‘Shangri-La Frontier’ Embraces the Game and Drops the Melodrama
If you die in the game you. . . get to keep having fun on your adventure?
If you’re at all familiar with the anime scene, you know what an isekai is: a story where the protagonist is transported to another world for an adventure. It’s a subgenre that’s popular to the point of oversaturation, and oversaturated spaces demand unique selling points, usually in the form of a unique setting and conceit. When digital gaming is one of the most lucrative entertainment industries in history, it’s only natural that VR, total immersion MMO games would become a common setting for isekai stories — the rules of a video game provide a common baseline of understanding to then build off of and/or subvert, and allows for common battle-anime tropes to naturally fit in without breaking immersion.
Sword Art Online wasn’t the first, but it was definitely the largest anime IP to identify the strengths of this setting and genre combo, and it padded on the stakes by trapping the players in the game and telling them, “if you die in the game, you die in real life.”
It’s all very melodramatic, and that melodrama bled into the tone, worldbuilding, and characters in a way that created contradictions as often as it created meaningful, impactful moments. It also, accidentally, made the world of the show feel less like the game it was, leaving one of the more fun aspects of its setting underused over time.
2023’s Shangri-La Frontier drops the melodrama entirely in order to not only embrace, but relish the experience of gaming itself. Our protagonist Sunraku (real name Hizutome Rakuro) is a young man that chases the high of beating broken, buggy, garbage-tier games, who is convinced to try the titular Shangri-La Frontier, the current god-tier quality VRMMO. By taking skills and knowledge gained by beating games with broken systems, we watch as Sunraku kickstarts his journey into a game world that actually functions as intended, without the looming shadow of mortal doom that other shows have leaned into for stakes.
By focusing on the thrill of discovery and the exultation of system mastery, Shangri-La Frontier diverges from some of its genre peers in a way that is simultaneously charming and relatable. This isn’t a story where whenever the protagonist is against impossible odds we have to pray for some Deus ex Machina to save them. This is a story where we can watch Sunraku run headfirst into a challenge, get absolutely demolished, and then enjoy thinking our way through the problem in parallel with the character. When the anime’s game world throws out a challenge, we’re encouraged to laugh and think about it as if we were players in the game as well.
From unique events reminiscent of events in games like Guild Wars 2, Final Fantasy XIV, or Destiny 2; to a combination of player skill and character ability based combat reminiscent of Skyrim or Elden Ring, the game world of Shangri-La Frontier provides a number of unique challenges and opportunities for the cast to overcome and exploit. If you’ve immersed yourself into any kind of MMO, you’ll be able to relate to the characters of the anime on their journey in a way that a lot of other shows can’t quite capture. This extends to the social component of gaming — guides, forums, chats, in-game guilds and clans dedicated to niche pursuits, all make an appearance in a charming, engaging way that will be immediately recognizable to a gamer viewer. I found myself wanting to play the titular video game myself while watching, and neither Overlord nor Sword Art Online (and its spinoffs) accomplished that.
Shangri-La Frontier capitalizes on the massive overlap between regular anime watchers and gaming enthusiasts to create a story that celebrates both with humor, slick animation quality, and excellent sound and music design. It drops the melodrama endemic to the isekai subgenre and replaces it with brash earnestness to its benefit. At the time of this writing, the show is less than halfway through its first full season, and it’s already moved pretty high on my list of quality anime. It’s well worth your time.
