Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 43

Maybe I'm a little out of touch, but I've never heard of an online game that still recognizes that you're part of a party when you log out of that game. I'm pretty sure Sunraku did log out last week because he needed to take a break and check his emails before going on this quest, so I don't know why he was still considered part of a party when he logged back in. That and the way that specifically Psyger-0 accidentally ended up accepting the invite to the unique scenario did feel a little bit forced. The whole setup felt like the writer had struck gold with this particular party composition and wanted to maintain it for a little bit longer. I'm willing to overlook all of that convenience at the beginning of this episode because I like this party. I want them to stay together since it's been doing wonders warming up to Akane and Psyger-0 as characters.

Psyger-0 has started rising in the ranks for me after the show started giving her more to do outside of being a weird stalker. It's nice seeing her make more decisions for herself and even sneak around her friends to maintain this close relationship with Sunraku. There aren't any major stakes in the show because they're just a bunch of teenagers playing a video game, and sticking with a game because of your crush is something that a lot of people go through. I wonder why her guildmates don't seem to question why her armor and stats are debuffed, which is visually indicated by that weird gradient over her armor. Maybe that's supposed to be a visual for the audience to recognize and not the other players, but I am curious to see how long Psyger-0 can keep this under wraps.

There isn't much to say about this episode outside of us getting into the opening acts of this quest. Surprisingly, things are opening up very generically with the ghost ship randomly appearing and just being inhabited by fish people. I liked the decision about ramming into the ghost ship because, compared to the captains, the ghost ship was falling apart and wouldn't be able to stand a direct collision. Aside from that, we're just getting a feel of all the characters' combat roles. We see the classes that our newcomers take in this game, Psyger-0 is still very much weakened due to the detrimental effects of their unique skill and Sunraku is starting to reap some of the benefits of his recent buff. I'm looking forward to what comes after the prelude.

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