Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 47

This episode is still firmly planted in setup territory and I wonder if this fighting tournament will be explored properly before the season ends. It would suck to get blue balled right at the very end after all this build-up. That being said, there is a significant amount of meat to this episode and I'm not just talking about the phenomenal action. I haven't been giving Shangri-La Frontier a lot of credit lately. It can diversify the different games that our characters play throughout the series. It's hard to communicate the technical aspects of these games and a lot of them feel the same, but visually there is an effort to make them stand out from one another. What we see here is, what I would argue, the best example of that so far.

The game Galaxia Heroes is an open-world fighting game where your actions in the overworld can give you distinct advantages during combat. The specific actions that help you depend on whether you are playing as a hero character or a villain character. I'm not sure why this setup doesn't immediately make villains broken because it could mean that the collateral damage caused by a villain could make it easier to fill their villain gauge. This feels like something where there's a lot more detail in the original material, but the anime is trying to abridge that to get to the action. The action itself is exhilarating, fast-paced, and bursting with style. The choreography is spot on and for someone who prefers fast, close-quarters characters in their fighting games and action RPGs, seeing everyone respond to Sunraku execute these blink-and-you-miss-it movements was exhilarating.

This episode also focuses on why Sunraku was brought onto this team. He's this hyper player who utilizes everything made available to him to the max. None of his movements feel wasted, and he constantly draws the opponent at his own pace. He utilizes unorthodox movements that a typical player might not, which is most likely a carryover from him playing so many games with obvious exploits. I wish the show bridged that early setup with his capabilities a lot better because it sometimes feels like we forget that this guy is also obsessed with playing garbage video games. We haven't seen him do that in a while. Resourcefulness is not so unique to him as he is about to find out it is also found in the leader of the upcoming rival team. Whether or not we will see that fight is anyone's guess.

Rating: