Are you curious to find out about the Dan Da Dan Chapter 242 release date?…
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.
While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.
Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.
Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital!
So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.
In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.
While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.
While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.
Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.
Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital!
So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.
In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.
While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.
#Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media">‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.
While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.
Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.
Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital!
So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.
In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.
While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.
Teaser for Koreeda's 'Look Back' - Live-Action Version of the Anime by Alex Billington June…
Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.
While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.
If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.
Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.
But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex.Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.
While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.
Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.
Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.
Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.
Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.
Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon.
But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.
While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.
Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.
While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.
If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.
Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.
But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex.Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.
While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.
Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.
Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.
Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.
Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.
Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon.
But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.
While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.
#Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon">Satoshi Kon’s Manga Deserve Just as Much Love as His Iconic Anime
Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the legendary anime director’s films: Perfect Blue, Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika, and the trippy Paranoia Agent TV show. But what doesn’t get enough love is Dream Fossil and Opus, Kon’s works as a manga creator before he became a household name. Manga, I’d argue, make for the perfect bookend for folks like myself who’ve made his films an annual rewatch to appreciate the full scope of his unique ability to blur the lines between dreams and reality.
While I’d heard of Opus before, I stumbled upon Dream Fossil by complete happenstance while browsing my local bookstore. In the same way, Tatsuki Fujimoto 17-26 piqued my interest as a collection of short stories before he hit it big with Fire Punch and Chainsaw Man, Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon was the quickest purchase of my life. Why? Well, it’s a collection of fifteen short stories he wrote before he dove into directorial work. As a fan of Kon, whom critically acclaimed directors like Christopher Nolan and Darren Aronofsky have paid homage to (and ripped off, respectively), I was curious to see the kinds of works the auteur wove before stunning the world with his anime. Unsurprisingly, I walked away from the book with a newfound appreciation for Kon, with inklings of ideas he’d revisit in the larger arc of his work, while learning a couple of really cool facts about him I hadn’t connected the dots on before.
If I were to pin down the overall vibe of the 15 short stories in Dream Fossil, I’d say they’re the less-depressing doppelgänger of Paranoia Agent. Sure, there are speculative fiction thrillers in there to showcase his ability to dream up imaginative stories. Key among them are Carve, a tale about two twins gifted with ESP trying to survive in a FUBAR world; Guests, a humorous tale about a family trying their damnedest to ignore that their fancy countryside house is haunted by ghosts; and Toriko, his two-part Akira-esque dystopian story about a rebellious boy running away from robot police in a desperate attempt to avoid being tossed into a rehabilitation center for the crime of buying cigarettes and sneaking liquor from his parents’ cabinet.
Picnic, the full-color short story Dream Fossil‘s editor’s notes all but declare as the sister tale to Akira, came with the casual mention that Kon was a former assistant to Akira creator Katsuhiro Otomo, a fact that makes a lot of sense when I think about their uncannily similar art styles and the themes in their works. We love the goated assistant-to-mentor pipeline in manga.
But my absolute favorite short stories in Dream Fossil were the ones teeming with slice-of-life whimsy. Tales like Summer of Anxiety, where a bike rider strikes up a meet-cute romance with a woman while being chased by her ex.Or Joyful Bell, a story about a mall Santa who spends his night helping a little girl find her way home while she pesters him about getting her a daddy for Christmas. But my favorite of all of Kon’s short stories was Beyond The Sun, an unserious Looney Tunes-like adventure about a nurse giving chase to her elderly patient after her hospital bed unlocks and it becomes the whole town’s problem. Every one of these stories had the magical ability to conjure up a visceral sense of nostalgia, like the heat of the summer sun on my skin as I walked under trees to the school bus in elementary school. And it managed to do so for a time I wasn’t alive for. Mind you, this was Kon before the world really knew what he was about.
While Dream Fossil touches on the latent potential Kon had at the onset of his career, Opus lands with a painful what-if that made me go, “Oh my god, it ends like that?!” out loud at my big age.
Whenever folks think of the big what-if of Kon’s career, they often think of Dream Machine, his proposed fifth film that never came to be before he died in 2010 at the age of 46. But the pang of agony I felt after reading Opus was leagues beyond my everyday misery over the indefinite hiatuses of Ai Yazawa’s Nana and Takehiko Inoue’s Vagabond.
Opus, in my humblest opinion, is the most ambitious, experimental story Kon has ever concocted. Like what-if-Paprika-were-a-manga levels of ambition. What’s more, despite its metanarrative premise being pretty common, I’ve never experienced a story quite like Kon’s. Opus follows Chikara Nagai, a famous mangaka on the verge of penning the final page of Resonance, his beloved sci-fi manga. The only problem is that the final page of the manga is stolen by the very character he planned to shockingly kill on that page, leading to Nagai being spirited away into his own series.
Since this is Satoshi Kon we’re talking about, what follows in the manga’s rousing adventure isn’t as clear-cut as Nagai and Satoko, the heroine of Nagai’s manga, teaming up to fetch the final page from her rogue sidekick and save the day. Things are far messier than that. For starters, the fact that Nagai wastes no time revealing that he made Satoko and the world she inhabits—including all the trauma she’s experienced thus far—for entertainment value (and to please his editor) leaves her existentially conflicted about helping him. The manga dives headfirst into how messy their whole arrangement is through imaginative panels that take full advantage of using the medium as a canvas to tell its meta story.
Key among its breathtaking panel work are moments where over-detailed background art gives way to rough outlines of crowd shots and characters mixed with a flood of overlapping panels where characters break reality, diving through a maze of memories and graphic novel volumes like ripping portals through a page.
Witness the stunning remaster of PERFECT BLUE, coming to 4K UHD Steelbook for the first time ever. Packed with tons of extras including interviews & lectures from director Satoshi Kon.
But my big “oh shit” moment with Opus is that its manga never reaches a conclusion. You see, the series was halted so Kon could take a hiatus and make Perfect Blue. That hiatus ended up being permanent and Opus was never completed. Worse yet, it ends on a cliffhanger. Like, I’m talking Berserk-level cliffhanger from when Kentaro Miura passed away. Thankfully, there’s a half step toward a happy ending to the shock I felt in real time flipping through the not-climax of Opus. In the greatest bit of posthumous metanarrative writing I’ve ever seen, the folks at Dark Horse were able to acquire an additional rough chapter that Kon worked on for Opus but never officially released and add it to the end of the manga.
While I won’t give away what happens in the additional chapter, I will say that it goes even further beyond how over-the-top meta Opus already was. It had me guffawing and misty-eyed. But more importantly, it cemented Kon’s legacy as an absolute master of his craft.
#Satoshi #Kons #Manga #Deserve #Love #Iconic #AnimeDark Horse,Kodansha,Manga,Satoshi Kon
Whenever folks think of the late Satoshi Kon, the first thing that usually comes to mind…
Witch Hat Atelier has quickly become one of, if not the, must-watch anime of the season. So much so, you can’t fault fans for hitting a common anime adaptation impasse: watching weekly, banking episodes for a finale-day binge, or giving in and reading ahead in Kamome Shirahama‘s beloved manga. Decisions, decisions.
But what if we told you there’s a secret third option—one that scratches the Shirahama itch to bask in her bespoke artistry and trades the unspeakable horrors awaiting Coco for a side-splitting, utterly riotous comedy? Well, good, because we are. That option is her slept-on, pre-Witch Hat Atelier manga, Eniale & Dewiela.
If Witch Hat Atelier is Shirahama in her grand adventure, Dragon Ball Z era, Eniale & Dewiela was her at peak Dr. Slump whimsy.
Set in a world where heaven and hell coexist, the manga follows the unruly yet wildly endearing friendship between Eniale, the angel, and Dewiela, the demon—two gals tasked with collecting souls on Earth, a job they’d much rather procrastinate on by going shopping. Unfortunately for them, celestial bureaucracies run a tight ship, so shirking their duties only piles more work onto them.
So they have their fun wherever they can get it by diving into a generational rivalry of soul-dollect, ducking exorcists, and doing the absolute most in the process to one-up each other. Naturally, their daily angel-devil routine spirals into chaos, ranging from the benign to the apocalyptic, making for a hilarious, short-but-sweet read.
For comparison, Eniale and Dewiela’s dynamic gives Bayonetta and Jeanne a touch of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, but with the debauchery dialed down from a raucous 11 to a mischievous five. In Witch Hat Atelier terms, Eni and Dewi read like the proto-blueprint for Agott’s tsundere bite and Coco’s sheepish naïveté reimagined as a madcap buddy comedy duo. Watching Shirahama remove her limiters and let these two wreak havoc—whether sabotaging each other’s soul quotas or teaming up to do the bare minimum—is a delight. And when they’re not butting heads, they’re simply gals being pals: shopping, scheming, and trying to live their best lives.
What I love most about the manga is that it’s Shirahama fully in her comedic bag, writing slapstick gags with an elasticity and confidence that feel distinctly aged-up, in line with Witch Hat Atelier‘s gentler whimsy. With each chapter, you can feel her stretching, riffing, and letting herself be unserious in ways that WHA‘s tone doesn’t always allow. Coincidentally, the manga also teases her natural aptitude for sapphic-tinged storytelling that WHA fans—especially Arkco-truthers (we see you)—will clock immediately. Shirahama’s genuinely funny here, but she’s also effortlessly flexing her ability to weave emotionally stirring beats into her gag comedy manga.
For readers who adore WHA’s visual splendor, rest assured: Eniale & Dewiela carries the same hallmarks. The panel work is exquisite, the ornate borders feel like thumbing through an ancient tome, and the intricate detailing is as gobsmacking as ever. But here, that craft is in service of pure comedy. Across its three volumes, Shirahama unleashes a cavalcade of supernatural disasters born from the duo’s joint dumbassery—raising hordes of zombies while trying to turn a priest into both an angel and a demon, splitting the sea like Moses to find a missing earring, and firing a sky‑beam of souls straight into the heavens.
And when the manga isn’t serving killer runway fashion, heavenly‑hellish hijinks, or a few sapphic glances, it’s got heart. The standout moment comes in chapter eight, where Dewiela goes from hovering over an old woman like a vulture waiting to collect her soul to befriending her and her “fugly” guard cat. That chapter made me misty-eyed, I’m not gonna lie.
So if you need a quick, delightful read while you deliberate over whether you’re going to stockpile Witch Hat Atelier episodes or are simply craving more of Shirahama’s work (outside her Pokémon card illustrations—she contains multitudes), Eniale & Dewiela is absolutely worth your time.
Witch Hat Atelier has quickly become one of, if not the, must-watch anime of the season. So much so, you can’t fault fans for hitting a common anime adaptation impasse: watching weekly, banking episodes for a finale-day binge, or giving in and reading ahead in Kamome Shirahama‘s beloved manga. Decisions, decisions.
But what if we told you there’s a secret third option—one that scratches the Shirahama itch to bask in her bespoke artistry and trades the unspeakable horrors awaiting Coco for a side-splitting, utterly riotous comedy? Well, good, because we are. That option is her slept-on, pre-Witch Hat Atelier manga, Eniale & Dewiela.
If Witch Hat Atelier is Shirahama in her grand adventure, Dragon Ball Z era, Eniale & Dewiela was her at peak Dr. Slump whimsy.
Set in a world where heaven and hell coexist, the manga follows the unruly yet wildly endearing friendship between Eniale, the angel, and Dewiela, the demon—two gals tasked with collecting souls on Earth, a job they’d much rather procrastinate on by going shopping. Unfortunately for them, celestial bureaucracies run a tight ship, so shirking their duties only piles more work onto them.
So they have their fun wherever they can get it by diving into a generational rivalry of soul-dollect, ducking exorcists, and doing the absolute most in the process to one-up each other. Naturally, their daily angel-devil routine spirals into chaos, ranging from the benign to the apocalyptic, making for a hilarious, short-but-sweet read.
For comparison, Eniale and Dewiela’s dynamic gives Bayonetta and Jeanne a touch of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, but with the debauchery dialed down from a raucous 11 to a mischievous five. In Witch Hat Atelier terms, Eni and Dewi read like the proto-blueprint for Agott’s tsundere bite and Coco’s sheepish naïveté reimagined as a madcap buddy comedy duo. Watching Shirahama remove her limiters and let these two wreak havoc—whether sabotaging each other’s soul quotas or teaming up to do the bare minimum—is a delight. And when they’re not butting heads, they’re simply gals being pals: shopping, scheming, and trying to live their best lives.
What I love most about the manga is that it’s Shirahama fully in her comedic bag, writing slapstick gags with an elasticity and confidence that feel distinctly aged-up, in line with Witch Hat Atelier‘s gentler whimsy. With each chapter, you can feel her stretching, riffing, and letting herself be unserious in ways that WHA‘s tone doesn’t always allow. Coincidentally, the manga also teases her natural aptitude for sapphic-tinged storytelling that WHA fans—especially Arkco-truthers (we see you)—will clock immediately. Shirahama’s genuinely funny here, but she’s also effortlessly flexing her ability to weave emotionally stirring beats into her gag comedy manga.
For readers who adore WHA’s visual splendor, rest assured: Eniale & Dewiela carries the same hallmarks. The panel work is exquisite, the ornate borders feel like thumbing through an ancient tome, and the intricate detailing is as gobsmacking as ever. But here, that craft is in service of pure comedy. Across its three volumes, Shirahama unleashes a cavalcade of supernatural disasters born from the duo’s joint dumbassery—raising hordes of zombies while trying to turn a priest into both an angel and a demon, splitting the sea like Moses to find a missing earring, and firing a sky‑beam of souls straight into the heavens.
And when the manga isn’t serving killer runway fashion, heavenly‑hellish hijinks, or a few sapphic glances, it’s got heart. The standout moment comes in chapter eight, where Dewiela goes from hovering over an old woman like a vulture waiting to collect her soul to befriending her and her “fugly” guard cat. That chapter made me misty-eyed, I’m not gonna lie.
So if you need a quick, delightful read while you deliberate over whether you’re going to stockpile Witch Hat Atelier episodes or are simply craving more of Shirahama’s work (outside her Pokémon card illustrations—she contains multitudes), Eniale & Dewiela is absolutely worth your time.
#Witch #Hat #Kamome #Shirahama #Blessed #Hilarious #Romp #Gals #PalsKamome Shirahama,Manga,Witch Hat Atelier">Before ‘Witch Hat,’ Kamome Shirahama Blessed Us With a Hilarious Romp About Gals Being Pals
Witch Hat Atelier has quickly become one of, if not the, must-watch anime of the season. So much so, you can’t fault fans for hitting a common anime adaptation impasse: watching weekly, banking episodes for a finale-day binge, or giving in and reading ahead in Kamome Shirahama‘s beloved manga. Decisions, decisions.
But what if we told you there’s a secret third option—one that scratches the Shirahama itch to bask in her bespoke artistry and trades the unspeakable horrors awaiting Coco for a side-splitting, utterly riotous comedy? Well, good, because we are. That option is her slept-on, pre-Witch Hat Atelier manga, Eniale & Dewiela.
If Witch Hat Atelier is Shirahama in her grand adventure, Dragon Ball Z era, Eniale & Dewiela was her at peak Dr. Slump whimsy.
Set in a world where heaven and hell coexist, the manga follows the unruly yet wildly endearing friendship between Eniale, the angel, and Dewiela, the demon—two gals tasked with collecting souls on Earth, a job they’d much rather procrastinate on by going shopping. Unfortunately for them, celestial bureaucracies run a tight ship, so shirking their duties only piles more work onto them.
So they have their fun wherever they can get it by diving into a generational rivalry of soul-dollect, ducking exorcists, and doing the absolute most in the process to one-up each other. Naturally, their daily angel-devil routine spirals into chaos, ranging from the benign to the apocalyptic, making for a hilarious, short-but-sweet read.
For comparison, Eniale and Dewiela’s dynamic gives Bayonetta and Jeanne a touch of Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, but with the debauchery dialed down from a raucous 11 to a mischievous five. In Witch Hat Atelier terms, Eni and Dewi read like the proto-blueprint for Agott’s tsundere bite and Coco’s sheepish naïveté reimagined as a madcap buddy comedy duo. Watching Shirahama remove her limiters and let these two wreak havoc—whether sabotaging each other’s soul quotas or teaming up to do the bare minimum—is a delight. And when they’re not butting heads, they’re simply gals being pals: shopping, scheming, and trying to live their best lives.
What I love most about the manga is that it’s Shirahama fully in her comedic bag, writing slapstick gags with an elasticity and confidence that feel distinctly aged-up, in line with Witch Hat Atelier‘s gentler whimsy. With each chapter, you can feel her stretching, riffing, and letting herself be unserious in ways that WHA‘s tone doesn’t always allow. Coincidentally, the manga also teases her natural aptitude for sapphic-tinged storytelling that WHA fans—especially Arkco-truthers (we see you)—will clock immediately. Shirahama’s genuinely funny here, but she’s also effortlessly flexing her ability to weave emotionally stirring beats into her gag comedy manga.
For readers who adore WHA’s visual splendor, rest assured: Eniale & Dewiela carries the same hallmarks. The panel work is exquisite, the ornate borders feel like thumbing through an ancient tome, and the intricate detailing is as gobsmacking as ever. But here, that craft is in service of pure comedy. Across its three volumes, Shirahama unleashes a cavalcade of supernatural disasters born from the duo’s joint dumbassery—raising hordes of zombies while trying to turn a priest into both an angel and a demon, splitting the sea like Moses to find a missing earring, and firing a sky‑beam of souls straight into the heavens.
And when the manga isn’t serving killer runway fashion, heavenly‑hellish hijinks, or a few sapphic glances, it’s got heart. The standout moment comes in chapter eight, where Dewiela goes from hovering over an old woman like a vulture waiting to collect her soul to befriending her and her “fugly” guard cat. That chapter made me misty-eyed, I’m not gonna lie.
So if you need a quick, delightful read while you deliberate over whether you’re going to stockpile Witch Hat Atelier episodes or are simply craving more of Shirahama’s work (outside her Pokémon card illustrations—she contains multitudes), Eniale & Dewiela is absolutely worth your time.
![‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season. Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital! Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026 So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media](https://i2.wp.com/gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/Alice-in-Borderland-1280x853.jpg?ssl=1 "‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season. Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital! Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026 So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media")
![‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season. Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital! Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026 So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media](https://gizmodo.com/app/uploads/2026/07/Alice-in-Borderland-1280x853.jpg "‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.
The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season. Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital! Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026 So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.
Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:
It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who. #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media")
