Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 45

I should've known this was the direction the series would take. All of the foreshadowing was there, but I was too focused on the unique encounter to think that the show would pull a narrative stunt like this again. This unique encounter has a seven-day window, we had all of the build-up with the fighting tournament outside of Shangri-La Frontier and, going through the opening again, there are a bunch of characters that we have yet to see who have nothing to do with this unique encounter. I should be more mad because it feels like the show is blue balling me with some legitimately interesting ideas, but I do have more faith in this detour since there is just enough present to get me interested.

Firstly, the show has teased fighting game mechanics throughout the entire series and this setup for the fighting tournament doesn't come completely out of nowhere. Plus, this isn't a situation where Sunraku is just randomly deciding to play a new game that happens to tie back into the main story, this is something that is set up by pre-established characters that I already like. I miss them so I'm happy about getting the opportunity to see them interact again. I'm also very excited to see how an established game exploiter like Sunraku does in an official tournament setting where there are rules and oversight. I'm sure he's skilled enough to compete on that level and I would believe he hasn't gotten that involved because he's just not interested in things like ranks or notoriety. Still, it'll be fun to see how he stacks up compared to everybody else.

Outside of that, this episode didn't have a lot to it outside of just clarifying a few details about the unique encounter and one extended action scene that felt superfluous. We learned a little bit about the monster and its ability to manipulate the vague concept of turning things in reverse. Turns out it's not just a big mindless monster. It seems to operate like a deity that uses players for entertainment. I'm curious how you take down something like that since the sheer scale of the enemy implies that it will be impossible to take down. I'm curious if we'll get back to this point before the show ends.

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