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！”