Kotaro Lives Alone – Episode 4

 

Kotaro visits his friend Kakeru at home and meets his housekeeper (Ms. Yoshida) who takes care of Kakeru and does the cleaning and chores. This housekeeper does everything for Kakeru. Kotaro tries to teach his fiend how to be more independent and how to do things for himself. In the first lesson, Kotaro teaches Kakeru how to catch crayfish from a pond and then they return to Kotaro’s apartment to cook miso soup.

Later Kotaro asks Karino to teach him the rules of dodgeball. However, Kotaro fails to dodge and gets hit with the ball most of the time. He feels that missing the ball is akin to ignoring one’s friend. In the second half of the episode Kotaro’s friends celebrate his birthday. As usual, Kotaro acts oddly. He spends many days practicing ways to increase his lung capacity because he wants to ensure that he blows out all of his birthday candles with one blow. In fact, he runs way from his birthday party at home so that he can take his cake to share with all his friends. These friends turn out to be stray cats in the park. He successfully blows out all the candles in one try.

Next, his friend Takuya drops by to encourage Kotaro to run away with him, because Takuya thinks his mother nags him too much. They don’t actually run away and just simply spend the day visiting a convenience store and talking at the playground. Takuya believes that running away will make his parents appreciate him more. Kotaro has no parents and so he tells Takuya how much he envies Takuya’s life. He explains to him that he doesn’t even have anyone at his house to miss him. Takuya quickly runs away to return home. Then Karino drops by to say how angry his was that he didn’t know where Kotaro was all day. So in the end Kotaro does have friends who care about him.

There were may words that I understood in this episode. I understood almost all of Kotaro’s self-introduction to Kakeru’s housekeeper e.g. “はじめましてであ”. Also when talking about things that were currently happening Kotaro used the word “今” a lot. Also I recognized the Katakana for cake when the characters were at Kotaro’s birthday party:　“ケーキ”

Kotaro Lives Alone – Episode 3

 

At the beginning of the episode, there is a salesperson standing on the sidewalk handing out free balloons. Kotaro is concerned that the salesperson may fly away because he has so many balloons. To get pass the one-person-one balloon rule, Kotaro returns to this salesperson several times until he acquires four balloons which his asks Karino to draw faces on. Kotaro names the balloons father, mother, little brother and little sister. In a very melancholy scene, the salesperson who sold him the balloons watches him play by himself in a playground with these four balloons tied to his belt.

Later, Karino meets with his editor about the progress of his Manga series. Kotaro tags along and defends Karino against the harsh criticism of his boss. Kotaro later asks another neighbor, Isamu, to help him shop for fashionable attire at the mall. Kotaro believes wearing fashionable clothes will make him popular with everyone and help him to have more friends. Later he visits Aktomo at the club where she works because Karino tells him that’s the best way to spend time with her. He learns that she may have to move out of the apartment building and he really wants her to stay.

In this episode we also see flashbacks to Kotaro’s traumatic upbringing. It seems as though his father was violent with him. So this helps explains why he never wants his photo taken because he does not want his father to find him. Also a new character is introduced, Ayano Kobayashi. She is a lawyer who is supposed to visit Kotaro weekly to give him money from his mother’s life insurance.

Kotaro Lives Alone – Episode 2

 

In the second episode we learn why Kotaro speaks like he is so much older. He is mimicking the speech pattern of a cartoon character Tonosaman. Also, Kotaro starts acting very weird because the public bathhouse that he likes to frequent is closed. As a result, he goes out of his way to avoid his neighbors and others because he is fanatically concerned about hygiene. Karino and Aktomo try to help him overcome his worries. Later Kotaro goes to enroll himself in school.  During the lunch hour he spends his time showing off his Bento lunch meal to other students. I watched the episode several times but couldn’t really figure out what the moral was, because so many different things were going on.

Once again, there was a lot of familiar dialogue. I recognized the kanji for child (子). Also whole phrases are now more comprehensible to me. For example, when Karino was running to join Kotaro at school I recognized this phrase だから　来なくてよいと言っているwhen Kotaro was telling Karino that he didn’t need to come. I didn’t understand all the grammar, but the context clues helped.

Kotaro Lives Alone - Episode 1

In the first episode we are introduced to a cute, but strange four-year old boy named Kotaro who has recently moved into an apartment complex. As a gesture of kindness, he delivers boxes of tissues to his new neighbors. One neighbor, Shin Karino, lives next door and is a struggling manga artist. Another is Matshuki Aktomo, who I believe is a waitress, but I’m not sure. What I do know is that she hates her job and is dealing with personal demons. 

Karino accompanies Kotaro on his errands, because he is worried that a crazed predator might try to kidnap a 4-year-old boy walking around the city alone. By the end of the episode Karino is pleased that he can finally make Kotaro smile because of the clever Manga cartoons that Karino draws of Kotaro’s bandages.

I recognized quite a lot of the vocabulary in this episode. In the Japanese subtitles, I recognized the character for parents 親| Karino asked for Kotaro’s assistance using the word ちょうと| Many characters explained their actions using the connecting phrase  から| When discussing his parents Kotaro used the words for mother はは and father　ちち 

Alice in Borderland - Episode 8

 

In the Season 1 finale, the show moves back and forth between the past and the present. In the opening scenes, we see Momoka (the young woman whose murder everyone was trying to solve in Episode 7) as a schoolgirl walking around an empty city. She is with her friend Asahi. They are filming themselves as they try to understand what’s going on. We then return to the present where everything is still chaotic at the hotel. After Arisu is escorted down to the lobby, he faces off against Aguni who beats him very badly. But Aguni finally admits to murdering his best friend “The Hatter” out of self-defense. The Hatter was growing increasingly violent and power-hungry. But in regard to the murder of Momoka, it is revealed that she committed suicide. So they throw her body on the flames to win the game.

After everyone stumbles out of the hotel, shocked by what has occurred, Usagi and Arisu watch the videos shot by Momoka and her friend Asahi. From the video, we learn that those two characters had a very special role in the game. They were “dealers” who helped to organize the game itself. They worked for a shadowy group of people called the Gamemasters. But in another surprising turn of events, when they finally track down these people in their underground bunker, Usagi and Arisu are shocked to see that for some reason they have all been executed. Chishiya and Kuina also find their way to the same place. Together they watch as a woman appears on a TV screen in the room to describe a new set of games. They walk out onto the empty streets and see large airships floating over the city skyline carrying huge playing cards. Then the episode ends on this dramatic note.

In this episode, I watched it with Japanese subtitles and picked up on a lot of Katakana. For example, when Asahi admitted to everyone she was a dealer she made a statement that I understood entirely: “私は　このゲームのデイーラー！”

Alice in Borderland - Episode 7

 

Episode seven is the penultimate episode of the series and in this episode the occupants of the hotel have to undertake an investigation to find out who murdered a young woman named Momoka and then burn that person alive in a fire pit which is called “The Fire of Judgement”. It’s really quite a gruesome murder, because she was stabbed to death. Also, for most of the episode her body is splayed out in the hotel lobby while everyone moves around her. While I like the show overall, sometimes it’s moments such as these which remind me of just how grisly it is.

The rules are that the players have to work together to find “the witch”. They have only two hours to do so. Aguni, the new leader, and his henchmen build the fire, but then they go crazy with bloodlust and start throwing just about everyone into the fire in order to catch the killer and get the final card. Many of the occupants of the hotel are arbitrarily and viciously murdered. While all of this is going on, Usagi finds a way to rescue Arisu from his confinement in the hotel room, Ann discovers that the Hatter was actually murdered and not really killed in a game and Kuina and Chishiya get into fights with other players. But as always, in the end, it is Arisu who figures out the identity of the real killer…..

Words/phrases that I recognized:  ここまでして: said by Chishiya to Kuina as they hide out in the security room, so that they won’t get killed |  でも、うちは：said by Kuina while taunting the person she’s about the fight

Alice in Borderland - Episode 6

 

Episode six is a very exciting episode because of the many surprises that occur. Arisu and Usagi sneak around “The Beach” complex to learn more about the place. However, they make a grisly discovery by finding a large container full of dead and rotting bodies. It is a shocking sight. Apparently, on “The Beach” traitors are killed and dumped. Fellow players Chishiya and Kuina notice Arisu’s disgust at this discovery and leverages his hatred and fear of The Beach to convince him to work with them to steal the Hatter’s (the leader of the Beach) deck of cards. 

Things get a lot more complicated when it’s revealed that the Hatter has been killed. According to his followers, he went to play in a game to extend his time and ended up dying. The captain of the violent gang who polices The Beach is voted in as leader. The vote is not fair, because he threatens everyone and forces them to vote for him. Arisu, Kuina and Chishiya have an even greater incentive to steal the deck of cards from the new volatile new leader.

While Aguni holds a general meeting in the hotel lobby to announce his new regime, Arisu tries to steal the deck of cards. However, it turns out the Kuina and Chishiya were just using him as a decoy, and he is eventually captured, assaulted, and tied up in a hotel room. He is in grave danger of dying because the time on his visa runs out a midnight, in which case, his captors don’t actually have to kill him they can just wait for the game to kill Arisu due to his visa being expired because he can’t play in new games. 

However, everyone’s plans fall into disarray when the entire hotel complex itself becomes a game arena. They all now will be forced to play in a game called “Witch Hunt” in the next episode.

Words/phrases that I recognized:  じゃあ、: when Kuina and Chihiya are talking to each other over walkie talkiesどこにあるん？ : When they are asking about the location of the deck of cards.