Story
Rokuro Hizutome Aka Sunraku his gaming tag is our main character who loves to indulge in the most awful trash games. This is literally how the anime begins; however, he begins to get tired of this repetitive process and is recommended that he try out the new God tier game Shangri La Frontier.
Yup that’s it and I love it! To me I think this is genius, the plot is not the best part of this anime, the game is. We are just watching a gamer try to beat this VA game with an expansive world which is extremely diverse. Why do I think it’s a genius idea, because we do this everyday, watching streamers play games so why not do it in an anime. Now don’t get me wrong this anime is clearly a couple of years in the future because all the games are VA styled, and we also see Sunraku in the game more than real life which is great cause his normal everyday life seems kind of boring. Now what catches your attention is the actual game, they’ve done such a great job with creating bosses, special moves, abilities, different characters, and even special features to the point where you actually would like to play the game.
Characters
We really focus on one character within the story which is Sunraku within the beginning of the story we see him do a pivotal move, which is dumping all his skill points to the luck attribute. This move right here successfully ties the story together, on why he ran across the “Lycagon the Nightslayer” monster, on why he’s found the special feature “Rabbituza”. Regardless of this, we see he’s basically coasting within the game based on his previous gaming experience.
Another bullseye for this anime, you can’t have a gaming anime without great character designs. We meet a few side characters which are all girls surprisingly.
We have Psyger – 0 which is like the attack god in the game lol. Surprisingly her real-life alias is a girl that secretly (not so secret) has a crush on our MC. With a background like this you would expect her to be a full suit knight of armor character who is probably one of the strongest in the game.
We have Arthur Pencilgon, yes, the name is a bit weird but she’s a beautiful spear wielding player killing character. Not too much background on this character outside she’s famous in real life and a previous gamer friend of Sunraku’s.
Another character is Oicazzo which is a pro gamer in real life, but character is a blonde hair girl who fight with her fists. Think of Oicazzo as Sunraku’s best friend/rival within this anime.
Animation
This anime pretty much gets passing grades for every aspect you can grade an anime on. The animation of the anime is above average, and I appreciate the details of the background. The biggest aspect of the animation is the fight scenes. The fight with Wethermon the Tomb Guard was great! Not to mention the opening music was great as well, both songs.
Conclusion
So, I’ve praised this anime for being a great anime in all aspects, deservingly so. However, I do fear that this anime will turn into somewhat of an energy drink as I call it. To explain the first season provides you with a rush and then crash after the first season. Like how The Sheild Hero anime has become. Ultimately watching a character progress through a game will slowly but surely continue to have people dropping the anime, with the next season I will be looking for a major plot or something big to happen. I rate this anime with a - "You haven't seen this yet? Turn it on NOW".
Anime scores of 90+ get this recommendation