The Fall 2022 Manga Guide

Shangri-La Frontier

What's It About? 

Second year high school student Rakuro Hizutome is interested in one thing only: finding "shitty games" and beating the crap out of them. His gaming skills are second to none, and no game is too bad for him to enjoy. So when he's introduced to the new VR game Shangri-La Frontier, he does what he does best—min-maxes and skips the prologue to jump straight into the action. But even an expert gamer like Rakuro might discover new secrets hiding in Shangri-La Frontier.

Shangri-La Frontier has story by Katarina and art by Ryōsuke Fuji, with English translation by Kevin Gifford and lettering by Kai Kyou. Kodansha Comics released its first volume digitally in December 2020, and physically in September.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Jean-Karlo Lemus

Rating:

Shangri-La Frontier almost had me. The one thing that keeps me hooked on the opening premise is that our hero, Rakuro, loves kusoge—“shitty games”. It's one thing to be a game addict, it's another to be the kind of connoisseur who intentionally loves the bottom of the barrel, the kind of people who'd intentionally go around finding enjoyment in the crappiest games you're lucky to have never heard of. If this was some kind of deep-dive into a man and his love for shitty games, we might have had a winner. Instead, it's just a very, very video game-flavored isekai. Oh, sure, Rakuro is never forced into a new world; there's even a nice bit where he's playing a crappy fighting game with a friend of his where they're both just using exploits against each other. Heck, Rakuro is a step above other isekai potatoes by virtue of actually having friends he shares his hobbies with! But so much of the story is just Rakuro exploring the opening areas to an actually good game for once and using the tenacity forged by thousands of hours of kusoge-playing to munchkin his way into top-tier ranks. All of the “setbacks” he goes through are secretly ultra-buffs that'll serve to make him tougher. He's fought against so many vorpal rabbits he can just cheese his way through anything. Of course he's the first guy to find so many secret-special areas. Of course he's the only guy to face off against an ultra-boss. Of course he's gonna become the best player in the game by virtue of min-maxing.

We've been here. We've seen this story before. Characters talking to us about their stat alignment hasn't been interesting in any prior isekai story before, and it's still not interesting here.

At the very least, the art is top-notch—heck, the production values almost make up for the absolute snore-fest of the story. Almost. But we've seen this before, we know how it goes, and really really pretty art just isn't enough. If the story leaned more into Rakuro's love of kusoge, I'd be all over this. As it stands, if you're that hard-up to watch someone be a munchkin in an MMO, just watch someone on Twitch.

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MrAJCosplay

Rating:

I'm gonna put it out there that I am very tired of the “trapped in a video game” subgenre that has plagued the animanga landscape in the past decade. I know why it is so popular among creators: it gives the writer an excuse to create a world informed by familiar video game mechanics, and the protagonist being "trapped" provides a natural source of stakes and tension. However, I don't think you always need to have such stakes for a story to be entertaining, and Shangri-La Frontier is a shining example of that. While there are some hints here and there about the story eventually going in a direction more typical of the genre, I appreciate the fact that most of this volume can basically boil down to a stubborn gamer trying to maximize his efficiency in a new open-world video game.

The main gimmick established in volume one is that our main character, Rakuro, spends most of his time challenging himself by playing buggy and unfair games. So what happens when you put somebody with all of that experience into an actually well-polished game with experience-based mechanics? Honestly, I kind of felt like watching an upstart player play Elden Ring for the first time after spending a majority of his time playing Sonic 06. The mechanics are simple yet surprisingly intuitive, and I actually found myself rooting for Rakuro to make the most out of his time in this game. There's definitely shounen elements to the series as he tries to take on threats that are clearly outside of his level cap, but I like how Rakuro, while better than the average player by virtue of his experience, is not straight-up invulnerable. Plus, despite having a protagonist that is stuck wearing a ridiculous bird mask that technically barely emotes, creator Ryōsuke Fuji never fails to communicate the comedy and intensity of the story. Combine that with some of the strongest action choreography that I think I've seen in a manga for quite some time, and this is a surprising hidden gem that I am itching to read more of!