Shangri-La Frontier

Episode 6

I praised last week's episode about orchestrating all of this buildup and foreshadowing, but there was more foreshadowing than I initially thought. Some confirmations were given in this episode, such as the relationship between Sunraku and Arthur, who seems to have a bit of a reputation for being a tyrant in whatever game she plays. It makes sense when you have players bonding together over breaking a game mechanically. Some of them are probably going to try to exploit it. The example game used in the flashback started to stretch the realms of believability. I don't see how a game designed that poorly would allow you to get away with just robbing the NPCs and taking over the kingdom that you're supposed to protect. Not every game is entirely open-ended; design limitations are put in place. If you can do something so elaborate, it must have been built into the game's code. Maybe I'm overanalyzing that, but it was on my mind for a solid third of this episode.

This show also stretches the logic of transferring skills from one game to another. Arthur even makes a point that Sunraku is a bit of a hot commodity, thanks to all the skills that he amassed from playing trash games before jumping into this one. I love platformers as much as the next nonbinary bean, but that doesn't mean that I'll automatically be an expert at any high-quality platformer because I mastered a few shitty ones. Still, the fact that we're emphasizing the skill level so much leads me to think that it will probably play a part in bigger things down the road. I don't know how far that road is because this episode didn't advance the story. There's a lot of flavor text and confirmation, but as far as pushing things forward, it feels almost like a half-step.

It's a gorgeous-looking and sounding half-step. I'm still having a lot of fun with the show, and if it didn't look as good, I'd probably be more critical because not a lot happened in this episode. The show finally started introducing the childhood friend Psyger into the mix. When she was first introduced, I thought that she was going to be part of this ongoing gag where she's constantly looking for Sunraku and never comes across him. Still, I tip my hat to the show that it ended up using the plot point of Sunraku having a target on his back as an excuse for her to seek him out and officially learn his location. Now I'm starting to wonder what role she will play in the show because it doesn't look like she's one of the featured characters in the opening. Will there be some other misunderstanding, or will something happen that results in her being sidelined?

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Shangri-La Frontier is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.