English Dub Review: Shangri-La Frontier “A Peculiar One”

Overview

Rakuro fights the Ravenous Python, arrives in the game’s second town, and explores its weapons crafting system before venturing out at night.

Our Take

Unbeknownst to Rakuro/Sunraku, Rei has already attained the status of being a powerful warrior in the Shangri-La game and visits Firstia hoping to encounter Rakuro when he starts the game. But given what we the audience know from the previous episode she’s understandably disappointed when he does not appear and assumes Rakuro already visited Firstia and left before she arrived. Despite his expertise in boss fights Rakuro almost dies, not having known the snake boss usually requires at least three players. His victory promotes him to level 14 but his health continues to drop from the snake’s venom, and is forced to run to Secondil where veteran player Reiji helps him register a respawn point before he dies to prevent a possible game over.

After his character finds a respawn point, Rakuro realizes his swimming shorts make him stand out, and not in a good way, which forces him to buy normal armor, though he keeps the bird mask. In an effort to upgrade with new weapons, the blacksmith sends him to the Diremarsh swamp to mine ore, which is more difficult than the Rakuro first assumed as the realistic swamp mud slows his movement. But now equipped with Marsh Daggers, Suraku/Rakuro ignores the Blacksmiths warnings and goes hunting monsters at night where he encounters possibly the ultimate challenge that is so unique and high-level, that not one of the game’s 30 million players has ever defeated it…

Overall, It’s clear that things have just got a little too convenient for our protagonist in this episode. I don’t get why people would find their appearance strange if the game has an extensive customization system you should expect to see some wild and weird creations that players would regularly do. If anything, the amount of players looking as plain as they do is what should raise some eyebrows. The Animation is still fantastic at least, and so are the main characters’ passionate explanations for the game’s mechanics. But as somebody who’s been watching these fantasy/adventure shows, it’s nice to see the main character honestly struggle and grind to level up much in the same way it works in “Rising of the Shield Hero”. It just goes to show the clear contrast to how many badly written isekai/fantasy shows there are out there where the protagonist is instantly powerful or invincible and somehow gets everything handed to him with almost no effort. But with that cliffhanger, I’m curious to see what direction it’ll take next!