Shangri-La Frontier

Episode 15

Finally, it feels like we are getting to the action promised for the past month and a half. After the last episode aired, setting up the raid on the player killer's guild, I thought that it was going to take much longer before we got to this point, but thankfully, this situation was condensed and taken care of by other characters while our main crew headed to the den of the beast. The build-up here felt properly weighted to everything going on. Emul is hanging back so that she doesn't get hurt, the crew is stocking up on items, and they're trying to find the best angle to take down a creature that has never been beaten before. It feels like watching people getting together to prepare for an epic raid boss in real life. I know I keep going back to Elden Ring, but it is pretty similar.

The music, animation, and action choreography were all on point. We haven't gotten a good fight with some proper back-and-forth since the early episodes of the season. The animation never faltered, but the direction and storyboarding for the first phase of the fight itself towards the end of the episode helped accentuate the scale of the fight. Because this boss keeps your level at fifty, this situation isn't beatable by brute force. Our heroes must use their skills, speed, and observations to come out on top. My favorite part of the episode was Katzo looking on, mumbling to themselves about all the information they're observing about the boss fight.

I was expecting all three of our main cast to bum-rush the boss with a well-coordinated attack, but they plan to run out the clock until the boss exhausts all his skills or an arbitrary, unknown timer runs out. I wouldn't be surprised if this fight takes multiple episodes, but as long as the show keeps its quality, I'll keep looking forward to what gets revealed when the fight is over.

Rating:

Shangri-La Frontier is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.