User Reviews

After thoroughly enjoying the first episodes we've finally made it to "The Beach" and I'm of two minds; I appreciate that it builds on the Alice in Wonderland parallels by having The Beach be our Tea Party, complete with a Mad Hatter and I think the explanation of the game itself with the cards on the wall was pretty nifty but I feel like the way it's handled here leaves a bit to be desired. We're introduced to some fresh faces and not all of them land just yet and the party/club vibe feels almost jarringly different to the rest of the series' tone up to this point. That being said, the games montage as well as the lightbulb game and the chemistry of our two mains are both very much what I enjoyed about Alice in Bordeland to begin with and it hasn't changed here. Overall, I think I'm gonna give it a decent 7/10

Still an enjoyable episode, although a very different one; there's only one brief game segment this time around. Instead we're looking at future society and at how people gather into rival tribes which leads to conflict and danger. Every futuristic/apocalypse show does this (e.g. THE WALKING DEAD) and it still feels fresh at this point.

I can see why people didn't exactly love this episode. Up until they reached "The Beach", it still felt like the show I saw for the last 4 episodes.

But then we see all these characters (new and old) that line up in a kind of clichéed way?

We have the playboy boss, the hot chick, the silent leader chick (Ann?), the nerd/otaku...oh, and we see that two players from a previous game are high ranking members too, namely the blonde guy from episode 2 and the guy who helped to kill the hunter.

But here's where some plot holes begin for me.

We see that the tough guy is the leader of the "military" and that they have access to weapons. They (unfairly) slaughter some Tigers and other animals (why isn't that punished by the game creators? Don't they have those sky lasers?) and it seems they could use brute force for many of these games, including the one in episode 2.

So why was the tough guy: a) kind of worried b) didn't bring a gun and his posse and just shoot the hunter right away?

I also really disliked how they just killed all the animals in a "cool" way. I mean, it really takes away from the serious tone the show had so far (and it's my major complaint about this episode).

The CGI wasn't too good either. The Panther looked real in episode 4. The Tiger? Meh...he looked like a real computer-animated one. I get that they wouldn't use a real Tiger (thank god), but why even show it at all? They could have left it to our imagination.

It also seems quite strange that all those players agree to these rules and survived this long! And why do they all seem to be rather young? We did see some older players before, but these all seem to be 35-40 max (and the majority younger). The whole "party" attitude to the game doesn't seem apropos to me either. All this effort (and clearly many will die on the way) to "probably" send back 1 person? And who will that person be? It seems to be the hat maker. But how did he survive up until now (seems he spent years there to build such a following and hierarchy) without dying in a game? Or without any of those close to him dying? He himself said it is impossible for 1 player to win all 52 games, but it seems he must have played and won hundreds! And from what we've seen, our two heroes didn't have any card twice, so shouldn't he have had a full set long ago?

Well, many questions...again, maybe some of this will be answered and maybe I am too nitpicky. But I liked this more when it was a smaller group and we got to know the characters better. Now it feels like a lot of the tension is gone. And although I am sure some will return, I feel they missed an opportunity to make a better show (although in fairness, maybe the source material forced their hand, as I never read the manga).

The animals reappearing makes me mad. So does the cliche of the organization in the middle of nowhere and the eccentric guy at the top. The riddle was good and makes me think that these games are the best, and not the ones where brute force is involved.

While many people hate this episode I have to give It credit on the way of introducing the characters in the Beach. However the weird de-railment in the plot is still off-putting.

TLDR as the end.

Running as fast as a car? Really?

The Beach makes no sense, given the story so far. All of a sudden thousands of people, probably tens of thousands, have gone to this game dimension, and no one has noticed in the real world. Also, the very high death rate in the challenges means that there has to be many many newcomers all the time to have The Beach keep that many members, yet for some reason it is secret, and new members are hand picked? If they are not hand picked, how are members being introduced if the Beach is a secret?

The part about collecting all the cards to end the game is just pure conjecture. Just because there is a physical card given as a "bonus" reward for clearing a game (apart from the visa thing) that does not mean that you need to collect them all (this is not Pokemon), especially since that is impossible for a single individual (as is also stated in the episode). More likely is that a single person would need to collect one card from every suit, or less likely one card of every difficulty level.

Even if you need all the cards, there is no need for physical cards, when the players winning the game has had their faces scanned every time a new challenge starts, so the game knows how many games each player has cleared anyway. If physical cards are needed, how does the game keep track of those cards? If you collect them all, to whom are you going to be presenting them?

More to the point, how the Beach know what happens after someone has collected all the cards, if that has never happened? That the Beach bases all of its efforts on a pure guess is just mind blowing.

It would have been much better, and more mysterious, if they had just said "We are trying to collect all the cards, because we guess that is what we are supposed to do, and we will see what happens once we have all of them, there is no way to know".

In the light switch puzzle, why not have the door closed, flip a switch, then open the door to see if it was correct? The rules only prohibit you from pulling a switch on an open door to see if it turns on, not opening the door while the light is on. That could have been an easy rule to have, too.

It is also implied that one member of the Beach hade knowledge of the solution to this challenge, meaning the challenges are not unique, even though the card gotten from that challenge was a new card for the Beach. This makes no sense. Furthermore, this member was apparently ready to die just to test the protagonist.

TLDR: illogical things happen, including a bad turn of the plot, and pure guesswork as a basis for a new organisation. All in all, a new low for this series.

Such a shame, it started off with a great premise, but by now the show is breaking it's own rules... Tokyo was initially devoid of people and the games seemed mysterious, but by now too many 'players' and people have come into the mix, with 'The Beach' emerging as a pathetic concept of elitist people collecting the playing cards. I'm getting increasingly disappointed with the lack of originality and failing to stick to the initial enigmatic or supernatural narrative.

The light bulb puzzle is so well-known, it makes no sense for it to be the same level of difficulty as the bus challenge from the previous episode. I don't know whether this puzzle was featured in the manga but it made the episode really boring for me. First episode that I disliked so far.

I guess they did run out of ideas, reducing the game element and adding a bunch of characters. The attire's alright though.

I just came here to comment that very odly, IMDB rating are SPOT on when it comes to this series espisode.

Now, for the fillers: Overally, Season of "AiB" is a solid 7. Episode 3 blew everyone's mind and deserves a solid 9.

Season 2 is probably best forgotten. But i came here to confirm your suspicions: yes, s1 episode 5 is where the writers couldn't do 'trap of the week' so had to introduce a longer arc, and if you don't enjoy this type of things in series, well, be aware they are going to go as far as introducing 'he wasn't really dead' type tropes from this episode in S2 in order to make for the missing cast which is getting offed at an alarming rate.

Baring the vulnerability of the human soul is wonderfully done in episode 1-3, e4 is the 'reload of fresh meat', and e5 is the jumping the shark episode of s1.

There is redemption at the end of the season by introducing a deus ex machina that actually makes sense, but you will be chasing that sweet psychological horror from s1e3 going forward.