Squid Game vs Alice in Borderland

Let's Compare Recent Popular Series

Hello everyone. Today I'm here with a different concept. Recently, my spouse's repeated request of "Watch this series, if it's good I'll watch it too" led me to decide to embark on this journey. In this post, I'll make a comparison between Squid Game and Alice in Borderland series and present my personal opinions. Happy reading 😊

First, let me discuss Squid Game. What I love most about Korean series is their short seasons and few episodes. This one also offers viewing pleasure with just 9 episodes. The adventure begins when our main character, who is in financial trouble, is invited to a game. A man approaches our main character at a subway station, makes him choose between red and blue cards, and gives him money for every hand he wins in a simple game. Our guy chooses the blue card and continues playing until he earns some money, then at the end of the day, he calls the number on the card the man gave him and agrees to participate in the proposed game. Where he goes, he begins the adventure as a player in blue tracksuits, with men in red outfits directing them. Seeing this, a question comes to mind. What if our guy had chosen the red card from those offered to him at the subway station?

Every game we see appears as giant-sized versions of children's games with deadly punishments. We see the friendships formed within the games and the betrayals made to survive one after another. At the end of all this, as expected, our main character wins the game and becomes the owner of the big money prize. But the most surprising event is that the old man who formed a "buddy" bond with the main character from the first day of the game turns out to be the founder of all these games. This ending was my favorite thing about Squid Game. Because the main character winning the game was a predictable outcome, but such an ending beyond predictability surely surprised everyone who watched it.

Now let's move on to Alice in Borderland. It's a series adapted from a famous manga, and you can feel this strongly while watching. I don't think it maintains the line between being a manga reader and being a series viewer very well. When watching something, I expect to see small traces from the real world, but this series consists entirely of extraordinary fiction. The characters are very forced, even their gestures and facial expressions are disturbing. Looking at the overall subject, yes it's engaging and maybe watchable, but while watching, I'm sure you'll feel the need to constantly skip ahead like I did. Even though it doesn't have the long staring scenes we're used to from our productions, I completed a season by constantly fast-forwarding due to long scenes without dialogue and slowly progressing events.

Alice in Borderland begins when three close friends with unhappy lives hide in a bathroom to escape from the police, and suddenly all people disappear, finding themselves in a completely empty city and in various deadly games. Again, like in Squid Game, the battle between friendships formed within the game and betrayals made to survive is the subject. The series has very extreme games and characters. Again, our main character successfully completes all games until the last moment, as expected, and the season finale ends with the news that different new games will continue.

If we have to choose between the two, I think Squid Game is a much better production in terms of viewing pleasure and flow of events. Since I've always found countries like Korea and Japan to have more advanced imagination when it comes to series and movies, the viewership and popularity of these series certainly didn't surprise me. As a result, after finishing both, my advice to my spouse was watch Squid Game, skip Alice in Borderland. This is announced to those who haven't watched 😊

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