Literature / Shangri-La Frontier

Shangri-La Frontier (Full Japanese title: シャングリラ・フロンティア～クソゲーハンター、神ゲーに挑まんとす～ Shangurira Furontia ~ Kusogē hantā, Kamigē ni Idoman to su, roughly translating as "Shangri-La Frontier: Crappy Game Hunter Challenges God-Tier Game") is an action, comedy and Science Fantasy Web Serial Novel written by author Katarina, which was originally released on the website Shousetsuka ni Narou in 2017.

The novel follows high-schooler Rakurou Hizutome, a boy who loves to play video games—more specifically "trash games" that are poorly made and/or full of glitches, since he loves overcoming a challenge no matter how bad the game is. After his latest exploits to the trash bin of the gaming world, the egregiously terrible RPG "Faeria Chronicle Online", he is convinced to try out Shangri-La Frontier, a supposed god-tier MMO, by the shopkeeper of his favorite game store. He takes up the challenge and creates for himself the character of Sunraku, wearing only his loin-cloth and bird mask, and attempts to see what a great RPG can show him.

The novel has a manga adaptation illustrated by Ryosuke Fuji, which began serialization in Weekly Shonen Magazine in 2020, and an anime adaptation which aired as part of the the Fall 2023 anime season. In 2022, it was announced that there is a video game based on the novel in the plans. Shortly after the Season 1 finale, it was announced that a second season would air starting in October 2024.

Beware of Unmarked Spoilers below!!

Tropes

• 20 Minutes into the Future: The novel's setting is a near future Japan with the major difference from modern day being the adoption of full-immersion VR gaming systems in place of traditional systems.
• Acceptable Breaks from Reality:
  • Discussed. United Rounds had a gameplay that heavily prioritized the realism of living in a dying kingdom, causing the drop rate to be so realistic low that starting 20 Bear Asses type quests could take hours to finish. Players then took up looting and stealing instead of trying to save the kingdom to make up for the atrocious in-game economy, which Pencil Knight leveraged for her power takeover. In other words, the game would be better designed if it was less realistic.
  • Also In-Universe, it's mentioned that once VR games were just starting, there was attempts at increasing the realism of games by also using the technology to induce pain onto players if they suffered an in-game injury (first mentioned in a throwaway line by Sunraku on his fight against the Mud Digger, then expanded when talking of the dead Survival Gunman game, which became particularly infamous due to combining the above with rather graphic gore effects). It has been all but stated that it was uniformly decried as a terrible idea that should never be implemented, both for the enjoyment and the health of the players involved.
• The Ace: Silvia Goldberg, the most notable member of the American pro-gaming team Star Rain. Imagine someone with the same play style as Rakurou but with even better reaction time, as well as crazy levels of mental endurance that allows her to outplay entire teams by herself. She has never been defeated in a match (at most you might win a battle, but it's difficult to get even that) until Kei finally manages to triumph by exploiting her only weakness - that she's actually The Roleplayer and couldn't bring herself to not do a heroic act even when it costs her the match.
• Adapted Out: During the introduction of Lycagon in episode 2, the anime cuts to the headquarters of the developers of the game, showcasing a screen that reads that there was 0 story development, and by extension, 0 Unique Monsters defeated. In the manga, a mysterious silhouette is actually shown looking at said screen and bemoaning the lack of advancement despite her efforts in creating the game.
• An Arm and a Leg: Shangri-La Frontier allows for limb damage of this sort. That being said, while characters losing limbs is possible and deals damage, there is not much to it; they'll return upon revival and there's no pain involved, which means it is mostly an annoyance and a strategic drawback than anything.
  • During his fight with the "Unique Monster" Lycagon, Sunraku gets his legs chopped off, leaving him immobile until he is defeated. They return upon revival.
  • Pencilgon loses her arm during the fight against the Kirin. While she holds out a little longer, she has to stab herself and KO herself, so she can be brought back with the other arm with a revival item because, as a spear user, not having both arms makes her weapon too unwieldy.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Players who wind up fighting a Unique Monster will receive a massive amount of EXP even if they lose (as pretty much anyone would, given that each of them is basically a Superboss in one way or another). Given SLF's usual approach to gameplay (difficult but realistic, with success at least being possible unlike in some of the trash games Sunraku has played), this was likely to help incentivize players to actually seek out the U.M.s, as otherwise no one except for the highest level players would even try to approach them. Unfortunately this feature was abused by Asura Kai (a clan of P.K.ers), who found one UM (Wezaemon) that had a predictable schedule and location, to easily farm EXP, at least until Pencilgon sold them out by revealing the location of their base and then permanently defeating Wezaemon alongside Sunraku and Oicazzo.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Early on, we see a silhouetted shot of one of the creators of SLF, bemoaning the fact that even after a year of service and several million players, none of the Unique Monsters had been defeated (leaving the World Scenario story at 0%). When a Unique Monster was finally defeated by Sunraku, Pencilgon and Oicazzo, it was actually massively Sequence Breaking, as the UM in question (Wezaemon) was meant to be a mid-late encounter, and the developers couldn't undo it as the victory had been entirely legitimate, so they had to scramble to add the necessary story changes for the World Scenario.
• Beef Gate: The intended progression path of the game is to move through the cities in numerical order. It is possible to take alternate routes which skip to later cities, but these will typically lead through areas that are much higher level than normal players will be able to handle at that stage.
• Benevolent Precursors: The Divines are the ancestors of the modern population of SLF who lived during an ancient period known as the Divinity. They crafted impressive magitek which is scattered across the world but died in order to protect the world for their descendants from an unknown threat.
• Big Ball of Violence: A variant is seen when Sunraku has to hide Bilac and Aramiys in his ghost cloak. Bilac immediately begins attacking Aramiys, resulting in the cloak bulging erratically all around Sunraku's body.
• Boss Rush: Sunraku's Rabituza quest leads to an Arena battle against 10 sequential bosses of varying difficulty, culminating in the fact against an unique enemy called Abhorrent Woodmage, which Sunraku is the only player to have fought so far. A bit unusually for this trope, losing one battle did not reset Sunraku's progress, meaning he could largely progress through it at his own pace (though it's implied he did it in one sitting anyway), and he was even allowed to have multiple attempts with any boss that he lost to, with some being beaten on the first try while others took multiple tries (the most stand-out being the Toxic Eagle, which took 112 attempts before Sunraku could beat it).
• Botanical Abomination: The Abhorrent Woodmage is heavily implied to be a mage that fused itself with plant life in an attempt to gain immortality.
  • One of the in-universe playable villains in the Galaxia Heroes fighting game, Yggdraiah, is a woman who was altered to be half plant through Mad Science.
• Breakable Weapons: Shangri-La Frontier has a "durability" system for the players' weapons, armor and accessories, where the durability drops after each use/hit in combat until it reaches 0, whereupon the weapon becomes unusable. Fortunately the item isn't permanently lost, and it's usually easy enough to restore them to full (it just requires the service on an in-game blacksmith), but players like Sunraku will often carry multiple weapons or equipment sets in case they need to change gear mid-fight.
• Breaking Old Trends: Setsuna informs the main characters to look for "Bahamut", which may be something of a Myth Arc for the game. While Oicazzo immediately thinks of a dragon or a monster, as Bahamut is the name of a mythologic Arabic monster, and it has been portrayed in various games, most notably in the Final Fantasy series, as a dragon. Setsuna assures them it is not a monster, which breaks tradition from real life (and apparently In-Universe) gaming.
• Call-Back: While getting weapons forged, Sunraku recalls a trash dating game where he was constantly getting a bad ending where all the love interests left to study at a pizzeria. After a tense meeting with Psyer-0, Sunraku muses he should probably try playing a game that will teach him some social skills. When Oicazzo recommends a dating game, Sunraku declines on account of his pizzeria trauma.
• Cast from Experience Points: Part of Pencilgon's plan to defeat Wezaemon the Tombguard involves using a powerful item that temporarily boosts all stats to the point where you are the equivalent of a max level character. However, as time goes on, your effective level drops, until you reach a floor of 20 levels below where you started.
• Cast from Money: The Rewards Scales is a special, unique item that Pencilgon gets from the merchant guild. It takes items with certain values in one scale and outputs an effect of equal value on its "Blessing's Dish". She uses this in a fight to bless Sunraku and Oicazzo with massive temporary extra stats in exchange for 30 million of the in-game currency.
• Challenge Gamer: All of Sunraku's friends count to an extent, but Sunraku himself is an especially bad case. The story starts with Sunraku taking on another trash game to the end which is something of a hobby of his. He is later encouraged to play an actually good game in the form of SLF, allowing him to face ememies at a higher level than his.
• Cheese Strategy: invoked Sunraku is not above using them against strong enemies if he realizes there is one, but won't do them if he feels that they drain the game from the fun of playing it. For example, he realizes that it is possible to use the Clown Spider's Gimmick Level against it and easily beat it with that method, but stops because he finds more fun in actually fighting it. Meanwhile, he uses a cheesy strategy to make the Crystal Scorpions fight each other and get them to drop loot, though he uses it specifically to gather materials, since they're way over leveled for him.
• Class and Level System: The titular game uses classes during character creation, where players can pick a specific job to level up throughout the game, with most of the later customization tied to equipment, sub-jobs and skills (the last of which are generally rewarded based on a player's actions and achievements rather than their class). The initial chosen class offers both benefits and drawbacks (e.g. Oicazzo's monk class prevents them from equipping any weapons or armor in exchange for being able to use some potent buffs, while Sunraku's Mercenary/Wanderer improves their proficiency with dual weapons but their location during the player's first time logging in is randomly chosen rather than in the starter town like most other classes).
• Cliffhanger: Season 1 ends with Sunraku meeting The Professor and being offered to join him in tracking down the real story of the game. To a lesser degree, both Oicazzo and Arthur had sent him emails asking for help with something or another they're up to.
• Closest Thing We Got: One of Kei's reasons for asking Sunraku and Pencilgon to act as substitute players for his pro-gamer team's exhibition match with Star Rain (despite neither of them being professional gamers, though their skills are nothing to sneeze at either) is that they both have experience playing SLF, whose engine is being used in the game being played in the exhibition match, Galaxia Heroes: Chaos. This would give them an advantage over the American team, who wouldn't have that experience due to SLF currently being region locked to Japan.
• Connected All Along: An extra shows that Momo and Towa actually know each other, and are even close enough to go out for drinks together to console another industry friend after a failed event.
• Critical Hit Class: Sunraku's build has high Agility to help dodge attacks, high Luck to maximize the chance of critical hits, and very little else.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: When logging back in to BERP to try and train for the fight against Wezaemon, Sunraku encounters a new player, Dragonfly, and offers to spar to show them some of the bugged moves that form the basis of BERP's charm. Sunraku emerges victorious repeatedly, but lets Dragonfly win one round due to Dragonfly unwittingly discovering a new bugged move for the players to experiment with.
• Curse: The game features a curse mechanic in which certain enemies may leave a mark on a player which can cause negative status effect and change their relationship with the world's NPCs. Sunraku gets the "Mark of Lycagon", which forbids him from equipping armor in any part of his body marked while also making said parts resistant to magic, and causes him to get involved in the Rabituza quest line.
  • Cursed with Awesome: One of the side effects of the Mark of Lycagon is that it makes lower level enemies run away from Sunraku in fear. While this can be annoying for grinding, it does make it easier to traverse lower level areas without being bothered by random enemies. The magic resistance that prevents him from receiving buffs or healing from allies also applies to other curses, giving him some handy protection from the effects of places like the Inner Canyon of Lost Souls.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
  • Just like most MMOs players in SLF don't have to worry about permanent death, as they'll just respawn at certain locations (such as inns) that they can set beforehand, though they will suffer a temporary penalty to their stats for a while. This is notably averted for NPCs like Emul, so Sunraku has to take extra care to make sure they're not in danger of dying, like making sure she's not involved with the battle against Wezaemon.
  • An update significantly increased the danger of death for Player-Killers in SLF. Any player who kills a Player-Killer can loot not only the items and money the Player-Killer was carrying, but also anything they have in storage. Even with workarounds to protect some of their inventory, many Player-Killers have become extremely cautious of PvP.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Pencilgon became friends with Oicazzo and Sunraku after the two of them ended her reign as Queen in United Rounds (albeit after blowing up the castle the three were all fighting in to take them down with her as a last laugh).
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • SLF has no hard safeguards against Sequence Breaking. If a player wants to ignore the suggested leveling path to freely explore they can do so, with one origin even allowing players to start at a random location rather than in the starter town. While this increases player immersion, it also means players may miss important tutorials, like Sunraku missing the entire exposition about skills and some of the game's deeper mechanics. More importantly, while the developers planned for the Seven Colossi to be defeated in a certain order to progress the game's story, they're all available to fight if players can locate them, and said order is never made clear to anyone except the game's creators. This allowed Sunraku, Oicazzo, and Pencilgon to take out a late game boss years earlier than planned, leaving the creators scrambling to adjust their plans to this unforeseen circumstance.
  • The decision to use the game engine for Shangri-La Frontier in the newest game of the Galaxia Heroes fighter series. While fully understandable given how advanced the engine is, and a net boon all around, apparently the developers didn't consider the potential for what might happen when a setting featuring NPCs with realistic appearances and reactions is put in the hands of a player who is more than happy to play the villain in a basically consequence free environment. As Towa/Pencilgon's match shows, the result can be In-Universe Nightmare Fuel for the audience, and one of the commentators remarks that they'll have to edit out much of the carnage she caused in any footage they release.
  • Chapter 174 of the manga reveals that there's was a In-Universe full dive game called Survival Gunman (known to its fans as "Sur-vile") that has a somewhat infamous reputation due to a certain feature. Initially marketed as a PvP Survival game with gruesome gore graphics, it was later revealed that it had a hidden feature, that the game could fully simulate physical pain, in a game where losing limbs and even your head was entirely possible. The discovery of this feature caused so much controversy among the public (especially since full-dive technology was still relatively new at the time and there were concerns about the effects this could have on the players' brains) that it forced the developers to permanently shut down all online servers.
  • Eito "Eight" Sasahara is a gaming idol with her own TV Show that decided to make her own special SLF event. However, neither her nor her crew realized that around the same time was a special event celebrating the anniversary of Saint Eristella, an important NPC in the game, which would gift players that complete her Unique Scenario double EXP and five-fold Drop Rate for the day, which means that the bulk of the players would be invested in grinding for levels or items at that point. As a result, only 10% of Eight's expected crowd showed up. Towa and Momo even point this out as Eight had already participated in the previous instance of that same event.
• Dramatic Irony: Rei is over the moon about starting a friendship with the target of her affections and believes she has made a significant advancement in their relationship when they interact both on real life and in-game. Sunraku however, considers Psyger-0 a useful acquaintance at best (and is somewhat terrified of them at worst, occasionally mistaking Psyger-0's intense interest as anger for some unknown slight), is a little weirded out by their overly polite way of speaking, and only calls when he needs them for something, while outside of it, Rakurou doesn't even know Rei's name and only vaguely recalls her from school. He also doesn't seem to be aware that Rei and Psyger-0 are the same person, something she assumes is a given to him.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The fauna-loving guild SF Zoo attempt to gain long-term access to Rabituza (and the vorpal rabbits within) by fulfilling the requirements for the Unique Scenario that Sunraku found, by pinning down Lycagon with various magics to make it easier to score 100 critical hits, based on information sold to them by Pencilgon. Sunraku (who's present by complete accident) is doubtful that this plan will work. This is partly because said information was formed from guesswork by Sunraku himself (and he admits to not being able to confirm it) and is incomplete at best (making him think Pencilgon was just scamming them for money). In addition, his personal experience with the rabbits (who greatly respect strength and daring) tells him they wouldn't respect such an underhanded method like this. This winds up being rendered moot, as Lycagon reveals some of the tricks she's been hiding, and wipes out SF Zoo.
• Dual Wielding: Sunraku starts as a dual-wielding mercenary class.
• Early-Bird Cameo: Blink and you'll miss it, but if you look closely in the first chapter/episode, you'll see a magazine with famous super model Towa Amane on it. She later makes her appearance in the series as Arthur Pencilgon, notorious player killer and founder of Asura-Kai.
• Elite Mook: The Vorpal Rabbit from the starter forest. It is a fast attacking and hard-hitting enemy, but also quite rare. Sunraku spends his first hours hunting a few more to get their weapons.
  • The Golden Scorpion, a variant of the Crystal Scorpions found above the Inner Canyon of Lost Souls. Not only is it much stronger than its crystal counterparts, it possesses a Healing Factor that can be used if badly injured and it can shoot poison from its stinger in a variety of patterns to hit its target. In terms of sheer combat strength, Sunraku compares it to freaking Wezaemon, though he does manage to take it down through exploiting its AI.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: In-Universe. Because so SLF is such an open ended game, but also very vague in terms of lore and story, some players play the game specifically for the pleasure of figuring out and discovering the world story, history, and lore. The Library is a guild solely dedicate to hunting down and cataloguing in-game information, including about the Seven Colossi.
• Equipment Upgrade: In-Universe. There's a system where weapons can be upgraded if the player has enough funds and/or can provide the right materials to a skilled enough blacksmith. In addition, certain weapons can be enhanced and changed into a different form after meeting certain conditions, usually related to how they're used in battle. This is called "ascending" the weapon. Vysache does this for Sunraku's vorpal knives, turning them into a unique twin dagger set.
• Establishing Character Moment: Our first introduction to Sunraku is him defeating the final boss of a trash game, only to turn around and deliver a flying kick to an NPC he found annoying.
  • Oicazzo gets introduced by doing the seemingly impossible: beating Sunraku in a super-buggy fighting game.
  • Pencilgon makes her appearance after engaging in some good old fashioned Player Killing.
  • Psyger-0's abilities get talked up a lot, but the moment we really get to see her in action is when she gets attacked by Asura-kai. As a result, we get to see why she's one of SLF's top players.
• "Eureka!" Moment: During the boss battle against Wezaemon, Oicazzo's job is to occupy its steed, Kirin, and prevent the two from joining together. When Kirin's bucking proves too much for Oicazzo's rodeo skills, Pencilgon encourages him by telling him to "stay strapped in". This gives Oicazzo the idea of using his whip to tie himself onto Kirin's head, trapping it in the "bucking off" behavior until the phase change.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Sunraku originally knew Arthur Pencilgon from a different, crappy MMO whose economy was so bad that players resorted to robbing and murdering NPCs and each other to advance. Pencilgon thrived in this environment and became a de facto dictator. Likewise, they both know Oicazzo from the same MMO, and Sunraku also played in another MMO with Oicazzo (this one a fighting game that had so many bugs that the small but dedicated fan base chose to incorporate them into the meta).
• Experience Penalty: Sunraku gets forcefully equipped with the Vorpal Collar by Vash after accepting his training, which halves his EXP gain...in exchange for giving him 2.5x more Stat points.
• Fanservice: Discussed. Sunraku is very turned off when Emul turns into a bunny girl, because he believes that the tropey fanservice has cheapened the immersion of being in a fantasy world and pushed it more towards something like an ecchi harem game. That being said, even in her human form Emul is dressed comparatively conservatively, as her dress and coat covers almost her whole body, but the concept of a bunny girl tends to lean more into fanservice tropes.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Looking at Rakurou's shelves in Episode 1, the viewer can see he categorizes the trash games he plays on them, including considering them really trash or not trash at all.
• Fun with Acronyms: The official acronym of Berserk Online Passion is "ben-P", but players began calling it "benpi", meaning "constiptaion".
• Forging Scene: Vysache gets a scene where he spends several minutes forging Sunraku an upgraded weapon, including tempering it in intense flames, slamming on it with a hammer that produces magic sigils which imbue into the weapon with each strike, and singing a song with lyrics dedicated to the work of blacksmiths to create great weapons.
• Funny Animal: While the players in SLF can only play as humans, there are non-human races in the game world that can interact with humans. The most notable examples of these are the Vorpal Rabbits that are between this trope and Beast Man, who have their own village called Rabbituza and at least one well known scenario related to them. We later learn of a similar race of talking cat people known as the Cait Sith, who also have their own village called Cazzeria, that are allies with Rabbituza.
• Gathering Steam: Psyger-0 has an attack that deals more damage than anything else recorded in the game. Unfortunately, it requires her to complete a long chant before she can use it, during which time she can do nothing else, limiting her ability to make full use of her abilities.
• Genre Shift: Not the story itself, but the various games we seen Sunraku play whenever he shifts from Shangri-La Frontier. These include Union Rounds (a dark medieval fantasy turner PvP looter), Nephilim Hollow (a customizable mecha fighting game) and Galaxia Heroes: Chaos (another fighting game, this one based on superheroes from an In-Universe comic book series).
• Gimmick Level: The Clown Spider's layer for its boss fight. It lives atop a huge vertical area, which demands that the player climb the area full of spider webs, some of which are sticky, and it will be dropping rocks on the player. A player that's able to climb past the Clown Spider quickly enough can actually turn this around on the boss, using the debris against it.
• G.I.R.L.: In-Universe. Oicazzo is a female character in SLF, but is played by the male Kei Uomi. No one really makes a big deal out of it, however, so it's barely mentioned.
  • The Professor, the leader of The Library, is another example, one that Sunraku is more surprised by. This is mostly because the avatar resembles a young girl, but the Professor's voice is that of a middle-aged man, which he doesn't bother to hide. Besides Sunraku's (internal) confusion at the dissonance of this, no one really questions it.
• Glass Cannon: Sunraku is this combined with a Fragile Speedster build. He's fast and hits hard (thanks to his super high Luck stat, which makes him get critical hits often), but thanks to being unable to wear armor, he can normally take only one or two hits before getting destroyed.
• Godlike Gamer: Sunraku, Oicazzo, and Pencilgon all qualify to a certain extent, as does Psyger-O (even if she doesn't realize it).
• Good Bad Bugsinvoked: Sunraku enjoys discovering and mastering the various bugs in trash games. Berserk Online Passion in particular is a mediocre game which has a small but dedicated playerbase solely because they've created entire fighting styles based on discovered glitches and bugs.
• Green Hill Zone: The starter area of Shangri-La is a bright and green expanse of woodlands.
• Guide Dang It!: In-Universe.
  • Unique Scenarios are special side quests that grant unique and powerful rewards. That said, the conditions to triggering said side quests are deliberately kept a mystery from the players, who have even created guilds to hunt down these quests and learn how to start them: In particular, the "Invitation from Rabituza" scenario Sunraku stumbles upon requires triggering similar conditions to the "Tour of Rabituza" scenario while fighting Lycagon well enough for it to see the player as worthy enough to inflict its cursed mark, which is a scenario so super-specific, not to mention near-impossible to reliably do given Lycagon's unclear spawn triggers, that nobody else has achieved it, meaning there's no information anywhere about it. Even that particular prerequisite is more of a guess from him than anything, since what triggered the quest is not shown to the players that did manage to trigger it.
  • This isn't helped by the fact that some players may keep the conditions for the Unique Scenarios they find a secret, either as a bargaining chip or to keep the benefits of said scenario for themselves. For example, the Player Killing guild Asura Kai kept the scenario for finding Wezaemon to themselves as they saw it as an easy source of EXP for themselves.
  • The conditions to obtain Arcanums is based on player achievements, but which achievements give which Arcanums is also not written down anywhere and it's mostly knowledge still being gathered by players.
• Holding the Floor: A running source of tension in the Galaxia Heroes arc is that Kei is made a last minute addition to a FPS finals match by his sponsors (and is unable to refuse), a match that is happening at the same time as the exhibition match with Star Rain, forcing the rest of the team to stall for time by either making each of their matches last as long as possible or distracting the audience via this trope when they mess up the timing with their fights so that Kei can finish the FPS match and still battle Star Rain's star player, Silvia Goldberg.
• Hope Spot: Played for laughs - Sunraku thinks his "Mark of Lycagon" curse is finally going to be lifted after defeating Lycagon's shadow, and at first it seems that way as the markings disappear from Sunraku's character... only for them to form into Lycagon's head, which swallows Sunraku and spits him back out with new markings as the curse is now stronger, with altered effects and now only being removable by defeating the true Lycagon (in comparison, the original curse could also have been removed by a saint). Sunraku is not amused.
• Hypocrite: Sunraku mentally mocks Oicazzo for always coming up with a player name that incorporates a fragment of his real name. However, it was established early on that Sunraku's gamer tag was created by mashing together fragments of his real name and he uses it in every game.
  • When Sunraku reveals the events of his second battle with Lycagon, and how other players outside the guild may have learned more about the Unique Scenario related to it to Pencilgon and Oicazzo, they get pissed that he would risk spilling valuable information on one of their bargaining chips with the other guilds. Sunraku gets Pencilgon to back off by indirectly hinting that the reason that there even was a second battle with Lycagon (due to the actions of the SF-Zoo guild) was because Pencilgon had sold (admittedly incomplete) information about the Colossi to them without telling Sunraku or Oicazzo first. Pencilgon quickly lets Sunraku off the hook on the matter and rushes on to the next conversation topic before Oicazzo (who hadn't understood what Sunraku was getting at) could catch on, leaving the latter confused.
• Lame Pun Reaction: Sunraku can't help but comment when he realizes the names of Wezaemon's ultimate skills and his post-combat praise were just the setup for a lame pun about a cloudless sky. Wezaemon laughs and admits Setsuna reacted the same way.
• Last Chance Hit Point: If you have have high enough Luck, this can proc randomly. One of the game's skills Clencher, provides a guarantee of it happening if certain conditions are met. Sunraku takes it since it can activate if your Luck stat is above 50 and the damage is self-inflicted or from recoil.
• Lost Technology: The technology of the Divinity is largely lost to the modern world of SLF. A few crafters like Vysache have enough technology to repair equipment from the era, but training to reach that point is difficult and expensive.
• Lunacy:
  • The moon's light carries mana to the world which Wezaemon uses to create his pocket dimension. On the night of a new moon, the mana levels become low enough for players to breach the barrier. Conversely, the night of a full moon is the only time when Setsuna becomes visible due to the high levels of mana.
  • This also applies to Lycagon, whose powers rely on how much moonlight is visible at the time. The most noteworthy ability in this case is Lycagon's Invisibility, which won't work if the moon is fully visible.
• Mad Bomber: Pencilgon plays one named Clock Fire, a toy themed villain, in the Galaxia Heroes arc when she is asked to substitute in for one of Oicazzo's teammates. She is very effective when playing as Clock Fire, in part because she gets worryingly into the role.
• Magitek: Relics and enemies from the Divinity are a blend of futuristic technology and highly advanced magic. This became a plot point with Wezaemon due to him being undead rather than a cyborg, while Setsuna was an AI rather than a ghost.
• Magic from Technology: Setsuna implies that this is the case for the game's setting, calling the technique used to create the barrier around her tomb "programs", before changing it to "magic"
• Manipulative Bastard: Pencilgon's real greatest strength, and why she's so good at Player Versus Player. By contrast, she tends to struggle more with PvE compared to her allies, especially against unintelligent monsters she can't deceive or manipulate.
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": Everyone present at the battle between SF Zoo and Lycagon when the latter reveals it has more tricks up its sleeves than expected, and proceeded to wipe out the guild.
• Mighty Glacier: Psyger-0 is basically this. She's comparatively quite slow, but hits like a truck, especially when she has a chance to get off her special charge-up attack.
• Mutual Kill: Pencilgon's fight with Oicazzo and Sunraku in ''United Rounds ended with no real winner, as Pencilgon had previously wired the entire castle to explode and used it to kill all of them.
• Never My Fault: One of the reasons that the NPC Faeria from Faeria Chronicles Online is so despised by the players is that, due to poor programming, she would often cause the death of innocent and/or important NPCs (e.g. by running them over with a cart), then blame said deaths on the Demon Lord, despite said Big Bad having absolutely nothing to do with the incidents in question.
• Noob Bridge: In SLF, the bridge to Secondil is guarded by a boss with telegraphed attacks but high defenses and is meant to be a gear check to ensure players will have strong enough weapons for higher level areas. However, it also has a Dung Fu attack meant to catch players off guard and essentially force them to be poisoned the first time they fight it, likely as a way to make sure that they remember to stock up on curatives. Since Sunraku didn't even bother to visit the first town, he has no antidotes and is forced to beat the boss as fast as possible so he can sprint to the Secondil inn to set a new spawn point before he dies. Reiji helpfully points Sunraku in the right direction and explains to Mia that he has seen so many new players make the same mistake Sunraku did that he could tell what was going on just by the fact Sunraku was running to town from the bridge in a blind panic.
• Noodle Incident: In one SLF Mini, Penclgion tells Sunraku about Schwarzer Wolf's previous fights against Lycagon and notes they had some success with the "Dynamite Bone-In Muscle Burst". She then immediately logs out without explaining what that actually means, leaving Sunarku to slowly go crazy trying to work it out.
• Not the Fall That Kills You…: Fall damage does exist in SLF, and the Mud Digger boss has a special attack in which it exploits this by throwing players up and letting the fall damage kill them. That said, Meteor Fall, which Sunraku accidentally activates, also turns it into damage against an enemy by falling on them.
• Numerical Theme Naming: The cities on SLF are named in the order they're visited.
• Off the Rails:
  • In-Universe, one of the trash games Sunraku played was United Rounds, which was supposed to be a survival RPG based on a falling kingdom in a post apocalyptic world where the players are knights defending it, defeating monsters to get items to improve their gear. Unfortunately, the drop rates for any usable items was atrocious where even the beginner quest to pick herbs could take 12 hours at best. It got to the point where players realized it was far more productive to rob NPC item shops and other players then it was to play the game normally, turning the entire game into a PVP looter RPG. The characters even discuss that whatever enemy the game actually intended to be the Big Bad, has been surpassed by Pencil Knight taking the role of a despot of said kingdom.
  • Sunraku's party ends up driving the world story off the rails by killing a unique boss before it was supposed to be possible, and because they did it without cheating the admins are forced to fix the game around this rather than just undoing it.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Shortly after the second battle with Lycagon, Sunraku and the other players with him encounter the area boss, a large draconic creature, with Sunraku and friends getting into fighting stances. The next chapter, we Smash Cut to sometime after that battle, with the party talking about it was indeed a tough battle, especially since they had been exhausted from just fighting Lycagon, the boss had a habit of stealing their weapons, and one of their toughest players was suffering from the after-effects of their Dangerous Forbidden Technique. Emul, who is just waking up, is more concerned that they don't remember anything from that battle, including taking part in the maneuver that took the boss down that Sunraku dubbed the "Super Emul Cannon", and the rest tell her that she doesn't need to worry about it.
• Open Secret: Sunraku feels the need to keep Emul and the Rabituza UQ a secret since he's the first to discover it. It doesn't last long as many other players have taken notice of Emul, a clothed Vorpal Bunny that isn't traditionally found anywhere else in SLF.
• Optional Boss: An early plot point revolves around "Unique Monsters", one-off superbosses that roam the world and are nigh-undefeatable. Of 30 million players in Shangri-La Frontier, no one has claimed a Unique Monster kill, even with an endgame guild dedicated to trying to hunt them down. Sunraku stumbles right into one and dies without even really being able to hurt it. He respawns and is cursed by its effect, giving him incentive to dedicate himself towards killing it as payback.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • Pencilgon gives Oicazzo and Sunraku the map to a hidden sub-zone where they can rapidly grind their levels by fishing up and defeating lake serpents. While the serpents aren't exactly pushovers, they're the only monster in the sub-zone and each one is worth a lot of XP.
  • Ashura-Kai has been exploiting the mechanic that grants bonus XP for simply encountering one of the Colossi to rapidly gain levels by spawning but not fighting Wezaemon without risk of getting attacked by PKKers.
• Player Killing: Mechanics allow this in SLF, with a successful PKer being allowed to steal items from their victims. Repeat offenders are marked with a special symbol and a bounty awarded to anyone who kills them. A recent patch added stiffer penalties for PKers, as on death they now automatically drop all of their items, both carried, equipped, and in storage, for their killer to claim.
• Power at a Price:
  • When a player in SLF reaches level 99 (the base level cap, though it's implied that this cap can be extended by meeting some requirement), they can unlock a subjob called an Arcanum (named after the Tarot cards), that provides benefits that come packaged with drawbacks, both depending on the specific Arcanum. The Arcanum given depends on the achievement's of the player involved, though there's not much information about what unlocks a specific Arcanum.
    • For example, Sunraku gained "The Fool", which halves the recharge for his abilities, meaning he can spam them more often, but enemies now do more damage with each hit and, worst of all, all healing items used on him now come with a probability of success, meaning he can't rely on them in combat. Unlike most Arcanum, the requirements for The Fool are fairly well known (reaching the level cap in as short a time as possible).
  • "Evil Force" is a consumable that supercharges one's stats for 15 minutes, such that even a level 50 player becomes comparable to a level 99 player. However, it imposes a Level Drain, deducting 1 level every 30 seconds, meaning the user has lost 30 levels by the time it expires. Oicazzo downs one before Pencilgon can finish explaining the side effects.
• Read the Freaking Manual: In-Universe. Sunraku is so eager to jump into SLF that he not only skips the intro narration, he also avoids the entire first village (accidentally missing several important tutorials in the process).
• Science Fantasy: The titular game itself talks of a highly advanced human civilization that traveled through space to find a new home in another planet, where science and magic have merged so thoroughly they're indistinct, so you get Magitek as well as concepts like Wezaemon, who is a zombie but he wields super advanced weaponry and rides a mecha steed. Setsuna heavily implies that the magic spells being used are actually super advanced programs.
• The Scrappy: In-Universe. Faeria from Faeria Chronicles Online. It seems that she is a common point of complaint among people who played the game, who point out she is annoying, self-righteous, and an active detriment to the story pacing, so much that they take advantage of the lack of repercussions during the final cutscene to dropkick her.
• Scrappy Mechanic: In-Universe, in Faeria Chronicles Online, Faeria controls the pacing of the game, and will only allow for the main story to progress if she is pleased with the player. If she is mad for something the player has done, the story comes to a halt until the player gets in her good graces again, stopping player progress in its track, which alongside her horrible personality is another reason players consider her The Scrappy
• Secret Identity: Both Sunraku and Oicazzo are aware that their teammate/rival Pencilgon is actually famous supermodel Towa Amane. She keeps it secret to avoid unwanted press and to be able to have fun without concern about her public image.
  • In a more recent story arc, both Sunraku and Pencilgon are forced to take on Real Life secret identities after they are asked to substitute in for Oicazzo's teammates on his pro-gaming team.
• Sequence Breaking:
  • Sunraku starts the game by skipping over the first town, having spent so much time just exploring his skills and the woods that he ends up so close to the second city and so over-leveled that he elects to just skip it entirely. This has consequences later on as Sunraku realizes he lost information on basics such as Skill Chains, Unions, etc.
  • Later on Sunraku's party ends up the first group to kill one of the unique bosses. Though an incredible feat, it ends up causing huge problems for the admins because the bosses were designed to be killed in a particular order based on their strength while the boss they killed is a late to mid-game boss. As a result they end up wrecking the world story and the admins are forced to hastily rectify the resulting story changes.
• Shipper on Deck: Mana, the owner for the game store that Rakurou frequents. The reason she recommends Shangri-La Frontier (thus kicking off the plot) is to give Rei Saiga a chance to finally hang out with Rakurou through a shared video game.
• Shop Fodder: Notably averted in SLF. During his first session, Sunraku collects monster drops per usual in hopes of selling them, only for vendors to reject them as useless junk.
• Shoulder Teammate: Whenever Sunraku goes out and does things with Rabituza Vorpal Rabbits in tow, mainly Emul but sometimes Bilac as well, their small size means they can comfortably ride around on his shoulders, which comes in handy since he can use them as Equippable Allies, combining Emul's magic skills and Bilac's physical strength with his speed and agility. It was especially useful in the Canyon of Lost Souls, since his lesser-curse immunity also extends a slight bit from his body, allowing the rabbits to conserve curse-warding items until they need them.
• Shout-Out:
  • Early in the story while Rakurou is in a game store, the shelves are stocked with several Captain Ersatz versions of major recent videogames, including Elden Ring, Sonic Frontiers, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Mario Kart and more.
  • Rakurou's choice of playing with a class that only uses underwear and a mask can be seen as a reference to Dark Souls's "Deprived" starter class, which starts with little stat advantage and no equipment, only dressed in loincloth. The class is known for being used in challenge runs for the game and as a class whose lack of specialization allows for testing several builds over the early game.
  • Emul from Rabituza is a blatant allegory to the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland in both design (a small white rabbit using Victorian-era clothes and a pocketwatch) and role (lead the protagonist into another world). It's particularly glaring since she is the only rabbit that wears such style of outfit, as all others use traditional Japanese style clothes.
  • Pencilgon's nickname to Sunraku's in Unite Rounds is Revolutionary Knight Sunraku.
  • Oicazzo is ordinarily limited from wielding any weapons due to his class, but can use whips thanks to his Archaeologist job.
  • During the fight against Weazamon in the dub, Sunraku makes references to "G.I. Joe" and "Samurai Jack".
  • The Unique Scenario that triggers the fight with Wezaemon is called "From the Dying World, With Love".
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: SLF seems to lie somewhere between Deliberate and Perfect Integration (leaning more towards the former). Several players note that you are rewarded for paying attention to details in the world's surroundings, particularly in regards to enemy behavior in combat. This is also true for the Seven Colossi, including Wezaemon, where learning that he was actually undead from another NPC (Wezaemon visibly looks more like a very old cyborg than any kind of zombie) allowed Pencilgon to find a way to interrupt a seemingly unstoppable insta-kill move with some holy water.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe. "Trash Games" refer to titles that are notorious for being too buggy, too hard, too boring, or just borderline unplayable in general to most players. Rakurou thinks of at least some of the trash games he plays as this, though. Berserk Online Passion, or BOP/BERP, is a post-apocalyptic brawler game that is so broken, that players enjoy finding new ways to trigger bugs into the game and bring them into the gameplay. Interestingly, a small player base still exists because of this despite not having maintenance for some time in its active servers.
• Stock Animal Diet: The vorpal rabbits are shown to greatly enjoy carrots per usual, with Sunraku sometimes bribing Emul with a carrot when he does something she dislikes.
• Story Breadcrumbs: Outside of the opening intro scrawl, the story and lore of SLF aren't told in distinct storylines or books. Instead, most of the history is slowly pieced together from conversations with NPCs, item descriptions, and quest content. The story was so well integrated into the world that a year into the game many people didn't even think it had a main story.
• The Strategist: Pencilgon is not necessarily the most skilled player, especially compared to the likes of Sunraku, but she is incredibly good at creating strategies to take down far tougher opponents. In fact, it's due to her careful planning that they're able to effectively sequence break and beat one of the Seven Colossi out of order.
• Superboss: In-Universe, the seven Unique Monsters, also known as the Seven Colossi, each count as this. Each UM is not only insanely strong, being several levels beyond the players' level cap, they also have their own individual special abilities and gimmicks, making them a nightmare to fight. To make matters worse, most of them are difficult to even find, with a few only having been heard about through NPC dialogue. As a result, none of the Colossi have been defeated by the time the story starts.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The opening narration mentions that the existence of trash games that Sunraku loves to play has come in part due to how hard it is for the industry to keep up with such a massive change such as full-dive RPGs (not helped by some of the usual industry issues such as crunch-time and lack of testing).
  • Later, it's brought up that with full-dive VR, trying to control a character if the avatar body was significantly different from your real one would give off a sense of incongruity (e.g. an average sized person might not know how to move in a much larger body). Part of what makes SLF notable is how it seems to compensate for that, allowing players to play characters with very different physiques with ease as though it were their own shape from the beginning.
  • When some new players photograph Sunraku to ask other advanced players on the forums about Emul who was riding on his shoulder, a group of the more experienced players actually call out the newbies for photographing Sunraku without his consent, because with his screen name and avatar being fully visible, it was like his face being posted on a public newspaper for everyone to see, which can be a reportable offense in terms of online etiquette, especially for an VRMMO like SLF. While it doesn't seem like anyone actually reported them (as they genuinely were new to online gaming and didn't know better), it did wind up causing problems for Sunraku, as it drew attention from unsavory sources like the PK-er guild Asura-Kai.
• That One Boss: In-Universe, the fifth boss of the boss rush Sunraku faces in Rabituza is called "Toxic Eagle", a flying enemy (at a point when Sunraku lacked ranged options for attacking) that would poop on its target (which would also inflict status effects on it). Suffice to say, after taking 112 tries to defeat it, Sunraku loathed this enemy, leaving him with mild PTSD after the matter whenever something bird-like came close.
• Translator Microbes: In the Galaxia Heroes arc, it's revealed that the exhibition match with Star Rain is also the debut of a new real-time translator called Babel, which would let the players converse with each other without worrying about the Language Barrier (one team is Japanese, the other is American), though apparently the announcer completely forgot about this feature until the players realized they could understand each other.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay:
  • Sunraku's encounters with the NPC denizens and quest lines intermixes with gear durability and other mechanics that makes him realize the game is a lot more realistic and in-depth than the RPG mechanics would normally entail. Naturally, this throws a gamer like him off but also can be used to his advantage occasionally.
  • In the game's second city, he learns that he can't sell random things to shopkeepers, who, realistically, have no use for some of the stuff he tries to sell, like a goblin's weapon of shoddy quality.
• Unwinnable by Mistake:
  • Discussed. Sunraku mentions that bad games tend to be poorly tested and hard to win because of mistakes by the people that made them, which is the origin of their difficulty, but because Shangri-La Frontier is actually a well made game, by design, Lycagon can't be a Hopeless Boss Fight; he might be a difficult fight, but it is meant to be won by the players.
  • The game United Rounds suffered from a horrific miscalculation by designers, who were so committed to maintaining the "realism" of their dark setting that they made finding necessary items and materials incredibly time consuming and needlessly difficult. This led the player base to devolve into a dog-eat-dog mentality, engaging in regular burglary and muggings to get what they wanted.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
  • Discussed regarding Faeria Chronicle Online, one of the legendary bad games that Rakurou was playing in the prologue. The main companion ends up being the cause of a lot of player grief, between worsening bad situations or getting party members killed, but always pins the problems on the dark lord. Should a player even try to tell her off for her wrongdoings, she will forcibly halt story progress until they painstakingly get back into her good graces. The game's disproportionate treatment in favor of its NPC no doubt contributes to its infamy, but it also lends to a cathartic opportunity where Rakurou gets to beat up that NPC during the ending cutscene without worry of repercussions.
  • For a while SLF was rampant with Player Killing, to the point players like Pencilgon formed whole guilds like Ashura-Kai made up of player-killers out of both the thrill and monetary benefit. The devs recently updated the game to add some deterrents to this behavior through a PK "bounty" system, where not only do you get a large amount of money depending on the severity of their game crimes, but the player that personally kills a player-killer gets to raid not just their inventory but their personal bank for any items they like, meaning PKers now experience The Hunter Becomes the Hunted.
• Walking Armory: Since weapons and other equipment in SLF have a durability system, some players tend to carry around multiple sets of weapons to either suit certain situations or just to have as an Emergency Weapon (and since they have Hammerspace inventories, they can carry a lot without it slowing them down). Sunraku has gathered at least 4 different sets of weapons as the story has progressed, and continues to expand and improve his gear when he can.
• Wham Shot: Episode 2 ends with a computer somewhere in the servers for Shangri-La Frontier showcasing a screen saying that 0 Unique Monsters have been killed so far, and that the World Story Progression for the game is in 0% still.

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