Alice In Borderland “Episode 6”

I know this series is based on a manga, and while I do not for one second claim to be an expert on manga, every so often, I hear dialogue that reminds me of manga I have read.  For example, in this episode, people keep saying how they are going to live up to their ideals, and that sounds like something out of a manga.  For all I know, this is how a lot of Japanese stories work.  I don’t know.  I’ve only read a few manga series and seen this show.

I now return to my commentary on this episode.

So, once again, I got some good action sequences.  Usagi and the Queen of Spades do some parkour type of fighting, and I gotta say, whoever is in charge of this strange world sure did a good job of putting, for the most part, the most despicable, awful, psychotic people as face cards.  I mean, the King of Clubs didn’t seem too bad once the characters got to know him, but he was running around naked the entire time for no real reason aside from the fact that it got to show off some really good camerawork for whoever is making this show.

But the Queen of Spades?  No, seeing her die didn’t bother me in the slightest.  Plus, she set that thing up to kill a kid, and it’s bad enough that a kid is even in the games.  The CGI elephants?  No, those are cool, but they don’t play the games…I assume.

So, really, this was what felt like a standard episode of Alice in Borderland.  Arisu rallies people to beat a game, he and Usagi get a little closer in a hot spring, and Chishiya is off playing a game of the mind against another face card.  Now, the game there reveals a bit more, like why that one young woman in season one killed herself on behalf of the game masters (she wanted to die on her own terms and to prove that the survivors weren’t all bad), but then came the moment I wasn’t expecting:  Chishiya was a doctor before he came to this weird side world.

That guy?  The guy who figures everything out with cold, calculating logic, was a doctor?  And a highly compassionate one that had to deliver bad news to an anxious mother with a sick child in need of an organ transplant?  That guy?

Oh, and he does manage to somehow bluff his way to victory again in a game that involves death by acid if you make too many bad guesses, mostly because he’s good at reading people.

Regardless, the season is nearly over.  And it looks like, with less face cards left, the characters are all headed back to, from the looks of things, get together to beat the baddies.  Arisu and Usagi, Chishiya, Aguni and Heiya, Kuina, and even Ann coming in from the borders of the borderland, all of them seem to be headed back to the city.  I almost feel bad for that triggerhappy King of Spades…or I would if he wasn’t another one of those face card assholes.

So, what did the Queen of Spades mean when she said the protagonists would find out what happened if they beat all the face cards?