English Dub Review: Shangri-La Frontier “The 300-Limit Pandemonium”

Overview

The 10th opponent in the Rabituza arena is the Aberrant Woodmage, a powerful foe combining fast attacks with magic. Underleveled and understated, Sunraku only needs to survive five minutes to win… but can he make it happen?!



Our Take

This time around, Sunraku is now stuck in an incredible endurance match between him and a Magical Tree monster which looks spectacular in terms of character design. The animation really shines in this show whenever it feels like it. And Sunraku has to do, is dodge all it’s attacks. The wide variety of spells this thing can conjure up are impressive, from fire to ice to lightning and even poison spells. All of it kept Sunraku on his toes in combination with the roots and chains whirling around as he ran.

You’d think that maybe landing a few hits on this creature would help but it’s even immune to physical attacks. Sunraku then came up with the great idea to leave him powerless, even if to only kill time which is his goal anyway. And wouldn’t you know it? Sunraku somehow manages to survive the five minutes but it sucks as he got nothing more than a title and no actual loot. Also, for a brief time, Sunraku reveals his in-game avatar face but the anime doesn’t bother showing it which gave off “Goblin Slayer” vibes which were somewhat comical, even if it was kinda brief and the post-credits segments were also mildly amusing…

Overall, this was an intense episode in terms of action and suspense with some humor here and there. I was also expecting some epic loot for Sunraku once he survived the final boss, maybe there will be some in that follow-up scenario? Psyger-0 staring at Sunraku like that, it’s that type of staring that you can’t help but feel. Even if he got nothing else out of the quest, the extra ability points he earned before losing the collar would have been more than worth it.