Summary
The training montage in episode 7 of Shangri-La Frontier is boring and poorly done, with static images and narration instead of actual battles. The inclusion of these fights in the story is unnecessary and irrelevant as they lack tension and are not fully animated. The humor and character interactions in Shangri-La Frontier are more engaging and entertaining than the combat sequences, highlighting the game’s lack of meaningful combat.
Sunraku’s adventures in Shangri-La Border, is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, has trouble trying to follow the classic “power growth” plot. The training montage that takes place in the seventh episode is by far one of the most boring and dull sequences, and it feels like even C2C’s animators are doing a half-hearted job. Regardless of the stakes, it’s hard to take any video game scene seriously.
The content of the episode involves Sunraku returning to Rabituza to continue his unique quest series. This involves fighting a variety of monsters, but the resulting montage seems to exist only to fill space and exhaust everyone’s patience, in and out of space. It’s a questionable choice when an anime can’t do much more than tell rather than show.
The Shangri-La border sags when taken seriously
Indeed, the practice video in episode 7 is one of the most anemic. Sunraku is challenged to fight a variety of monsters in the Vorpal Arena, but the way it is presented is problematic: a look expands over a series of still images, while Sunraku narrates the process of destroying them all. The monsters obviously don’t matter, and neither do the fights, yet everyone – Sunraku, the animators, and the audience – is forced to sit and listen not to the fight but to the idea of one. The war is being rushed to completion. It’s a waste of time and effort.
The training sections are hard to come by because the plot is stuck with battles that are nominally without danger. While other stories try to rekindle some tension with time limits or the real possibility of death, Shangri-La Frontier’s sequence lacks both. If the fights are just boring, then there’s really no point in including them because their stories are irrelevant. But since the story is about Sunraku’s epic quest to find and destroy the video game boss Lycagon, the plot has to itemize every experience point he grinds.
It remains debatable that Shangri-La shines in comedy. Jokes like Rei screaming at her bird-headed lover while wearing the Psyger-0 avatar’s heavy disc make better use of virtual reality gaming. Meanwhile, Sunraku’s Sisyphean game has no value in a world where fighting has no meaning, which is further evident in how bored audiences find the anime to be with combat. Shangri-La border The narrative flaws show that, despite the emphasis on gaining power, the fighting and numbers game are still the least interesting part of an MMO.
Shangri-La borderr is available on Crunchyroll.
Watch on Crunchyroll