Shangri-La Frontier: Kusoge Hunter, Kamige ni Idoman to su 2nd Season

Ever since Rakurou "Sunraku" Hizutome started to play the extremely popular virtual reality game Shangri-La Frontier, he has truly fallen in love with it. Sunraku has quickly made a big name for himself by fighting two of the seven unique, nearly unbeatable monsters, which is unthinkable for most players. To progress the game's story, he sets out on an adventure with his leporine guide, Emul, to acquire a magic operation unit from an ancient workshop.

Though Sunraku breezes through this quest alongside his clanmates Towa "Arthur Pencilgon" Amane and Kei "OiKatzo" Uomi, there seems to be an ulterior motive as to why the two of them decided to help Sunraku in the first place. Nevertheless, Sunraku gains valuable knowledge and allies, critical for his advancement in the game. By seeking out powerful enemies and unraveling the inner workings of the game's world, Sunraku may just change Shangri-La Frontier forever.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Hizutome, Rakurou Main

Uchida, Yuuma Japanese

Emul Supporting

Hidaka, Rina Japanese

Amane, Towa Supporting

Hikasa, Youko Japanese

Saiga, Rei Supporting

Waki, Azumi Japanese

Vysache Supporting

Ootsuka, Akio Japanese

Uomi, Kei Supporting

Koichi, Makoto Japanese

Hakamori no Wethermon Supporting

Hayami, Show Japanese

Bilac Supporting

Tomita, Miyu Japanese

Akitsu, Akane Supporting

Terasaki, Yuka Japanese

Rust Supporting

Takahashi, Rie Japanese

Kubooka, Toshiyuki Director

Fujita, Akiko Sound Director

Fudeyasu, Kazuyuki Script, Series Composition

Hiraike, Yoshimasa Storyboard

Reviews

Mar 30, 2025

KANLen09

Recommended

Shangri-La Frontier, Round 2 — The God-tier game never ceases to amaze, and Challenge 2 Challenge is the perfect animosity for a studio name that never once shuns from giving the audience its hype train that never stops.

What comes to mind when you think of "the greatest game that's ever lived?" There are a lot of games for that matter, so let's dumb it down to just anime depictions of it. Some will say that Sword Art Online still plays a huge precedent, being the franchise that has lasted on a golden platter since its 2012 debut, and that's no question at all being the ... VR MMORPG that pretty much influenced the gaming landscape in terms of anime. And within the last few years or so, the newest contender of mangaka Katarina's Shangri-La Frontier has been going strong since its Fall 2023 debut with studio C2C at the helm, and it's no surprise that we're once again back yet into another Fall-Winter seasonal crossover with the studio's first-ever 2-cour back-to-back sequel series enlisting of a god-tier game that never refuses to say never, because never is NOT enough.

With Season 2 continuing the leftovers from Volume 7 to the middle of Volume 14 of the manga, it's evident from Season 1 that there's no definition of a good stopping point, because from the intents of director Toshiyuki Kubooka, it is meant to keep each and every episode hyped for the next, to the next. And yes, given that Sunraku and the gang have weathered the storm against Weathermon the Tombguard (which was one of the major arcs of Season 1), going into Season 2 with the Ether Reactor arc, where Sunraku would eventually make his own secret Inventoria, only to face inherent difficulty in reckoning switching to yet another game for help and ideas, to then revisit his lifelong in-game nemesis once again to try and remove the initial curse set upon him with the Nightslayer's Shadow arc (which is quite the action-heavy arc), thereby taking a switch with yet another Unique Scenario of the Abyss City arc and the much-anticipated GGC arc that clearly defines what SLF is all about.

If you have to take a gander at how Season 2 does things differently, I will have to say to look out for both Lycagon's revisit as well as the other games that were played in the middle of SLF. Remember, Sunraku started out his journey as a total noob, only to be affected by Lycagon's curse the moment he was about to break the bank of the game's development stage. And because this boisterous creature is so hard to locate, it takes comrades and a well-executed strategy just to find the rare enemy alone to convince it to undo the curse on him. Sadly, as much as Sunraku wants to exact revenge on Lycagon, it backfires and induces him to a fault that everyone, from players to NPCs, will notice the evil aura emitting from him. The GGC aspect, though, really turns SLF into one glorified Gamer's Aura of a video game anime because of the other games in place, like Nephilim Hollow that allow for unlimited parallels of other SLF players in those games to take even more precedent. Once again, remember that when Sunraku met OiKatzo for the first time, it was in the trash game BERP for hardcore trash gamers, which is how he and Arthur Pencilgon a.k.a Towa Amane got into the whole SLF shtick in the first place. And the sequel expands a bit more from the local to the international stage, where eSports is at its height of fame and the hardcore know their skills fully well. It's always the integration of both internal and external factors that makes SLF one of the most tightly confined series I've seen, and it has been proven in Season 1, so it should be in Season 2 here as well.

I need not say that C2C has been pushing themselves like (the once) Studio Bind to pump out only one core source material, and they're continuing to nail flawless production and near-perfect animation prowess even for Season 2. Yes, there have been somewhat of production cuts that are obvious for the sequel, but it is overall still better than the average 3rd-rate studios out there who can't muster much.

OST continues to be just as great, with the tight integration that always works no matter what. The OP/ED set is where I have reservations of a hit-and-miss experience. LiSA's OP and otoha's ED knocked it out of the park for the 1st Cour, but Awich's OP and CVTLE's ED regressed it back for the 2nd Cour. To be fair, the songs are not bad at all, especially for the 2nd Cour with its rather dark depiction and 8-bit stylized features, but I don't think that it held its weight against what we have heard for almost 1.5 years now.

Still, managaka Katarina's Shangri-La Frontier still continues to impress in its consistency, and heck, we're not even anywhere remotely close to done with the adaptation, especially since Season 3 has been in the works for quite some time already. If there's any chance of catching up to SLF, now's the time to respond to the gamer vibes within you and just let loose your gamer bait rage to experience one of, if not, the greatest video game-inspired adaptations out there.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Mar 30, 2025

CaptainKenshiro

Mixed Feelings

Well the second season is here and since the specifics were already covered on the first one, this one will be shorter and more straightforward, kinda like the show itself. People keep playing videogames in a mostly fun looking way so there are still reasons to be pleased with this continuation, but it’s definitely worse than its predecessor due to the following reasons:

-The pacing is slower. The first season already had a slower pacing on its second half, and it became worse in here. Now the main characters have interacted and formed an alliance with other players that care about the lore and unique scenarios ... and epic bosses of the game and stuff, which is good, but now there is a lot more sitting down and talking and exposition going on.

-Speaking of exposition, it had become worse in this season compared to the one before it. Since the protagonist has leveled up and unlocked new weapons and abilities, there’s a lot more inner monologues about that, and even on screen there are a lot more explanations about in-game mechanics. And since the show moved on to the fights against the epic bosses that affect the whole in-game world, there is a lot more strategic discussion between the characters. Infamously, there is an episode where half of it or more was about a party planning what to do against an epic boss while having it occupied with a decoy.

-The protagonist is now more broken. He has access to an OP inventory full of powerful items that even serves as a room to teleport to, so he uses it in battle as an escape route to rest and heal a little, and to come back from, more geared up. Speaking of gear he also gets more powerful weapons as he levels up and works with NPCs, so he doesn’t struggle nor is as creative against small enemies as he used to be. Yes, it is a natural course in videogames in general so it makes sense for the writing to be that way, but it doesn’t really prevent it from being a slightly worse watching experience. Even when it seemed that he was disadvantaged at some point, he works his way around it and comes off as more OP and it never feels like he struggles much.

-There is little plot progression. Despite seemingly moving forward due to showing more characters, enemies and places within the in-game setting, the characters don’t really progress much in what they want to do in the game. The protagonist even gets a second chance against that one epic boss from the first season, for the MMORPG and the show to pull out a troll.

-There is focus on other type of content in it and not in the best ways. The series now bothers to explore the backstories of other characters and how they began to play videogames and roleplay and why they choose their playstyles in specific. Character fleshing is good but when an action show does it in the middle of a fight interrupting the flow of the series, it is an issue. And although I now don’t find Rei to be a creepy stalker, I still feel like her attraction to the protagonist is rather silly and superficial and I wish there was less focus on it.

-Related to that, the anime is now slightly more serious. Although still primarily a comedy action adventure show, since now characters even have entire episodes dedicated to introspect about why and how they play videogames and roleplay, they started to take, well, videogames, more seriously. It is nowhere near the embarrassing levels of other shows, which I already criticized on my review of the first season, but it was preferable as it was before.

-The series dedicates runtime to other videogames. I don’t really find this to be an issue, as it shows more of the characters outside the main game and playing more stuff and using other mechanics. I find that to be a nice change for a short while, and the anime even uses that to show how someone can get a burnout from a hobby, and it even ties the characters and events from those other games to the main one, so I don’t take it as wasted screentime. The directing even went to change the title of the anime at the beginning of some episodes and commercial brakes, which was a nice touch. Other people did find it to be an issue, so I think it was worth mentioning.

-Since I covered the occasional change of videogames, that leads me to talk about another actual problem which is the animation becoming worse. One of the other videogames is a so-so and far more generic looking mecha fighting game with far less customizations, so its aesthetics are more plain and boring looking, and even has weak CGI and less detailed artwork all around. But even within the main game, the artwork and character figures became weaker, the backgrounds and special effects, and even some epic monsters have now far more and more noticeable rather poor looking CGI. Even the motions and impact frames feel and look worse than they did before. At its best the series still looks great and sometimes even far better than it did in the first season, but its overall decline in visual quality is very prominent and can’t be denied. Near the end of the season, the characters play another fighting game with roleplay elements, which although it had uninteresting gameplay, it also featured interesting mind game like abilities and much more interesting and better visuals.

-Even the audio department is considerably worse. The music is still the same but less prominent and with a several case of lacking good insert songs, there are two new openings and two new endings, none of which I liked particularly but the first ending was nice to look because the characters were in suits and dresses. The voice acting is about the same, and the sound effects are far weaker than they were in the first season.

-The ending is still open of course, as the source material is ongoing, but it is also a double cliffhanger of sorts, so it is worse than the one from the first season. Luckily the continuation was already confirmed, but is that a good thing?

As a whole, the anime is still watchable to kill some time but it has undeniably become worse than it was and if they don’t stop its production for a little while to try and polish it to its previous level, it might affect the following entries to the point where they might become bad.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Mar 30, 2025

joemaamah

Not Recommended

Funny

Preliminary (18/25 eps)

Started a little slow, but picked up after a couple episodes. Then it went straight into the dumpster. We need nephilim washed away in a world wide flood, to bring things back to where they belong.

The art work is the same. There's been a slight uptick in the animation quality this season. No problems on this front.

The characters seem to have been a mixed bag. Bilac is the only one to have gotten any real development so far. But the writing to introduce a new character has been sketchy at best. Why throw in this mecha silliness when she's already got SLF experience? ... Which leads to the narrative writing. Why are they wasting multiple episodes on mecha trash? If I wanted to see that crap I'd queue up some Gundams. It's jarring to start off in fantasy land, and then BAM! suddenly it's a sci-fi cosmos, with no apparent need for any such transition.

Most of the original VAs still doing a decent enough job. Although I think Sunrako and at least 2 of the new characters introduced are being overacted. So at least in that regard the direction slid compared to Season 1.

Even if we get heaping helpings of vorpal bunnies for the rest of the season, damage has already been done. I'd have started this season off at an 88/100 B+ grade, but since then it's dumped to a B- at 82/100. I'll grind through to the end of the season, but not sure the writers can keep this series from the trash game bargain bin.

Finally got back to the meat and potatoes. Thought Lycagon springing up out of nowhere was a bit of a stretch, but it was the start of a good fight. Creep the grade back to a full B 85/100.

The plot and characters have improved, but the animation quality is surely sliding. Let's hope the producers are saving up their pennies for an impressive ending. I'd hate to see this become just another flashy trash anime.

They finally get into the real quest of the season, and they are going to rug-pull us for some dorky "pro gamer" arc in another game? Just jarring, and some piss poor writing. Could they make up their minds what game they are writing about? Dropping out of B territory to C+ at 78/100.

If I wanted Final Fantasy I'd load it on my PC. New character is a bitch. Drop this season's grade even further to 72/100 for a C-. The only reason left to watch this mess is to see if it can remain out of D territory. But I'm not feeling it and changing from Recommend to Mixed.

Avoids D territory, but only because it's plunged straight to an E at 45/100. SLF is at its peak when its focused on the game and not the lame self-insert players. The writers kick the game to the curb not once, but twice this season. I've had enough of this foolishness. It's going in the DROPPED pile after 22 eps. Can't hardly recommend it at all.

I lied and finished the season. And yes it got even worse. The writing falls off the table, and the animation, especially in the finale, drops to miserable. Let's now call this 40/100, E- teetering on the edge of an F. It amazes me the producers could fuck the second season up this badly.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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