YMMV / Alice in Borderland

• Anti-Climax Boss: The final game against Mira, the Queen of Hearts was definitely rough, but not for anything about the game. Arisu nearly loses due to Mira's mind games, but once he overcomes her mind games, all he has to do to win is play a simple game of Croquet. He doesn't even have to win to clear the game. Mira takes her failure to mentally break Arisu without concern and happily plays through the game knowing she will die at the end. Though given the category of the game, that's admittingly kind of the point.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Karube and Chota are beloved by most fans because of their dynamic personalities, being True Companions to Arisu but also performing their Heroic Sacrifice in a Sadistic Choice for Arisu in the heartbreaking Seven of Hearts game in episode 3 because they know they that Arisu's intelligence and moral conscience can make a difference for himself and ask him to live life to the fullest devastating Arisu as they die.
• Fanfic Fuel: What are the games associated with all the cards we don't see? For instance, no ace card games are ever seen - would they be the simplest games as presumed by its value, or more difficult than the 10s just like its placement in some card games?
• Friendly Fandoms: With Sweet Home (2020), another horror series that aired on Netflix in December 2020.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In chapter 43 of the manga, Arisu and Usagi find a hot spring shooting out of the wreckage of a baseball field. They take a bath there and shortly later have sex in for the first time in the ruins. It's supposed to be rather romantic. However, when you consider the fact that in one of the side stories, 6 people were instantly killed when said hot spring initially erupted and the lone survivor had to amputate her leg and suffer a lot to survive, it becomes less so.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Manga: Ginji Kyuma, revealed to be one of the citizens of Borderland, ran a dangerous treasure game called "King of Clubs". A charismatic and jovial musician who, despite his troubled life, retains a positive outlook towards life in general, Ginji accepts his fate as one of the citizens of Borderland after playing several dangerous games. When Arisu and his companions try to challenge him in the treasure hunt, Ginji and his companions outwit Arisu's team numerous times despite their advantages over Ginji's team at first, which leaves Arisu and his companions in complete disarray. Despite being outwitted by Arisu at the end of the game, Ginji accepts his defeat and praises Arisu's performance during the game, proving himself to be one of the most compelling enemies Arisu had ever faced.
  • Live-Action series:
    • The mysterious Shuntaro Chishiya is a cunning manipulator who allies himself with anyone he can to further his agenda of acquiring all the playing cards to escape from Borderland. Chishiya first appears at the Five of Spades game, where he is one of the two people to figure out the location of the building's safe room, and helps Arisu and Usagi in taking down the game's tagger. Later joining the organization "Beach", Chishiya works his way up into the organization's ranks, and when the leader of Beach dies and is replaced by the militant Aguni, Chishiya uses Arisu as bait to figure out the hiding spot of the playing cards. When Aguni decides to purge Beach of all non-militant members, Chishiya confronts the insane Sugaru Niragi, burning him with a homemade flamethrower, retrieves the Ten of Hearts card, and joins Arisu and Usagi in playing the next stage of games to track down the Game Master.
    • Mira Kano is a mysterious executive member of Beach who is revealed to be a citizen of Borderland. As the Queen of Hearts, Mira is responsible for designing the Hearts games, games that toy with the emotions of the players, turning them against each other, leading to the deaths of many players, including Arisu's two closest friends. The final opponent Arisu must defeat, Mira's game initially appears to be a simple game of Croquet. During the game, Mira takes the time to toy with Arisu a bit with elaborate lies on the secrets behind Borderland before revealing the true nature of her game: gaslighting Arisu into thinking that Borderland only exists in his head as a coping mechanism for losing his friends. Nearly getting Arisu into quitting the game, Mira relents upon seeing Arisu persevere out of his love for Usagi, accepting her defeat and bidding Arisu and Usagi farewell before her demise.
• Narm: The killer in 5♠ Tag wears a mask in the shape of a horse's head. Depending on your take, it's either silly and detracts from the Nightmare Fuel or so bizarre that it adds to it.
• Lighter and Softer: The Queen of Spades game is considered to be this for a few reasons. The game itself is hardly “deadly” until it’s the last round and one team is shot with lasers. It’s especially a step down from the King of Spades, making the Queen of Spades seem more like a pip card game. Since it was written by Netflix, the game has a more uplifting and optimistic ending, by having Usagi deliver a motivating speech to the members of the Player team and no players died. The Queen of Spades herself applies to this because she receives much less depth and character development than the other face cards.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Though the general reception for the live action adaptation has been pretty positive, one change that some find iffy is how Arisu is involved in almost every game that appears onscreen (the exception being during the montage of games involving Beach members, Arisu is only involved in one of them by the simple reality he can only be in one place at a time) even if he had zero involvement in the manga. This in fact includes the aforementioned game in the montage, Arisu wasn't in the rising water game. And the biggest change is having Arisu and Usagi participate in the game involving the broken down bus in a tunnel. Originally, this game was seemingly nothing but one shot characters, and another change to it means that the King of Diamonds loses one of his big character growth moments, since he was incognito as a player, but the actor filling his role is clearly a different actor who portrays him as a member of the Beach. This continues in the second season, with not only Arisu but Chishiya and An being given arcs that weren't originally theirs.

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