English Dub Review: Shangri-La Frontier “The Writing Tool Knight-Queen”

Overview

Sunraku encounters Arthur Pencilgon, whom he knows as Pencil Knight from another game called “Unite Rounds”. She brings with her a message that he either publishes what he knows about the unique scenario or wears a target on his back.

Our Take

As Rakuro recognizes Arthur as a fellow trash game hunter from the previous episode,  we get a brief flashback of how the two met in a post-apocalyptic trash game where gamers often ignore its rules and mostly focus on fighting each other for resources. Arthur fought her way to becoming queen and the game’s unofficial final boss, the Dystopian Empress until Rakuro eventually defeated her, beginning their unusual friendship/rivalry of sorts. Arthur reveals that her clan along with herself have traveled from the 50th city Fifticia to kill him, while Animalia reveals Arthur is the level 99 second-in-command of Ashura Kai, specializing in assassinating players even higher level than herself.

As the fight begins, Arthur passes a demand from Ashura Kai’s leader to publicly share info about his current circumstances, such as how to access the unique scenario for vorpal rabbit NPCs. But as a consequence, Emul can’t sustain her human form and reverts to a rabbit which compels Animalia to attack Arthur, allowing Rakuro to dash for Thirdrema’s gate to establish a respawn point which is not without obstacles of their own while Animalia has some tricks up her sleeve. From nowhere, Rakuro is rescued by Rei, having finally learned his location from her sister, Psyger-100, from the photograph of him with Lycagon’s mark. Arthur is delighted to see Rei, whom she knows in-game as Psyger-0, but the distraction lets Animalia unleash one last proverbial middle finger to Arthur…

Overall, things certainly escalated quickly during the proceedings. Sunraku has unintentionally lured in quite a pack of players without even trying. From the animal lover to a clan of PKs featuring a player from a past game, both preventing him from getting into the city unless they get some form of info out of him. As for the post-credits scene, It’s established that in the game it’s possible to taste the food. How the heck does this thing work? There are no controllers so it just reads your brainwaves or bodily nerves to access your senses? Hopefully, this will be better explained later on…