This series goes out for all the gamers out there that are also into anime.
Shangri-La Frontier recently finished airing the first season and I must admit it was, well, pretty good for its genre. For anyone who wants to comment on the fact that it feels like a Sword Art Online wannabe, I will remind you that recently everything becomes a copy (consider how many Isekai we have seasonally) and S.A.O. was definitely not the first in its genre (the .hack series is way older although unfortunately forgotten). Furthermore, just as I had mentioned in the article about Solo Levelling and web comics, Shangri-La Frontier also started as a web novel. Anyway, in my opinion, Shangri-La Frontier did what pretty much My Hero Academia did for in the shonen world: it effectively used the common tropes at its disposal to create a solid narrative.
The series starts with the main protagonist asking himself a very specific question: “How long has it been since I played something that wasn’t completely garbage?”. This just cracked me up since I considered it much more a critique of the current state of affairs within the gaming world. The protagonist is however what is referred to as a trash gamer or trash game collector in this anime; he searches for the worst possible programmed games and beats them exploiting all the glitches within the system. You could imagine him as your typical speedruner, just a gamer that does a playthrough either at character lever one or without any armor, bigass sword equipped to min-max his stats, and ends up oneshotthing every boss.
And that is pretty much the premise of the anime, a god-tier gamer who understands perfectly how the meta-game should be played and decides to try the best and most complex game on the market. Did I mention that the game itself is in a fully realistic V.R.? – hence why I mentioned S.A.O. and .hack. Probably more implausible than the fact that the V.R. experience is so advanced is the fact that the main character has so much free time to play.
It shows that the author has a deep knowledge of videogames; the game mechanics are explored in detail and even the search for the common bugs and exploits within the depicted world is reminiscent of what gamers do in reality. Furthermore, several basic game mechanics are not even excessively explained and are almost taken for granted; in other words, the series understands its demographic and target audience. All of these details, as well as things like skill issues, levelling, calculating drop rates from enemies are all nuances that give Shangri-La Frontier its solidity and are good arguments for its success. Even the fact that the player community and the P.K.’ing dynamics actually lead to dictating what the gaming world becomes is a good take on the topic (cough cough League players cough cough toxic a.f.).
Overall, I would argue that the pacing, the world-building and animation are all on point, so there is nothing actually to complain about. Is it a profound series? Not in the slightest. Could you analyse and correlate issues that are connected with the real gaming world? Possibly. Is it worth the time? If you want to have some brainless fun, sure.
PS: how the hell did they manage to make a bunny forging a weapon look cool is beyond me, but that part was simply fantastic.