#Animated PV Celebrates 1st Anniversary of Shangri-La Frontier Manga

Manga series Shangri-La Frontier has been running for a year, and a celebration is underway for the gaming-centric series. Latest on the docket is an animated PV… which, while it doesn’t necessarily signal an anime adaptation, is still pretty cool to watch.

The PV is a combination of motion comic and full animation, depicting protagonist Rakuro Hizutome (a.k.a. Sunraku) in the world of the series’s title game. Have a look:

The PV stars Yūma Uchida (Kyo Soma, Fruits Basket) as Sunraku, with additional voice-overs by Azumi Waki (Rem Galleu, How NOT to Summon a Demon Lord). Waki has also been selected as the manga’s official ambassador, and will host a weekly series about the manga starting August 17.

The new PV is the fourth in a series of seven projects based around the manga series. The first is a kusoge competition, challenging fans to come up with an idea for a super bad video game of the kind Sunraku would enjoy. Ludicrously difficult games, poorly balanced player characters, incomprehensible stories, and the like are all welcome. There’s a million yen to play for, and presumably the concepts will be memorialized in some way. More information about the contest will be available soon.

The second and third projects are the aforementioned weekly YouTube show and a portal site, respectively. What the last three will be is anyone’s guess… though the way things are stacking up, we can’t help but wonder if Project #7 will be a very big announcement.

Shangri-La Frontier is written by Katarina and illustrated by Ryosuke Fuji, based on Katarina’s web novel. The manga is available in English from Kodansha, who summarizes it:

Second year high school student Rakurou Hizutome is interested in one thing only: finding “shitty games” and beating the crap out of them. His gaming skills are second to none, and no game is too bad for him to enjoy. So when he’s introduced to the new VR game Shangri-La Frontier, he does what he does best—min-maxes and skips the prologue to jump straight into the action. But can even an expert gamer like Rakurou discover all the secrets that Shangri-La Frontier hides…?

Source: Comic Natalie