Kara Dennison
January 23, 2025 
On the surface, Shangri-La Frontier is about the joy one kusoge lover finds in a god-tier game. Thanks to the glitches our hero Sunraku has mastered, the challenge of SLF is both approachable and fun. But there’s much more to this anime than its initial conceit. In fact, it has lots to say about how and why we enjoy the hobby of gaming.
Season 2 expands those introspections as Sunraku expands his friend group. Here are a few important lessons we’ve learned from our latest venture into the full-dive game.
Everyone has their own reasons for gaming.
Animalia and the members of her guild, SF Zoo, are relatively minor characters in Shangri-La Frontier. If anything, we’ve seen them as comical antagonists, fixated on invading the space of the game’s cute rabbit NPCs. But in the fight against Lycagon, the guild stepped up in a major way. And while things didn’t go quite as planned, we did learn some important things about Animalia.
Chiefly, we learned why she acts the way she does in game: in real life, she’s very allergic to animals. What may strike other players as annoying is a major drive to engage in the game. The full-dive VR experience grants her an important experience she can’t get in the real world. In other words, just because someone doesn’t play like us, that doesn’t mean they’re playing “wrong.”
When in doubt, take a break.
Shangri-La Frontier isn’t the only game we see Sunraku play in the series. Occasionally he’ll take a break to dive into other games. And when SLF becomes frustrating, he does something important: he switches games for a bit. Thus begins the Nephilim Hollow arc, filled with epic giant robot battles and new allies.
Besides just being a fun change of pace, this arc lays out an important theme: taking a break when a game is stressing you out. Games are meant to be fun, and hitting a wall is the opposite of fun. Stepping away to do something else—another game, another hobby, whatever—can get you back on track. You may even come back with new insight!
Everything is more fun with friends!
Sunraku starts Shangri-La Frontier going solo. And once he does make friends in-game, they’re mostly NPCs. But by the end of season 1, he’d teamed up with some actual friends. That group is growing to include admirers from real life and other games. And, he’s discovering, trusting others can be both fun and helpful!
A key moment in the standoff with Lycagon changed his mentality on how closely he guards his experience. Yes, going it alone would keep the games secrets closely guarded. But focusing too much on guarding those secrets can get in the way. When he trusted Psyger-0 (a.k.a. Rei) to have his back, things improved. And with a whole new expansion in front of him, he’ll need all the allies he can get!
Shangri-La Frontier season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
