Alright so The King of Spades is arguably the big bad of Alice in Borderland Season 2 and he’s by far the face card who does the most damage to those stuck in the game. Though Mira is the one that the players face last, The King definitely feels like this biggest threat, but he also remains the biggest mystery.
Whereas the other Kings and Queens spend time introducing themselves and talking to the players, the King keeps himself to himself. The only thing that we really learn about him is the vision that we see him having as a younger man that appears on screen for a split second.
Because of this you might be wondering what that’s all about and who he is.
Luckily the manga fills it in and in this video we’re gonna be breaking down his backstory to give you a better idea about who he is.
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Who is The King of Spades in Alice in Borderland?
Alright so The King of Spades is actually a man known as Isao Shirabi. He first debuted in chapter 32 of the Manga, and he appeared similar to how he did in Season 2. However, whereas in that he just showed up and started shooting people, the manga played it slightly differently. The blimps appeared and the characters started to investigate them with one going out to scout the area and see what they are. Through binoculars they looked over the blimps and spot the Kings one. After looking at the area they got a glimpse of a scope flash and before they could even move a sniper bullet struck them, introducing the King in a big bad way.
From this point onwards he started indiscriminately taking people out which is sort of mirrored in the show.
In the series he uses an Anti-Tank rifle at the beginning which is complete overkill.
You see, unlike the other face cards the King of Spades has complete jurisdiction over Borderland. Whereas they are stationary and restricted to a certain area, he has free roam turned on and can show up anywhere on the map at random. This is why he can show up in the city one minute and then pop up in the forest the next. During the manga a lot of players ran out there because they believed that he couldn’t travel to that part of the map. However, he showed up like what we see in the show and burned a large part of it during his attack.
The King also has his own strategies and ways of carrying things out beyond just showing up at places. There’s actually a method to the madness and Shirabi normally waits until people are gathered in one area together so that he can get the greatest number of players in the shortest amount of time. Whereas most people believe that there would be safety in numbers, he disproves that by killing people in quick succession.
His entire tactic is to ambush people and by the time his blimp has drifted in he’s normally fully set up somewhere and ready to take everyone out.
Now though he’s a villain, he actually views himself as a hero because he believes he has an insight to life that many don’t possess.
Shirabi believes that life is painful and filled with misery and that by killing people he’s actually saving them from the pain of it. This was a mind state that was something he developed after his time as a mercenary which is what we see in the flashback.
Shirabi was highly sought after and when he was on holiday in Tokyo his old friend Apache reached out to him with a job. Shirabi was suspicious of the job, and he viewed it as being a mission that was gonna just be a slaughter. He told Apache not to do it and said that he’d be killed if he went ahead with the job. Apache thanked him for being such a good friend and Shirabis basically said that he’s not really his friend and though they’re allies today, if they get hired for opposite jobs they might be on opposite sides.
He said they were business rivals, but Apache clearly didn’t see it that way.
Even though he had a really bad feeling about it, Shirabi still accepted the job and as predicted, it was a complete s**t show.
The battle was a slaughter and they’d indeed been sent in as sacrificial lambs. Upon fleeing the battlefield both were shot but Shirabi suffered but a flesh wound. Apache on the other hand was in critical condition and though Shirabi had said they weren’t friends; he still did whatever he could to pull his friend out.
They made it quite far too, but Apache said that he was just slowing his friend down and that he should leave him.
Shirabi didn’t want to do this, and he rested alongside him which is when they both decided agreed to meet each other as friends of war on another battlefield. After this Apache asked him to kill which Shirabi didn’t really want to do. However, he explained to him that he was suffering and that the rest of his life would be a misery. He asked Shirabi to kill him and said that it would save him from the agony that his life was going to be.
This is where we saw him in the vision, and he killed Apache at this point which is when he also developed the mind state that he should ease people of the burden of their lives.
The King of Spades in Alice in Borderland Explained
Now when the meteor struck, Shirabi was closer to the centre of the blast and thus he entered before the main players that we followed. As the show states time moves differently in Borderland and the entire time Arisu spent down there was just a minute in our world. So, if someone was hit even just 10 seconds earlier then they’d arrive down there months earlier. Kyuma and Shirabi both arrived five months before Arisu did and thus, they have time to play out an entire cycle. Kyuma actually worked alongside Shirabi and Mira who all became friends.
She bumped into him whilst he was burying a body and it turned out that Shirabi had actually been going through Borderland and burying those that had been killed. He didn’t want to leave the corpses behind for predators to eat and he thought that death should have some dignity to it. Mira planted a seed with the body, and she promised to come and water it every morning so that it could grow.
The three players met up every morning and after making it to the final game they decided that they should do it altogether. They won and then they were given the choice to return to the real world or to remain in Borderland.
Now a lot of people have been like ‘why the f**k would you want to stay?’
It’s something that we see throughout the series, with several characters debating why anyone would want to remain behind in this hell.
For Shirabi it was simple though.
As we’ve discussed throughout the video Shirabi carried a certain outlook on life and he viewed the battlefield as being a burden.
Due to his skills, he thought that he was one of the only people that could shoulder it and he decided to remain behind and kill those that were due to feel the suffering of life.
So that’s basically his backstory and his outlook on life. Shirabi also was of course a master when it came to weapons and his blimp is packed with them.
He can gain supplies by returning to it and whatever he needs is sent down to him by parachute which is where he can pick it up.
In the end he tried one final ambush like what we see in the series, and this eventually led to his undoing.
Though he ended up killing a tonne of people he was eventually defeated by the players teaming up. When he would strike the large groups, he expected them to all panic and flee, the players not doing this and working together is what eventually brought him down.
The battle in the manga plays out much like what we see in the series with the players throwing pretty much everything that they have at him in order to finally take him down.
It’s completely relentless and The King doesn’t let up at all.
However, they manage to break through and beat him which is when he’s finally defeated.
In his dying breaths we see him apologise to Apache for what he did, and he says that it was the only way that he could save him.
In the series we see a flash of the memory that made him the way that he is and it’s a perfect way to say goodbye to the character.
Now that’s everything you need to know about the King of Spades and he’s definitely one of my favourite characters in the show.
Completely relentless I absolutely loved it when they went through his backstory in the manga and I kinda wish we got it in the show too.
Though we didn’t I think that the series does enough to tease at it and hopefully this video has piqued your interest so that you go and read it.
Now obviously I’d love to hear your thoughts on the character so make sure you comment below and let me know.
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If you want something else to watch, then make sure you check out our breakdown of perfect scene in Spider-Man Homecoming. We break down the entire thing so it’s definitely worth checking out if you wanna know more.
With that out the way thank you for sitting through the video, I’ve been Paul and I’ll see you next time. Take care, Peace.
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