imawa no kuni no alice (Alice in Borderlands) - Asou Haro

Status: Ongoing

Genre: shounen, action, horror, mystery, psychological

Arisu (Alice) Ryouhei, a high school student, was hanging out with his friends Karube and Chota one late night when suddenly they saw fireworks in the sky. They woke up in a strange world called "Imawa no Kuni" (Borderlands). Everyone transported into borderlands have to participate in deadly games or die. If you're familiar with survival, and/or deadly game series like Battle Royale or kamisama no iu toori, you know you're in for lots of deaths, blood / gore, and sexiness, lol

Apart from Arisu a lot of characters are going to die anyway, so I won't bother doing character introductions. Arisu is a guy who's quite detached from his surroundings: he doesn't think much about his future, doesn't feel much about other people (except for his friends). However, it turns out he has great instinct and analytical skills required to survive and win imawa no kuni games.

Imawa no kuni

Imawa no kuni games are designed like trump cards: clover = physical, diamond = strategy, heart = psychological, spade = random (?? I think, correct me if I'm wrong). The number represents the difficulty of the game; the higher the number, the more difficult it will be.

If a player clears a game, the number of the trump card obtained will be converted into visa, the number of the card equals to the number of the days given. If the player's visa is expired, they will be killed automatically. So, to keep surviving players have to keep playing the games and extend their visa. 

I've read way ahead of the available english translations. So read this part at your own risk (SPOILERS ALERT)

It turns out, the players are not the only ones on Imawa no kuni; there are dealers as well. Dealer's job is to set up the game so that all the players get killed. If player(s) can clear the game, the dealer will be eliminated instead. After the players completed all the numbered cards, the game moved on to the suits, where players play against the Jacks, Queens, and Kings.. who were also players in the past.

What I like:

• The mistery. What exactly is imawa no kuni? What is the purpose of people being brought there? Who will survive til the end?
• The Game of Thrones - like psychology. The mangaka makes us like some characters... and boom! They die. 
• The games are brilliantly made. I like heart games in particular because they mess up with your head, even though the solutions are sometimes so simple 3:)

What I don't like:

The mangaka killed off some good characters T_T lol I can't really think of anything particularly bad about this manga.

This manga has awesome premise and excellent execution especially in later volumes where stories start to converge and things come into light. I just hope the quality will stay the same and this manga will end with a bang because I really like what I've read so far.

I hope you enjoy the manga, and tell me what you think in the comment section :)