English Dub Season Review: Shangri-La Frontier Season One

Based on the Japanese web novel series written by Katarina, and later illustrated in Manga form by Ryosuke Fuji, the story primarily follows Rakuro Hizutome a young brash gamer only cares about one thing: beating poorly designed VR games. He devotes his entire life to these buggy games and could clear them all in his sleep. One day, he decides to challenge himself and play a popular mainstream god-tier game called Shangri-La Frontier. But he quickly learns just how difficult it is. Will his expert skills be enough to uncover its hidden secrets?

On the technical side, Season One was produced by C2C and directed by Toshiyuki Kubooka, with Hiroki Ikeshita serving as assistant director, Kazuyuki Fudeyasu supervising and writing the series’ scripts, Ayumi Kurashima designing the characters, and Monaca composers Ryūichi Takada, Kuniyuki Takahashi, and Keiichi Hirokawa composing the music. The first opening theme song is, “Broken Games”, performed by FZMZ, while the first ending theme song is, “Ace”, performed by Chico. The second opening theme song is “Danger Danger”, performed by FZMZ feat. Icy, while the second ending theme song is “Gajumaru: Heaven in the Rain”, performed by Reona.

Following the success of game-themed Anime shows like “Sword Art Online” where you’re in a virtual world. Anime’s that take place inside a game is almost an oversaturated subgenre. And unless there’s some deadly stipulation like “Sword Art Online” had where if you die for real when you die in a game, there is no tension or stakes which creates a stalemate of ideas where nothing can evolve, and you simply respawn when you die with almost no consequences. However, within this landscape, some gems stand out, offering well-researched lore and immersive virtual worlds that captivate viewers, regardless of their gaming experience. One such gem is Shangri-La Frontier, which upon research, won Japan’s 47th Kodansha Manga Award in the Shonen category.

In the world of Shangri-La Frontier, full-dive Virtual Reality MMO’s are commonplace, overshadowing retro games with their outdated mechanics and gimmicks. Enter Rakuro Hizutome, aka “Sunraku” (which is the screen name he frequently uses), whose mission is to expose and conquer these “trash games.” As a character, Sunraku epitomizes the limitless gamer, fearlessly confronting challenges and exploiting loopholes to progress. When he stumbles upon the titular game, he sees it as an opportunity he proceeds to use his expertise, knowledge and experience gained from playing countless trash games to his advantage.

In later storylines, he randomly encounters his classmate Rei Saiga, a shy admirer who secretly follows him in-game under her screenname and the appearance of an intimidating Knight named “Psyger-0” which doesn’t always lead anywhere and sometimes makes Sunraku more dense than half the male cast of Black Clover because Rei’s efforts to get his attention leads to grossly one sided, and utterly meaningless romantic attempts that don’t really go anywhere for the sake of bland comedic contrivance. At the very least he does get someone to interact with in later storylines in the form of a cute talking rabbit NPC named “Emul” after discovering a hidden realm offering boundless growth opportunities known as Rabituza and to me, this where the plot starts to really pick up, as their mutually beneficial relationship defies gaming conventions, underscoring the show’s uniqueness in the anime and manga landscape. And it’s also noteworthy that the Japanese voices of Sunraku and Emul met and later got married when they did this show, so I guess something good came out it in the long run.

We also encounter two other allies within Sunraku’s circle who in different ways are unique and come from completely different walks of life Such as Pencilgon and Katzo. In addition to all this, the show also features some real-life scenes, which are just very average slice of life moments that don’t really do much outside of establishing how different the gaming worlds are and real life. Most of the show is about our protagonist just being the living embodiment of the phrase “fuck around and find out” with very little consequence or any sort of grand storylines. Nothing is ever at stake because dying in the game just gives a temporary debuff, so he can die multiple times in a row and it does nothing because there’s no real life takes like in “Sword Art Online” where if you die in the game, you die for real. And despite its 25-episode run-time, half of the show feels like filler but greatly hints at something bigger within this online game, but it’s all pretty vague…

The Animation quality is very impressive. Some of the fights, especially the one against the big boss was quite possibly some of the best I’ve ever seen in any anime, with high quality stuff across the board with very little CGI near the end in the form of “crystal scorpions” which are thankfully not visual eyesore. And the background music remains solid, as it does its job in terms of complimenting what’s going on in the screen. with a decent voice cast, especially Chris Guerrero (Ainz from Overlord) who voices Emul’s Father who’s in charge of Rabituza. The pacing strings episodes together effortlessly, with each episode having a post-credits comedy bit called “SLF Theatre: Mini” that sometimes adds more to the plot that they couldn’t fit into the show which is sometimes amusing. If I have any major complaints, it’s the same complaint I’ve had with most Dubbed anime shows which is the scenes that involve subtitles such as people who share RPG status or text messages or even songs being in Japanese that are subbed which sometimes takes away the immersion but it’s nowhere as bad as other shows I’ve covered previously.

Overall, Shangri-La Frontier stands out in the crowded landscape of video game-themed anime and manga, offering a refreshing take on the genre with its well-developed characters, immersive world-building, and simple story that slowly unravels into something bigger. At the end of the day, this is mostly about a dude playing a video game. And you can tell the person who made this “understood the assignment” as they say. But with the recent announcements of an actual game being made, and season two coming later in October of 2024, we can look forward to more Antics with Sunraku and Emul and the rest of his crew somewhere down the line.