Introduction: Welcome to the Borderland
Imagine stepping out of a subway station into a version of Tokyo that is completely, eerily empty. This is the nightmare that jobless gamer Arisu and his two best friends, Karube and Chōta, find themselves in. Their brief moment of freedom from societal pressures quickly turns to terror when a city-wide screen announces a simple, chilling message: the game is about to begin.
Alice in Borderland is a relentless story of survival, strategy, and psychological torment. If you've just finished the series and are trying to piece together all the games, betrayals, and the shocking final reveal, you've come to the right place. This is the complete plot and ending, explained.
Part 1: The Games Begin
The First Game: "Life or Death" - Three of Clubs
Forced by a deadly laser grid to participate, Arisu, his friends, and two strangers—a pragmatic woman named Shibuki and a high school girl—find themselves in their first game. The game is deceptively simple: choose one of two doors, "Life" or "Death," within a time limit to avoid being burned alive. After the high school girl dies choosing the "Life" door, Arisu’s genius for puzzles and observation kicks in. He realizes the building's layout is the key, using his spatial awareness to deduce the one safe path through a series of identical rooms. They barely survive, with Chōta suffering a severe burn on his leg. Upon completion, they receive a "three-day visa"—a grace period from playing. They also learn a horrifying truth: when a player's visa expires, they are executed by a laser from the sky. Survival means constantly playing and winning more time.
Understanding the Rules
A veteran player explains that the playing cards collected after each game signify the type and difficulty.Clubs (♣️): Team-based games.
Diamonds (♦️): Games of intelligence and wits.
Spades (♠️): Games of physical strength and endurance.
Hearts (♥️): The most dreaded—games of psychological manipulation and betrayal.
The number on the card indicates the difficulty level.
The Game of "Tag" - Five of Spades
With Chōta injured, Arisu and Karube enter the next game alone to gain experience. The game is "Tag," set in a residential complex. The players must find a "safe zone" hidden in one of the apartments within 20 minutes while being hunted by a ruthless chaser in a horse mask. Here, they meet several new players, including the strong and stoic Aguni and the agile mountain climber, Usagi.
Arisu realizes the chaser's mask limits their vision and devises a plan for the players to work together by sharing the chaser's location. In the game's climax, Arisu deduces the safe zone's location is a room that requires two people to press buttons simultaneously to stop the timer. He and Usagi succeed at the last second. After the game, they discover the chasers are just other players who lost, forced into this role by explosive collars. Karube also finds a walkie-talkie on a fallen player that mentions a place of hope: "the Beach."
Part 2: The Seven of Hearts - A Game of Ultimate Betrayal
With Shibuki's and Chōta's visas expiring, the four friends are forced to enter a game together. It's a seven of hearts game, the most difficult they've faced. The game is "Hide and Seek."
One player is designated the "Wolf," and the other three are "Sheep." The Wolf wins and survives; the Sheep are eliminated. The role of Wolf is passed to whoever makes eye contact with the current Wolf.
The game is designed to shatter their friendship.
It quickly devolves into a desperate scramble of hiding and chasing as the role of Wolf jumps between them. Arisu, heartbroken by the conflict, decides to sacrifice himself for his friends. But Karube and Chōta, hiding from him, make the same decision. In their final moments, they tell Arisu to live on, and as the timer hits zero, Karube, Chōta, and Shibuki are eliminated, leaving Arisu as the sole, devastated survivor.
Part 3: The Search for the Beach
Grief-stricken and broken, Arisu is found by Usagi, who nurses him back to health and gives him a reason to live. They decide to find the Beach, hoping it holds the answers to this world.
Their journey leads them to a "Distance" game (four of clubs), where the goal is to "reach the finish line." Thinking it's a simple marathon, they run for miles, but Arisu realizes the bus they started in was the finish line. They had to stay put.
He races back on a motorcycle to save an injured player, and they all survive the flash flood that was the game's true danger.
Following a clue, Arisu and Usagi finally locate the Beach: a utopian-like hotel resort filled with players.
Part 4: Life and Death at The Beach
The Beach is led by the charismatic and eccentric "Hatter." He claims that collecting a full deck of 52 playing cards is the only way to return to the real world. The Beach operates on a strict hierarchy where players who contribute cards gain rank. However, it's a fractured society, split between Hatter's idealists and Aguni's militant "enforcers."
Arisu is introduced to Chishiya, a brilliant and mysterious player who proposes a plan to steal the collected cards. The plan is a setup; Chishiya betrays Arisu to gain Aguni's trust, and Arisu and Usagi are captured.
The "Witch Hunt" - Ten of Hearts
Just as Arisu is left to die, the entire Beach is turned into a game arena for the Ten of Hearts. One of the players has been murdered, and the "Witch" responsible is hiding among them. They have two hours to find the Witch and burn them on a bonfire to win.
Chaos erupts.
Aguni and his militants begin executing players to force a confession. Usagi rescues Arisu, who, despite his experience with Hearts games, must now solve a mystery amidst a massacre.
Through flashbacks, we learn the truth: Hatter had become a tyrant, and his best friend Aguni was forced to kill him to stop his madness. Riddled with guilt, Aguni tries to take the fall, claiming he is the Witch so everyone will be killed with him. But Arisu deduces the truth: the "Witch" was the victim herself, Momoka, who committed suicide because she was a "dealer" helping the organizers run the games and could no longer bear the guilt. The game masters simply used her death as a premise for their deadliest game yet.
Part 5: Stage Two - The Face Card Games
After the Beach burns, the players learn they have only completed the numbered cards. Now, they must face the citizens of the Borderland in the face card games. - King of Spades (♠️): A ruthless survival game where a heavily armed boss hunts players across the entire city. He is seemingly invincible.
- King of Clubs (♣️): "Osmosis," a complex team game of scoring points. Arisu's team wins through a clever sacrifice play.
- Jack of Hearts (♥️): "Solitary Confinement," a psychological game of trust and deception where Chishiya brilliantly outsmarts the Jack, who was hiding among the players.
- Queen of Spades (♠️): "Checkmate," a game where Usagi's empathy convinces other players to join her side, leading to a win against the Queen.
- King of Diamonds (♦️): A mathematical game of logic where Chishiya forces the King, a former lawyer, into a moral crisis, causing him to concede defeat.
The surviving players—Arisu, Usagi, Chishiya, Aguni, and others—finally band together and devise a plan to ambush and defeat the formidable King of Spades in a massive, coordinated attack.
The Final Game and Ending Explained
With all other face cards defeated, Arisu and Usagi face the final boss: Mira, the Queen of Hearts. The final game is shockingly simple: three rounds of croquet. The true game, however, is psychological.
Mira attempts to break Arisu's will by feeding him lies about the nature of their world—that it's a VR simulation, an alien experiment, or, most cruelly, a hallucination born from trauma after his friends died in a real-world traffic accident.
Arisu is nearly lost in a vision of himself in a psychiatric hospital, with Mira as his doctor. But his bond with Usagi grounds him, pulling him back to reality. He refuses to give up.
Moved by his resolve, Mira concedes the game of croquet and is eliminated.
The Final Choice and the Real World
With all games completed, a voice offers the survivors a choice: remain in the Borderland as "citizens" or return. Arisu, Usagi, and most of the others choose to refuse.
Arisu wakes up in a hospital. The truth is revealed: a massive meteorite struck Tokyo. The moment he and his friends were messing around in Shibuya was the moment of impact. Everyone who was in the Borderland was a victim of the disaster, their hearts having stopped for exactly one minute—the "one minute" they spent in this other world, which felt like months. The Borderland was a form of purgatory, a place between life and death, where their will to live was tested.
In the hospital, Arisu meets Usagi. Neither has any memory of their time together, but they feel an inexplicable connection. As they decide to take a walk, a gentle breeze blows across a deck of playing cards on a nearby table, leaving only one card behind: the Joker.
Conclusion: The Joker
The ending confirms that the harrowing events were a shared near-death experience, a battle for survival fought on a spiritual plane. While the heroes have returned, changed by a journey they can't remember, the final shot of the Joker card suggests that the game may not be truly over, leaving the door open for a new, mysterious challenge.
What did you think of the ending? And what do you think the Joker card signifies? Let me know your theories in the comments below!
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