A killer is just a killer until they kill the killers.
What They Say:
“Squish”
Sunraku has encountered a new player named Dragonfly in “BERP”. The two engage in a series of matches with bug exploits allowed. Afterwards Sunrakru heads to Rabituza to link his skills at the Skill Garden.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
In this era of one-cour or split-cour series, last season had an unusually high number of two-cour series continuing right into this season. Shangri-La Frontier is such a series, lucky enough to enjoy high production values and an uninterrupted 25-episode run that shows no signs of faltering in quality. A few weeks after its 13th episode, we begin the second cour in earnest, complete with new opening and ending theme songs and sequences. The opening retains FZMZ, a special supergroup who debuted with the first opening, but adds a guest artist by the name of Icy – reportedly actually Reol of recent Rurouni Kenshin fame – which gives variety within familiarity for the series, the variety even more pronounced because of FZMZ’s multiple vocalists. The ending song brings us another female vocalist with a name not too unlike Reol’s, that being ReoNa primarily of Sword Art Online fame but quite prominent in anime for several years in general.
Once we get to the episode proper, I’m still at a loss regarding the significance of this excursion into BERP, the trash fighting game Sunraku pops back into and comes across a talented newbie to spar with. Surely it’ll become relevant later, but it feels like another one of the arbitrary meandering distractions the series has been known to take in its weaker moments. When Sunraku returns to SLF, it’s for more antics with rabbits, including the introduction of a new Emul sibling. Her quirks and how Sunraku emulates them can offer some minor chuckles, but at its core it’s largely just an exercise in RPG skill tree optimization. This can be a strangely satisfying experience in one’s own playthrough, but for a third party – particularly when the first party and the game in question don’t even exist – it hardly makes for the most compelling narrative.
By the last parts of the episode, the trio finally comes together to progress on their mission to take down Wethermon. However, Pencilgon has another objection to explore before the hunt is fully underway. She was introduced, especially within the concept of this game, as a ruthless player killer, and that comes back into the forefront as she discusses her guild of infamous PKs. SLF has added more and more incentives for PKs to be targeted by players who would otherwise not go after other players, changing the metagame for both types of players. This happens to put Pencilgon in a unique position to take advantage of her connections and break ties with her former allies while better preparing her new crew for the battle ahead without interference. Together with the post-ED scene counting down to the big summer release coinciding with the trio beginning their attack, this episode unfortunately functions almost entirely as a prologue for the big things we’ve been looking forward to than much of value on its own.
In Summary:
Shangri-La Frontier is back for a new cour, complete with a new opening and ending and the promise of big events to come, but very little in the way of actual events for its first episode of the new year. From a production standpoint everything is still at the top of its game, and I’m legitimately looking forward to what it’s teasing, but the repeated side stories and relatively dull in-game mechanics only serve to continue prolonging the eventuality of anything of note actually transpiring. Surely we’re too close now to keep putting it off for much longer, though, right? Right? Fool me once… It’s exhausting for sure, but if the teaser at the end is to be trusted in any capacity, this second half should hopefully have a great deal more to be excited about in each episode than some of the disappointing episodes up to this point.
Grade: C-
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
