Alice in Borderlands is better than Squid Game.

I think comparing the two is easy on surface level but kinda not really productive.

Alice is very much a manga turned J-drama. The adaption does a great job of smoothing out a lot of the more manga-y aspects of it(much less horny/weird male gaze stuff, aging up characters,skipping over some of the wackier games/side stories etc) and pushed into being more of a hard thriller drama.

Squid game is also a death game premise and has similar roots. There's lots of J-horror death games homages. You can see a lot of respect for both Korean and Japanese thrillers in squid game, especially with it's structure, but the sole difference is intent.

Alice really does not have a hard message. It's a thriller first and fore most, it's DNA as a monthly manga designed to get you to want to buy each new zine installment to see what happens next is palpable. There are arcs but after reading it's sequel and spinoff, above all else Alice wants to be a shock thriller.

Squid game on the other hand emphasizes it's social commentary above all else. It's a story about Korean class struggle and the failures of Korean capitalist expansion told by a creative who has had to actively struggle through all of that.

I'd say more apt comparisons to Alice would be similar series like Gantz or As the Gods will, while Squid game has a lot of similarities to early Saw or The Long Mile. They just come from such different situations.

/r/unpopularopinion Thread