©硬梨菜・不二涼介・講談社/ 「シャングリラ・フロンティア」製作委員会
Despite being one of the best animated episodes this season so far, this is the episode where Shangri-La Frontier lost me. The pace feels significantly slowed down. Everything has been set up over the past few episodes with no significant resolution. We’re eight episodes in and the number of missions or important developments that have happened can be counted on the fingers of one hand. While these missions are supposed to be difficult and highlight how cutthroat this world can be with the kid gloves off, I’m trying to figure out what the point is.
I like this show because it has no stakes, but stakes and direction are two different things. The last episode and a half just got trained by Sunraku. While that may be important, it’s worrisome to spend so much time on it, especially since this determination to train has made him an honorary rabbit. I couldn’t tell if it was a joke or an important development.
The episode highlights Sunraku doubting himself during a tense fight with a tree witch. It feels unnecessarily more dramatic. He was determined that he couldn’t keep taking shortcuts because he wouldn’t be able to go any further, but it seemed like that message had been taken to heart. The show is at its best when it tries to be a silly adventure. While the humor of this episode was pretty good (the last scene of the episode made me laugh), the adventure aspects of Shangri-La Frontier were lacking. Hopefully the upcoming mission will bring more excitement to the series.
Rating:
Shangri-La Frontier is now streaming on Crunchyroll.