Shangri-La Frontier

Episode 21

This episode feels like the pacing suddenly came to a screeching halt. I like it when Shangri-La Frontier gets into some of the specifics of game exploits and world-building, but I'm not a big fan of an episode taking more than half of its runtime to explain those exploits to us. Especially when it isn't apparent if this is foreshadowing or just sharing fun facts. It would be nice if this inventory system loophole that Arthur talks about gets used again because otherwise, what was the point of the long-winded explanation? Thankfully, the background music helped keep me engaged.

The primary purpose of this episode seemed to be exploring the spoils of war. Our cast is unaware of how they might've completely altered the course of this entire game, so they will do what most gamers do after a big event and count their loot! It is amusing that all of the cool armor and equipment we saw at the end of last week's episode is useless since they don't have a power source. Even if they did, Sunraku couldn't use the armor because of the curse on his body. I'm sure Arthur and Katzo would've gotten a major kick out of that if they found out this way. In general, it is nice to see these three hanging out more casually together outside of combat and even going so far as to make the group official. They rag on each other and get on each other's nerves, but it never feels malicious in a mean-spirited way. They're all just a bunch of trolls, and I love it.

I hope this next arc being set up gives Katzo more to do. The episode starts with us getting our first real glimpse of him in the real world, and there's a lot of emphasis here on how he doesn't have anything that makes him distinct compared to Arthur and Sunraku. Those two pretty much jumpstarted unique encounters that inadvertently affected the game's overall trajectory. Katzo isn't that lucky, and sadly, the most exciting thing that happened to them is that they recovered a broken battery after getting tossed around like a ragdoll by a giant robotic horse. From the little that we've seen, Katzo is a professional gamer, and it would be cool if we could see that expertise play a part in the game, comparing them to Sunraku's game exploit intuition and Arthur's trickery.

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Shangri-La Frontier is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.