Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 36

I know some people are going to think I'm being mean, but I mean it when I say that this episode of Shangri-La Frontier hit me on an emotional level that most previous episodes did not. Divided into two parts, the first two-thirds are about SF-Zoo taking down Lycagon, while the final third has some rather interesting introspection from Sunraku himself. I respect that Sunraku let the guild do their thing without interfering. He respected that they were the ones to track Lycagon down, so even though there was a chance that they could've taken it down before him, that player etiquette was very nice to see. Plus, it also serves the purpose of him observing if anything new ends up happening for a later encounter, should things not go according to plan.

Boy, did things not go according to plan. Not only was the clan viciously wiped out in an incredibly brutal way, but we actually got a payoff to something that was subtly set up at the beginning of the show. Sunraku wasn't exactly winning the fight between him and Lycagon before at the beginning of the show, but he was able to hold his ground until something mysterious ended up catching him off guard. Here, we see that the mysterious thing was the Nightslayer's ability to manipulate shadows and the darkness itself. This thing could be pinned down with multiple spells and curses, but it will still find a way to attack you as long as it is under the night sky.

I feel bad for Maria, the leader of SF-Zoo. The introspection she had as she was falling to her death was unexpected, but nice and I like how it tied into how there is something distinctly different about this beast compared to every other animal in the game. Still, knowledge is power so there's a good chance that this encounter will end up shaking the very foundation of all of the established group dynamics that we've seen thus far. SF-Zoo only attacked because they thought they knew what they needed to do based on information that they purchased from Arthur, who didn't exactly give them a full story. I wonder if that's going to come back and bite Arthur in the ass later. There are so many different directions that the story can go based on this encounter, and I like that. Things are up in a similar way to the Wethermon fight from season one.

However, in the final third, we see Sunraku internally wrestling with whether or not he also wants to jump into the fight. I understand why he was holding himself back. While he is getting along with Psyger-0, he's very wary about any new information being discovered by somebody that isn't exclusively him. Hell, he would even be hesitant to jump into things if Arthur was by his side. The audience knows that Psyger-0 doesn't necessarily care about any of this deeper lore or battle for information but Sunraku doesn't know that. So it's perfectly reasonable that he would have a moment of hesitation.

The irony is that he is next to somebody who values his crazy desire to rush in headfirst and enjoy the moment. That's part of the reason why she likes him in the first place. It's not that Sunraku is ignorant of how things could snowball in the long run, but at his core, he's all about enjoying things at the moment or learning to appreciate things that other people might not, which is why he goes through trash games in the first place. I enjoyed this because it feels like we are building a relationship between these two characters. In many ways, it's coming full circle because Psyger-0 wanted Sunraku to play Shangri-La Frontier in the first place so they would have a chance to play together and now, here they are, going up against a unique creature that arguably jump-started a lot of the major story routes of the entire series. I never thought we would get to this point, but I am happy that we did and I am excited for what the second half of season two has in store for us.

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