everything and a possible way to leave, but it’s only speculation. The new cast introduced are deliberately excessive, while Arisu and Yusuha remain innocents, and they’re the subjects of the cliffhanger ending leading to Volume 3.