Alice in Borderland is a manga I enjoyed reading. The question of why we live life is a wonderful and difficult theme. The answer the manga comes up with is avoiding the question entirely. As the answer is, it's different for everyone but life is ultimately valuable.

Arisu struggles with a lot of emotional issues and the solution for all of them is a girl. A girl that pathetically only exists as his motivation. The manga makes up for it by other female characters that make an impact, especially in the Side Stories. Arisu is very much a typical Seinen protagonist similar to Battle Royale, Oyasami Punpun, and Parasyte. Indecisive young men who learn life lessons and eventually become normal. Something that plagues this genre is external motivations, a girlfriend, a job, or a stable family life. These things are important to young Japanese men and they are the targeted audiences.

Story: 6/10
Unfortunately, Alice in Borderland utilizes all the typical elements of its genre to tell a story. His motivations, his friends, his rivals, his journey are all things we have read or watched before. We know what path the story is going to go in. I can't express how much I hate the line "protective instincts". When I read it I wanted to vomit. Are the main characters incapable of internal motivations, it is always reserved to side characters like Kyuuga?

Character: 8/10
Despite the weak writing, the characters are interesting. This is the strength of a serialized manga. As almost every character needs a backstory even ones that don't deserve it. Arisu's development is strange as he regresses at some points in the story. Thankfully, this allows for side stories. These side stories use the setting to the maximum advantage. While many of the characters in these stories are also typical manga characters. The short time we spend with them and the curiosity of knowing them to keep you interested. While the ending of many games can be strange, they are used to elevate the characters involved in them.

I wanted to highlight these two things as these are a result of the medium and genre. The medium allows for internal monologues and extended time exploring the characters and an elevation of suspense as time passes according to the author whims. While the genre holds back the manga.By being held prisoners to certain themes and cliches for the young men reading. We don't want our main characters to be complex people that we can disagree with. We don't want our love interest to be humans that can elevate us from our comfort by being active. We want them to be puppets that do things when we what them to.