What a disappointment Actually Alice in Borderlands is one or my favorite manga, I enjoy reading each chapter, it has been a while since I read the manga, so I wanted to see these 3 ovas to see how good they are, after all for my Alice in Bordelands it was a great and I knew that, despite being 3 ovas, it could be a good thing from there (well, I was wrong). The story does not change much, Arisu Ryohei, tired of his life and with an inferiority complex by his brother, appears in another world with his 2 friends after seeing some fireworks, in the"new world" (which is equal to the Earth, but without many people) there are some survival games in which Arisu will have to participate to survive, the plot is simple, but it can unleash many possibilities, but the pacing is terrible, the plot rushes so much that we can not get to Psychologically understand the characters or their actions, the ovas only take advantage that they are a game of death to play great and develop them well (that is a good point that the ova have at least) and then forget everything else, it shows due to the emphasis to make each game fit a game and making their preparations, which does not work because the grace that the games had was to see how the protagonists faced the games in a psychological way and in a way Inamica, while here they only focused on making the game great, leaving a kind of "style over substance", since the reflections and deductions of the characters completely dislodge due to the inconsistency that the ovas had to prioritize and retract the games ( it takes very little time to explain correctly and dynamically).
The last game was the one I gave the most hope, but the flask forward (as opposed to flask back) that were recurrent in the chapter made the majority of the chapter's dialogue meaningless and explicitly let you understand that something wrong It was going to happen (which is a simple way to put tension although with everything, this game was the one that best treated the tension), without the need to resort to psychological immersion, which generates, although all the games are raised in a way correct, the latter in particular could have developed in a great way, but the little immersion with the characters and the fact that we could not get into their mentality makes their deaths do not feel like something emotional or that has weight (although the soundtrack did a good job in general), so, despite the good approach, the development was mediocre.
The characters are where the ovas weakest, in the manga the characters are undoubtedly their best element (especially Arisu), due to the duration of the ovas the characters are very poor, you can not get to emphasize with any due to the emphasis that is only given to the games and in the ingenious way to solve them, it is not at the end of the third game where you can get to understand the feelings of the characters, but that only serves to generate an emotional scene where friends of Arisu die, if not for that reason the characters never managed to express themselves correctly, the exposition of deep themes is very superficial and pretentious (we never really get to know much about Arisu's past or why Chouta feels a loading, they are only vague themes presented in a superficial way), so the exposition of themes is superficial and does not complement the characters due to their poor presentation in the chapters (although I always I talk about character designs in other reviews, here I have nothing to say, it is normal), the characters besides being poor do not get to express their personality well nor can we see great relationships with each other (which is a contradiction taking in mind that they are best friends), so outside the protagonist the other characters become very boring due to their little time on screen (it provides very badly the exhibition of characters, something that did not happen in the manga).
The animation is normal, although the scenarios are very muted and low in color that they use to express more the dark tone of the ovas themselves, outside of that the transitions are mediocre and the facial gestures too, the animation does not help to focus the viewer on certain aspects, at least the animation is not as bad as you might think at the beginning, it just does not meet decent standards.
The end of the ovas only leaves the viewer anxious, forcing him to read the manga, which makes it a concise ending, but with clear intentions, I really find that these ovas were totally wasted, the manga being a work that gives much emphasis to psychological aspects and the ingenuity of the games, the anime only gave emphasis to the "ingenuity" of the games (since the few that appear are not the big deal), well, a short review, if I don't talk about other aspects of the ovas it is because it is irrelevant, I really would not recommend these ovas to anyone, or to someone who would like an anime about people in a survival game because in the end and seeing it in retrospect it is likely that there are not many things either good to get out of this animation
lelethargilistic
January 17, 2021
Mixed Feelings
I watched the live action adaptation on Netflix with a friend recently, and I enjoyed that, so I decided to check out the anime adaptation. Together, these are about 1.5 hours long and the same story was told over 3 or 4 hours in the live action show, so I was expecting the story to have fewer frills here. I was pretty much right. And, because I preferred the live action version, I'm going to talk about why that is more than anything else. But if you're not interested in that, the TL;DR is that you should watch the live action version instead of this, ifyou only want to watch one. It goes further in the story and reworks it so that everything gels better.
Now, I have not read the manga and I won't until the live action series has finished, but I assume this anime is a pretty straightforward adaptation. And I was really impressed by most of the story changes they did in the live action version. They changed the whole first game because that arrow set-piece was never going to happen on TV, and their replacement was much better, in my opinion. It was kind of a ridiculous puzzle, but it didn't reduce to just a word game like this one did. Making the beams smaller and using TV screens instead of the placards gave the whole thing a more modern feel. Arisu's characterization is completely different from the start; he's way more reserved through the whole thing and develops from a weak and scared starting point. In the anime, he's confident from the start and even sort-of happy to be there. He's indistinguishable from Karube and doesn't have anywhere for his arc to go. I mean, in the live action version, ARISU is the one to call out to people in the tag game and tell them he's going to coordinate. It's a moment where he comes out of his skin slightly. Here, it's Karube. What purpose did that moment serve in the anime? Moving the plot along. Which is not even to begin with the consequential hide-and-seek game, where Arisu doesn't even try to think deeply about the game at all in the anime. The live-action version was a lot more contemplative and sympathetic.
That's not to say the live action version's changes were perfect, though. They apparently cut a moment, seen in the anime, where Arisu invites someone to hide with him. In the live action version, that person just runs off and dies in a way that makes it seem like Arisu used him as bait or, at best, didn't care about his humanity. The live action version also put Shibuki in a situation where she was not in control of her decisions during the hide-and-seek game, so you could say Chota made her decision for her. Which came after a weird sex-and-cult-related segment about Chota that is not in the anime. I assume those elements are in the manga, but I preferred the anime's rendition without the cult segment and without Shibuki's choice being made for her.
What this anime does have over the live action version is that it's well-animated and has cool character designs. It also has a really pleasant, muted color palate that works well aesthetically. I wouldn't say it's worth checking out for the visuals alone, but they are nice.
Here's hoping future seasons of the live action version get to the end of the story, and that it continues tweaking things to work better. Maybe even more aggressively.
