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| “ | I'm gonna do it for everyone. I'm gonna find the mastermind of this sick game. And get this world back to the way it was. I swear it. | „ |
| ~ Arisu's motivation |
Ryōhei Arisu is the main protagonist of the Netflix show Alice in Borderland, based on the manga of the same name. In the TV series, Arisu is a jobless young adult who usually spends his time playing video games and hanging out with his best friends, Daikichi Karube and Chōta Segawa, whether it be to going to the bar or the mall.
He is a reference to Alice Liddell from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
He was voiced by Yoshimasa Hosoya in the Japanese version of the 2014-2015 OVA adaptation and by Jeremy Gee in the English version. In the TV series, he is portrayed by Kento Yamazaki and voiced by Daniel Rindress-Kay in English.
Personality[]
Although Arisu is lazy and mostly spends his time playing video games, he is a very good-hearted, talented, intelligent, optimistic, and ultimately selfless person as shown in the game of tag when he warns everyone where the tagger is and what their weaknesses are. He seems to have an instinct of working together with people, which could be argued is also a flaw as he is betrayed by Chishiya when he tricked Arisu into helping him conspire against the Beach Executives. More proof of his selflessness also lies in trying to get himself killed for one of his friends in the Seven of Hearts game. He ends up finding solutions for almost every game he plays in the Borderlands, his knowledge of geometry and cars helping him and his friends to win the Three of Clubs game, and his knowledge of probability enabling him and his Beach peers to win the Four of Diamonds game.
Biography[]
Season 1[]
We first see Arisu in his room playing a first person shooter until his Brother Hajime walks in and scolds him for ditching another interview that he set up for Arisu. What really sets Arisu off is when he is called a "parasite" by his brother and storms out of the house, but before Arisu leaves his brother briefly laments about the past.
Once Arisu leaves his house he starts texting his friends Karube and Chōta to meet up, and planning on what they're going to do in their spare time. After staring at the crowded centre of Tokyo, Karube picks up and starts carrying Arisu across the streets with Chōta filming the two as they're cheering on carefree. This is until a ruckess occurs and the three boys run from the police and hide in the same stall together. As it seems like the police are about to find them, all of the electricity goes out and they are transported into the Borderlands.
First, the three friends roam the deserted city and are ecstatic from being alone, but they soon come across their first game, the Three of Clubs, and they decide to play it out of curiosity. Here they meet Saori Shibuki and, thanks to Arisu’s reasoning and despite everyone’s fear of dying, they manage to win the game. They soon learn that to survive in the Borderlands, they need to participate in games and win them in order to extend their visa. However, Chota had his leg burned in the previous game and is forced to remain with Shibuki while Arisu and Karube take part in the Five of Spades game. Here they meet Chishiya, Aguni and Usagi for the first time and they all have to fight a “tagger” who is none other than a horse-headed shooter. Aguni and Karube manage to overpower Horse Head while Arisu and Usagi press the hidden button that they had to find to clear the game. On a radio pertaining to the late companion of Aguni, Karube hears about a Beach where survivors gathered and Arisu plans to investigate.
Since the visa of Chota and Shibuki is coming to an end, Arisu and Karube decide to play a game with them and they come across the Seven of Hearts game. It is a hide and seek game where a player designated as the wolf has to hide, while the three other players (the sheep) try to find him to become the wolf themselves. At the end of it, only the wolf survives. All the players can communicate through the device connected to them. The players’ survival instinct first pushes them to fight each other and Arisu eventually manages to run away and hide as the wolf in an attempt to find a way to save everyone. As a desperate Arisu understands that he cannot prevent his friends from dying, Karube and Chota accept their fate and encourage Arisu to keep on living. Arisu tries to find his friends and helplessly witnesses Karube’s death, winning the game but losing his companions.
Arisu remains depressed for several days until he meets Usagi in the streets who decides to take him under her wing. When his visa is coming to an end, he finally pulls himself together and participates in the Four of Clubs game with Usagi, which they narrowly clear.
After that, they find the Beach but are captured as they try to spy on some members. Hatter, the leader of the Beach, tells them that he is after all the cards (except the face cards) and that he wants Arisu and Usagi to help them to find the few remaining ones. Arisu makes a good impression to the Beach high-ranking members, especially by winning the Four of Diamonds game thanks to his wits, but he is despised by Aguni, who turns out to be the leader of the Militant Core, the armed forces of the Beach. After Hatter dies and Aguni takes over the Beach, Arisu meets again with Chishiya, who elaborates a plan to steal the cards under the idea that only the person possessing all the cards will be able to go back to the real world. Arisu agrees to help him and breaks into Aguni’s room, but his attempt at opening the safe containing the cards fails and he is caught red-handed, tied up and tortured by the Militant Core, with Chishiya revealing that he was merely using him as a pawn.
During the chaos of the Ten of Hearts game, Arisu is left alone in a room from which he tries to escape before he is rescued by Usagi. After a moment of reflection, he concludes that the witch who killed Momoka is Momoka herself and he confronts Aguni about the massacre of the Beach people. Aguni beats him up but Arisu reveals to him that he knows that he was Hatter’s best friend, that he killed him and that he decided to put an end to the Beach because of what it turned Hatter into. When Niragi comes back with burns all over his body from his fight against Chishiya and threatens to kill everyone, Aguni sacrifices himself to throw him into the fire. The remaining Beach members then burn Momoka’s body and clear the game, earning the one missing card.
After discovering a video of Momoka and Asahi meeting with the organizers of the games in a subway station, Arisu and Usagi go and investigate the place where they are joined by Chishiya and Kuina. They find out that everyone there was murdered and soon, all the screens show an announcement by Mira Kano, one of the former high-ranking members from the Beach, saying that the next stage of the games will start, this time consisting only in the face cards.
Season 2[]
Arisu, Usagi, Kuina and Chishiya are first seen waiting in the middle of the road for the King of Spades game to start. They see Beach people approaching in cars and getting off, and suddenly the game starts with the King of Spades shooting at and killing everyone he sees. Chaos ensues as Arisu runs away terrified, until he takes cover with Usagi, Kuina and Chishiya. When Ann and Tatta arrive in a car, they get in and drive away at high speed, but they are separated from Chishiya. After a rather long chase, they manage to shake the King off and hide, even though they also lose Ann on the way.
While Arisu and Usagi are looking for food, they play the customer and the saleswoman and Arisu recalls shopping and eating with his friends, prompting him to do everything he can to go back to the real world. Yet Usagi expresses her doubts about wanting to go back to a cruel world, and when Arisu tells her he understands her, she pushes him away by saying he actually does not and she becomes cold towards him.
Arisu decides to play other games to avoid the King of Spades for the moment. He, Usagi, Kuina and Tatta go to the King of Clubs venue where they meet again with a severely burned and sick Niragi. They accept to play the game with him and confront the King of Clubs, Kyuma, with his team. The game quickly turns in favor of Arisu’s team, but Kyuma’s team turns the tables by sacrificing one of their members to earn a massive amount of points, a strategy so extreme that it was completely unexpected. The players are first distraught, with Tatta feeling guilty for the death of Kyuma’s crewmate and Niragi going off at him for not defending their base properly. Arisu then has the idea of attacking the enemy base while benefiting from the electrical shock provided by the inactive bracelets, in order to trick and incapacitate the opponents. It works but not enough to take back the advantage, so Arisu’s team starts looking for bonus points hidden in the game arena. However, Kyuma’s team is faster and earns all the points, and Kyuma tells Arisu that he wants him to show him what he got. Convinced that they are going to die, Arisu and his teammates lose faith and idly wait for the end of the game, except for Usagi who manages to find enough points to reduce the gap to 500, and Niragi who decides to sexually assault Usagi as a last act before death. Arisu arrives in time and knocks him off before bringing an unconscious Usagi back to the base, where he notices that Tatta is gone. When he hears a clang in the distance, he follows the sound and sees Tatta crushing his forearm with a container’s door in order to take off his bracelet so that Arisu can trick the opponents by having as many points as two players by himself. With Arisu’s help, Tatta finally succeeds and starts bleeding out while Arisu runs to find Kyuma with the two bracelets, with barely more than five minutes remaining before the end of the game. By seemingly admitting his defeat, Arisu manages to convince Kyuma to shake hands, which activates the bracelets and, unexpectedly to Kyuma, gives the advantage to the players. Kyuma accepts his defeat and congratulates Arisu, telling him to live his life to the fullest and claiming that they are indeed friends before being shot down by the laser along with his teammates.
After the game has ended, Arisu rushes to find that Tatta had died from his bleeding and his companions bury him. Niragi leaves the group and Kuina goes to look for Ann and Chishiya. Arisu and Usagi, left alone and having made up for their past quarrel, hunt together but fail to catch anything. They arrive in a survivor camp where everyone was killed and find a man who is still conscious but is on the edge of death. He tells them to take a look at the film and Arisu and Usagi get into his truck where they find various shootings from the Borderlands. One especially is about a woman from the survivor camp describing the “fireworks” that a lot of people apparently saw before entering the Borderlands. She claims to remember exactly what happened but as she is about to speak, the King of Spades arrives and shoots her in the head, resulting in the massacre of the survivors. Hearing the sound of a blimp, Arisu and Usagi realize that the King of Spades is approaching so they run away in the forest. The King of Spades begins to chase them and shoots at them, forcing them to take separate paths. Arisu manages to flee from the King but he is knocked unconscious when he runs into an arrow shot in a tree just in front of him. He wakes up at night in front of a young woman with a bow and a Flex-Foot Cheetah, named Akane Heiya. She tells him that she is with someone who knows him, and that someone turns out to be Aguni, who survived the fire at the Beach just like Niragi.
Aguni tells Arisu that he plans to kill the King of Spades and asks for Arisu’s help to trap him. Arisu accepts and is given a rifle by Aguni to stand guard and wait for the King in order to shoot him dead when he shows up, actually serving as a decoy. After a chaotic encounter with the King during which Arisu is almost killed, Arisu falls from a cliff into a lake. He swims out and, alone and separated from Aguni and Akane, he starts looking out for Usagi.
He finally finds her waiting for the Queen of Spades game to start alongside a little boy. During the game, he decides to help Usagi to protect the boy and is one of the only players, alongside Usagi, to never be tagged by the opposing team. After Usagi manages to convince the other players to fight for their freedom and to go back to the real world, instead of bowing to the Queen of Spades, they both successfully help everyone win the game.
After that they find the destroyed stadium where Akane had her first game and decide to investigate. They find hot springs inside and Arisu uses the opportunity to take a bath, to which Usagi, reluctant at first, agrees. As they bathe themselves, they see elephants living in the ruins of the game arena and Arisu considers it as a sign of hope. Soon after, Arisu and Usagi share their first kiss.
Arisu is later seen exploring the abandoned streets of Tokyo, where he finds a rifle. He meets again with Chishiya who is quickly non-fatally shot by Niragi. The latter wants to play a game between the three of them where the goal is to be the last one standing. Chishiya is up for it but Arisu refuses to shoot at them. Hearing the ruckus, Usagi intervenes and Niragi decides to aim for her. In order to save her, Arisu shoots Niragi in the belly but not before he takes a shot at Usagi. However, Chishiya takes the blow instead.
As Chishiya and Niragi start bleeding out, the King of Spades suddenly approaches, chasing many survivors who try to escape, including Kuina and Ann. Arisu and Usagi hide Chishiya and Niragi under cars and meet up with the other girls. After witnessing a failed attempt on the King’s life and barely evading his hits, the group is saved by Aguni and Akane. Aguni decides to bait the King, who had removed his facemask and cloak by the time, and asks Arisu to trap him in the pharmacy nearby. While his companions fight and are nearly killed by the King, Arisu empties bottles to fill the store with explosive gas, planning to use Chishiya’s handmade grenade to blow the King up. After the King has beaten all of Arisu’s friends, the latter tricks him into following him to the pharmacy. Sensing that something is wrong, the King stops before the door but is tackled inside by Aguni. Arisu and Aguni jump out of the pharmacy through the glass pane and blow the whole store up, fatally wounding the King of Spades. As Aguni finishes him off, Arisu rushes to Usagi’s side and, upon seeing that she cannot walk because of her stabbed thighs, he supports her to walk to the last game, the Queen of Hearts game.
Mira, the Queen of Hearts, welcomes Arisu and Usagi and treats them to a game of croquet. To clear the game, all they have to do is play three games, no matter if they win or lose. In the middle of the second game, Arisu finds suspicious that the game is going so well. Once they are done with the first two games, the Queen of Hearts offers Arisu and Usagi a cup of tea. She asks them if they want to know the truth about the Borderlands and she starts spewing lies to play with their mind: she pretends that they are living in the future, in a simulation recreating the world from the past to find back feelings that humankind had long lost; then that they are participating in a TV show to entertain the rich; finally, that they were put in the Borderlands by aliens who invaded Earth. Fed up with her lies, Arisu points his rifle at her, asking her to tell the truth once and for all. The Queen then starts tricking him into believing that every event that took place in the Borderlands was created by his own mind. She manages to convince him that she is his psychiatrist and that he is a patient in a mental ward who was admitted after he was traumatized by his friends Karube and Chota being run over by a car in one of the first scenes of the series. Arisu falls for her trap and loses all will to live, and would have abandoned the game if not for Usagi to encourage him to go back home in the same way he did her. She goes as far as cutting her own wrist to make him snap out of the Queen’s mind game, despite her already bleeding out. They both admit their love to each other and Arisu insists on finishing the game. The Queen, moved by their determination, agrees to do so. Once the game is finally cleared, the Queen tells Arisu that he will discover the truth soon, that he will be given a choice and that life is like a game that he should try to enjoy. Soon after, she is shot down by the laser and fireworks are fired in the sky, while the game announcer’s voice asks the surviving players if they want to become citizens of the Borderlands or not. Arisu and Usagi both reject the proposition.
Arisu wakes up in a bar where the barman is Karube. He also notices Chota sitting next to him. The two of them joke about Arisu’s nose hair before Karube declares that they want him to live his life to the fullest so that their sacrifice is not vain, to which Arisu promises.
It is finally explained that on the day Arisu entered the Borderlands, a meteor actually exploded over Tokyo, destroying every building and killing most people in the area. Those who escaped from the Borderlands are in fact those who survived the explosion. Arisu wakes up in a hospital bed next to his brother, who tells him not to feel guilty for his friends’ death, that his heart stopped for a full minute before beating again and that their father cried as much as he did when their mother died. He later goes to a vending machine and sees Usagi buying something and forgetting her change. He catches up to her and gives it to her, the two of them not recognizing one another. Yet Arisu asks her if they have ever met, prompting Usagi to wonder if he is hitting on her. Arisu, at first taken aback, asks her if he would be right to do so. Usagi reassures him that they did meet and Arisu asks her if she wants to go on a walk with him, to which she complies.
Abilities[]
- Genius Intellect: Arisu has a very logical and analytical mind. He is often the one setting up strategies to beat the games. In the Four of Clubs game, he deduces before it is too late that the goal of the game was not to rush to the end of the tunnel but rather to hide and wait in the bus. In the Four of Diamonds game, he finds a way to identify the correct switch from the heat emitted by the light bulb, essentially saving his fellow players.
- Sharp Memory: Arisu has a good memory, being able to remember small details that enable him to find clues to beat the various games. During the Three of Clubs game (his first game), he recalled the size and structure of the building in which the game was taking place, from which he inferred the right path to the exit.
- Social Understanding: Arisu has good emotional intelligence and understands how people think and act. He often puts himself in the place of his opponents, wondering what he would do if he was the traitor during the Ten of Hearts game, or if he was Kyuma during the King of Clubs game. This helped him to find ways to win difficult games and to ultimately survive.
- Indomitable Will: Arisu is an optimistic and strong-willed individual who is adamant about doing everything he can to beat the games and go back to the real world. During the Seven of Hearts game, he spends most of the game trying to find a solution to take off his deadly helmet, even though he fails at the end. During the Queen of Spades game, he is the only one, alongside Usagi, who insists on fighting the Queen to beat the game once and for all. Although he almost gives up in the Queen of Hearts game, he finally pulls himself together and decides to play it until the end.
- Good Physical Condition: Despite being a lazy gamer, Arisu has shown that he was an efficient runner in various games, including the Four of Clubs, the King of Clubs and the King of Spades game. He is able to react fast in front of danger, being quick enough to find shelter when he is being shot at for example. Even though he is not a particularly good fighter compared to most of his companions, he survived every physical game he took part in.
Trivia[]
- In the TV series, Arisu uses the name "Alice" in video games. This is seen when he is playing a shooting game and the screen of the game displays "Player: Alice".
External Links[]
- Ryōhei Arisu on the Guile Heroes Wiki
- Ryōhei Arisu (Manga) on the Alice In Borderland Wiki
- Ryōhei Arisu (Anime) on the Alice in Borderland Wiki
- Ryōhei Arisu (Netflix) on the Alice in Borderland Wiki
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 Heroes
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Ryōhei Arisu | Yuzuha Usagi | Daikichi Karube | Chōta Segawa | Saori Shibuki | Shuntarō Chishiya | Hikari Kuina | Rizuna An | Kodai Tatta | Asahi Kujo | Morizono Aguni | Akane Heiya | Hayato Dōdō | Yūji Mahiru | ||