Last week I wrote about #myfavoriteanime Angel Beats! which is one of the anime that has had the most influence on my life personally, you can read my previous post My Favorite Anime - Angel Beats!.
This time I will discuss an anime that is still relatively new but I liked it from the first episode they released, this anime is Shangri-La Frontier (SLF) which can be watched on the Muse Indonesia channel. I first discovered this anime when I was scrolling YouTube, and saw an anime poster that had just been licensed by Muse Asia, including Indonesia.
Shangri-La Frontier (SLF) tells the story of a high school student named Rakurou Hizutome whose hobby is playing VR games, but what is different from anime with the theme of VR game players is that the main character Hizutome has unique interests from people in general. Looking for dregs or unpopular games is Hizutome's main mission, he only likes to finish games that people don't play because they are not well known or the game's rating is low.
After finishing the last buggy game he bought, the stock finally ran out, and Hizutome went to the regular game shop to look for another shitty game. While looking for another crappy game he was accosted by his regular shopkeeper, the woman asked if the previous game that Hizutome bought was finished then he answered yes, and was confused about what other games to play, the shopkeeper then pointed at the game poster which was a VR game that was currently popular, called SLF (Shangri-La Frontier) is where the story of Hizutome, a shitty game hunter, tries for the first time the high rating game Shangri-La Frontier.
Hizutome finally decided to play a VR game that was currently popular on the gaming market in the hope of getting the latest game experience because so far he had only played shitty games full of bugs and very annoying storylines. This is where I started liking this anime, previously I had watched anime with a similar genre like Sword Art Online, and after that, when I saw an anime with the VR game genre, I didn't really like it until I finally saw Shangri-La Frontier.
I thought Hizutome's journey in starting this SLF game would start with choosing a cool character and powerful supporting items, it turns out he chose a character with flexible movement dexterity and looks different from the characters he usually plays in previous VR games. Hizutome chose a character in shorts, and no clothes, and what surprised me was that he chose to wear a bluebird mask, I directly imagined that the storyline of this anime would be exciting and filled with comedy.
At first, I thought the storyline would be easy to predict, where a main character who is an expert at playing games will be fluent and smooth in every game he plays, it turns out that Hizutome experienced problems at the start of playing SLF until he was amazed and annoyed himself because he was used to bad games, he forgetting that SLF is a game produced by a leading company in the field of VR games with features that are very different from low-quality games like Hizutome played before.
Hizutome in the Shangri-La Frontier game uses the name Sunraku, the same name used in several VR games played before. His journey in the SLF world begins with his admiration for the enemies he fights while the game is running. Sunraku fights Vorpal Bunny which in my opinion is a good fight scene in terms of animation and character movements that can be compared with classy anime studios, SLF was produced by C2C studio which previously I didn't know that this studio had worked on several anime Majo no Tabitabi, Oneechan ga Kita, and several other anime that I have never watched before.
This anime also has an interesting story apart from Sunraku fighting in the SLF game, but there is also the spice of love of a girl who secretly likes Hizutome. Rei Saga is a girl who likes Hizutome and wants to invite him to play together, but she is too shy to tell him directly, the woman at the game shop tells Rei that Hizutome plays the SLF game and suggests meeting him in the game so they can play together.
Rei is a strong character in the SLF game, her large body with iron armor all over her body makes other players not realize that she is a woman, she uses the name Psyger-0 in the game, and Rei keeps waiting for the moment to meet Sunraku (Hizutome) but their meeting was full of surprises, Psyger-0's character is strong and feared by other players in SLF but she is actually a girl who is looking for a way to be friends with Sunraku and play together.
There was a lot of excitement that I got when watching Shangri-La Frontier, and the characters in it also have their uniqueness in my opinion, like Emul the vorpal bunny from the land of Rabittuza, and Sunraku being one of the lucky characters to get a unique scenario from SLF to enter the world of Rabittuza and get a unique experience there, there are many other interesting things about this anime, and I recommend that those of you who like the isekai genre or VR anime games will be very entertained by the story presented by Shangri-La Frontier.
All my writing in this post is my personal opinion after watching Shangri-La Frontier, if you don't want to be exposed to spoilers, you can watch it first, then stop by my post so we can discuss it further.
