Shangri-La Frontier

Episode 5

I love how you can argue that last week's episode was just set up for the setup found in this week's episode. The first half didn't have a lot of substance in terms of storytelling despite maybe a few hints here and there. I question why Sunraku thought that he'd be able to utilize his speed on a boss that was found in swampy mud after taking so much time traversing swampy mud to get to said boss area. It felt like a dumb character moment, and I don't know why he acted so shocked that he fought with a handicap. I think the intention was to show off Emul more as an NPC and battle companion. The way the fight finished was pretty funny, though, whether it was intentional or not, especially with the long, drawn-out monologue about the physics of using fall damage and converting it into direct damage. I don't know if that's a direct reference to a specific game because I've never heard of that before, but now it makes me wish there was a game like that.

The real meat of this episode comes in the second half, where I was right about Sunraku suddenly having a giant target on his back. I like how the second half of this episode showed the gradual progression of hostility that online players were starting to have over rumors and speculation. It genuinely gave me anxiety, but I liked the variety of different responses that we got. It capped off with someone pointing out that it's an offense in the game to take a screenshot of another player without their consent. I didn't think about that, but that sounds like something that should be implemented if we ever reach this level of VR integration in our video games.

Now that Sunraku reached the next town, all of this buildup is finally coming together, with Sunraku realizing that a lot of players are going to come after him for different reasons, and one of those players is the player-killer was foreshadowed in the last episode. They know Sunraku from a previous game, and not only did she seem to get off on the idea of killing other players, but she also severely outranks Sunraku in terms of level, so I wonder how that will play a part in things. Not an amazing episode, but there was just enough interesting stuff here to get me to look forward to what's about to happen next.

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Shangri-La Frontier is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.