Alice In Borderland “Episode 5”

Sometimes I watch these shows with large casts, and I have no idea who half the characters are or why I should care.

That is only a partial problem this time around.

This time around, with a cast of mostly new characters, I still have no idea who many of them are.  This episode even gives names to two members of Usagi’s group.  I don’t really remember them.  I just remember that they were a brother and a sister.  As it is, the two groups reunite, Arisu attacking Ryuji pretty much immediately, and while Usagi defends him, the viewer knows Ryuji was instructed to kill Usagi before the final game is over so Arisu can become a citizen of Boarderland.

That…is some heinous nonsense.

As it is, the final game involves going to different rooms, throwing dice, seeing who can and can’t pass along to the next room, and if they lose all their points, they die.  That happens.  The junky character meets a bad end, but so does the brother, and this is where the story gets some much-earned sympathy.  See, the players can use different doors, but each door projects their futures on the walls, and that future will come to pass if they choose that door.  Arisu has a plan to find a way out with everyone following a strategy.  But those doors show horrible fates.  The two siblings, well, the brother lets his sister move ahead in a future where she meets a great guy, gets married, and even gets pregnant.  He dies looking at his sister’s future wedding.  He seems to have made the a choice he’s satisfied with.

It’s outright devastating.

Do I remember his name?  No.  His sister’s sorrow, the fact that it makes Arisu’s own game plan harder when she doesn’t follow directions, the fact that another member of the group is beating himself up for following a happy future while letting the junky die, it all works pretty well.  It also shows what a rotten skunk Ryuji is as he breaks the plan first, holds himself like he’s too good to follow the same directions, and his future shows him shooting Usagi…who happens to be pregnant, with the unborn child counting as a player.

Man, this alternate universe sucks.

But Arisu’s last vision shows he does find the exit…and Usagi’s dead body.

Boo!