Gaming is a feeling in your SOUL, man.

It’s as much a thing you do as a thing you experience, as a thing you inhibit, as a thing you BECOME. Playing video games is the rawest form of escapism because you become the player, the hero, the number one, propelling the force of the narrative at the push of a button.

Shangri-La Frontier is the first anime that gets the holistic gamer shtick down pat. See, the whole joy of gaming is a very tactile feeling: you get the sense that it’s never really DONE. Whereas with a movie, you press play, and let it run ‘till it’s over, video games are an eternal experience. Whether it be sidequests, speedruns, or achievement hunting, most games offer repeatability, rePLAYability, and that is their greatest strength. There’s always something to do.

SLF captures this in stride, kicking things off with “trash games player” Sunraku, a young man choosing to revel himself in only the bottomest of the barrelest games, because he loves tearing at the mechanics from the inside, seeing what ticks, seeing how far he can push the game, seeing just how awful everything is with his surprisingly-well-working eyeballs. So, when his friends invite him to hit game Shangri-La Frontier, he’s skeptical. He doesn’t play good games any more than I watch good anime! Regardless, he gives it a shot, and soon finds himself itching at every turn to get back into it. From here, there’s glimpses into protagonist Sunraku’s everyday in the real world, but it rarely consists of more than a convenience store run and a silly romance subplot. From here, it’s all gaming, all the time, baby.

In terms of a narrative, SLF isn’t gonna blow your socks off, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a simple to-the-top narrative propelled by fun characters, old friends, and cheesy villains with bosses to beat and quests to fulfill. In that way, it’s a video game you can watch, which is an experience that I can’t say I’ve had with anything else. Except maybe Versus. Loveeee Versus.

One fun twist to it all is that Sunraku decided to dump all his points into the luck statistic, something most players won’t do, and gets so lucky in that luck that it prompts a whole narrative with him as the epicenter. He encounters legendary enemies at low levels, uncovers a new dimension, gains access to superweapons, and is cursed with scars that wrap around his body, marking him as “The Special”, “The Chosen One”…in case we weren’t aware already!

Nothing is told or explained in excess. Shangri-La trusts its viewers with its simple mechanics and quirks and characters, laying it all out on the table very clearly, and referencing back to itself when it needs to, whatwith item descriptions, abilities, and the whatnot. Each episode has a myriad of accomplishments and is polished with solid animation, and silly tunes to keep you rolling. The energetic performances recall late-night voice calls and blazing trivial bickering that only the devoted could know. Interesting, but unobtrusive hooks, funny sideplots…Are you sold yet?

**In many ways, Shangri-La Frontier is the anti-*Sword Art Online.***

Though both take place in video game worlds, Sword Art Online takes a serious slant with the “you die in the game, you die in real life” mantra, whereas Shangri-La Frontier offers no such ultimatum to its characters, as they log on and off freely, instead being allowed to revel in their world, feeling more like an extended hangout session.

It’s got the gall to build up a legendary boss with four episodes worth of brutal, cathartic, high-stakes fighting. It’s got upgrades. It’s got save-scumming. It’s GAMING.

Inside the box, but thinking outside it.

Where Sunraku starts, a ritualistic fun-having doomsayer with masochistic tendencies for the awfulest of awful games, is completely different from where he ends up, a freewheeling, reliant, still fun-having optimist with a laundry list of fun to-dos! It feels HUGE, like, even just with Sunraku as a character, he becomes more reliant on his friends, on allies in-game, on the world itself as he learns to stand on its feet, too, and trust it. There’s a slow feeling that ripples down your arms and to your toes when you settle into a good game, and that’s exactly the feeling this captures.

Shangri-La Frontier is the video game anime given flesh. It’s what you want when you think of one, much in the way that Speed Racer is the perfect anime-to-movie adaptation. It’s very much simple entertainment for entertainment’s sake, but sometimes all you need is an energy drink to the mouth, a lack of sleep, and a play of the game.

**Welcome to *Shangri-La Frontier.***