Is the Alice in Borderland Manga Over & How Does It End?
Alice in Borderland is a shōnen manga by Haro Asō, published between November 2010 and March 2016 in the Shōnen Sunday Super andWeekly Shōnen Sunday magazines by Shōgakukan and compiled in a total of eighteen bound volumes released between April 2011 and April 2016. Apart from several short stories, two spin-off series treated independently from the main work are also created: Alice on Border Road and Alice in Borderland Retry. A series of three OVAs were marketed between October 2014 and February 2015 with limited editions of volumes 12 through 14 in Japan. An eight-episode television series adaptation premiered on Netflix on December 10, 2020. In this article, we are going to tell you whether the original Alice in Borderland manga is finished.
The Alice in Wonderland manga is finished and has been over since 2016. This includes the main manga, as well as the two spin-off series that have been published as supplements to the main work. The OVA series is also over, while the currently airing live-action adaptation is still officially ongoing, and we don’t really know when and how it is going to end.
The rest of this article is going to focus on the publication of the Alice in Borderland series and all its aspects. We’re going to go over the whole publication history and ultimately tell you whether the Alice in Borderland series is over or still ongoing so that you know how much material from this great series you can expect.
Is the Alice in Borderland manga finished?
Written and drawn by Haro Asō, the Alice in Borderland manga started publication on November 25, 2010, in the Shōnen Sunday Super magazine. The manga moved to the Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine on April 8, 2015, for the third series’ final arc. The final chapter was released on March 2, 2016. The series was published by publisher Shōgakukan in a total of eighteen bound volumes released between April 2011 and April 2016.
A promotional anime clip was made by studio Production I.G in 2013. Several short stories have originated in the Weekly Shōnen Sunday magazine special and are published as special episodes in the main story volumes. They are:
- “Four of Hearts” (July 11–25, 2012)
- “Four of Clubs” (January 16–23, 2013)
- “Six of Diamonds” (だいやのろく, Daiya no Roku) (May 22–29, 2013)
- “Seven of Spades” (August 21–September 4, 2013)
- “King of Spades” (December 11, 2013–June 18, 2014)
- “King of Diamonds” (October 15, 2014–February 4, 2015)
Several spin-off series treated independently from the main work were also created. Alice on Border Road, written by Asō and illustrated by Takayoshi Kuroda, was published in Shōgakukan’s Monthly Sunday Gene-X between August 19, 2015, and February 19, 2018, and then published in a total of eight bound volumes released between January 18, 2016, and March 19, 2017. A second series, Alice in Borderland Retry, was published between October 14, 2020, and January 20, 2021, in Weekly Shōnen Sunday.
The list of published volumes includes the following:
Alice in Borderland
| No. | Original release date | Original ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | April 18, 2011 | 978-4-09-122819-2 |
| 2 | September 16, 2011 | 978-4-09-123269-4 |
| 3 | January 18, 2012 | 978-4-09-123444-5 |
| 4 | July 18, 2012 | 978-4-09-123779-8 |
| 5 | October 18, 2012 | 978-4-09-123897-9 |
| 6 | January 18, 2013 | 978-4-09-124171-9 |
| 7 | May 17, 2013 | 978-4-09-124304-1 |
| 8 | August 16, 2013 | 978-4-09-124363-8 |
| 9 | December 18, 2013 | 978-4-09-124514-4 |
| 10 | March 18, 2014 | 978-4-09-124580-9 |
| 11 | June 18, 2014 | 978-4-09-124667-7 |
| 12 | October 17, 2014 | 978-4-09-125308-8 |
| 13 | December 18, 2014 | 978-4-09-125416-0 |
| 14 | February 18, 2015 | 978-4-09-125560-0 |
| 15 | May 18, 2015 | 978-4-09-125837-3 |
| 16 | September 18, 2015 | 978-4-09-126206-6 |
| 17 | January 18, 2016 | 978-4-09-126698-9 |
| 18 | April 18, 2016 | 978-4-09-127097-9 |
Alice on Border Road
| No. | Release date | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | January 18, 2016 | 978-4-09-157431-2 |
| 2 | April 18, 2016 | 978-4-09-157444-2 |
| 3 | August 19, 2016 | 978-4-09-157457-2 |
| 4 | January 19, 2017 | 978-4-09-157471-8 |
| 5 | June 19, 2017 | 978-4-09-157488-6 |
| 6 | November 17, 2017 | 978-4-09-157505-0 |
| 7 | January 19, 2018 | 978-4-09-157510-4 |
| 8 | March 19, 2018 | 978-4-09-157516-6 |
Alice in Borderland: Retry
| No. | Release date | ISBN |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | December 11, 2020 | 978-4-09-850365-0 |
| 2 | February 18, 2021 | 978-4-09-850388-9 |
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So, what do all of these things tell us about the series? Well, as old Alice in Borderland fans will know, the manga series has been over since 2016. Since then, the main series did not release any new materials, save for two spin-off series that are not related to the main one. The spin-off series also ended, so for all Alice in Borderland fans, we can only confirm that the series, at least its written part, is over, and we don’t know that there are any plans to continue it. The live-action adaptation is still ongoing, so fans can enjoy the story like that, but the manga is definitely over.
How does Alice in Borderland end?
The ending of the Alice in Borderland manga is not different from what you would really expect. Since Alice in Borderland is a shonen title, after all, despite the one or two odd moments, it doesn’t really divulge much from your usual shonen formula. The heroes that survived the game face off against the Queen of Hearts, which makes sense if you know the story of Alice in Wonderland. It was, as you’d expect, a very complex final battle, but the heroes prevail in the end, and they win the final game they had to in order to finish their Borderland experience.
After defeating the main villain of the game, the players are transported back into the real world on some meteorite-like objects. Those that survived the game also survived in real life and could continue their lives normally, whereas those that died in the game also died in the real world. The fact that time in Borderland passes much faster than in the real world made their real-life fates much easier to handle in-universe, as they were in the game for a long time, whereas only minutes passed in real life. Not much of a surprise ending, really, but we have to say that the journey was quite an intriguing one and that we enjoyed it. The spin-offs are not addressed here because they are not really connected to the main plot, so we’ll leave that for a separate article.
