Shangri-La Frontier Season 2

Episode 31

Please tell me I'm not the only one watching the second half of this episode screaming “what the hell are we doing?” Sunraku achieved his goal and got all the really cool material from defeating the gold crystal scorpion. A definitive highlight of the episode was Bilac losing her mind to the point of going into shock over the sheer rarity of the items that Sunraku had given her. It almost makes up for the show handling Bilac's class upgrade completely off-screen! That was arguably a major plot point for the past ten episodes but here it is, taken care of with little to no fanfare. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was definitely more than what we got. I would've loved to see more about how NPCs changed their classes or heightened their abilities, since I imagine it would have to be different from how the players do it, right?

Whatever, we accomplished the main goal that was set out for us ever since we beat Wethermon back in season one. We have the power source to activate all the robotic armor in the pocket dimension. But of course, Sunraku can't wear any of them because of the curse on his body. I can understand him feeling depressed about that, and I empathize with being devastated when confronted with a reality that you can't change. It sucks to watch someone put his time and effort into acquiring this power source only for him to be unable to reap the rewards of his labor. It is a shame that there is absolutely nothing we can do about his current predicament…oh wait, there is!

Remember the meeting with the other guilds from the beginning of the season? Not only did we discover that Sunraku's curse is removable, but apparently it's very easy for him to do! Moreso because the guilds can help his cause they owe Sunraku for the information he gave them. It has been a while since I've seen such a blatant lapse in writing quite like this, because there's no explanation for it. It just never crosses his mind that he can get the curse removed from his body, so he decides to just go play a different game and have an action scene that takes up pretty much half of the episode's run time. The action was cool, but not only does it not mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but I can't get over the fact that we're just sidestepping the most obvious and natural narrative progression point.

It's so weird that this show has moments of filler like this, but they're such high-quality filler that it makes me more angry than if the show had budgetary issues. Why are we wasting so much time and animation here? I don't know how the story handles this in the original material, but unless this encounter in this Gundam knock-off video game ends up playing some kind of major part in Shangri-La Frontier, it just feels empty. Even if there are dedicated fans out there that want to tell me that this is important, there had to have been a more organic way for us to get here, right? I don't know, this just left me blinded with anger, and considering that we will still be in this completely separate game for what looks like another half-episode, I am not filled with any sense of joy.

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