I'm Standing on 1,000,000 Lives.

Episode 5

Through its first four episodes, this series has firmly been one of the season's bottomfeeders when it comes to technical merits. This episode does nothing to change that impression, and I have given up hope that we will ever see much improvement. At times, the series has also looked like one of the bottomfeeders on storytelling quality as well, but in that realm it has also shown flashes of greater potential merit. By going into territories less traveled by isekai/game series and slyly throwing in a couple of less obvious curve balls, episode 5 has landed itself firmly in the more meritorious territory.

The bulk of this episode focuses on Kusue, the character that I have so far found the most useless, least likable, and least interesting out of the main cast. The beginning of the episode reveals that health problems made her one of those kids who always had to sit out during P.E. classes, though it sounds like she may have been grade-penalized for this; don't know if they can get away with that in Japan, but such a thing would not be allowed in American schools. Because of that, she's never been a physical person, which makes her ill-suited to be a Warrior in general. But this episode reveals a potentially bigger problem: she is basically the diametric opposite of Kahvell. While the latter revels so much in slicing flesh that she joyfully goes into extremely specific details about why she likes it, for Kusue it is a repugnant experience.

We have seen characters in anime before who were squeamish about killing and/or struggled with it when they had to do it; Grimgar, Ashes and Illusions immediately comes to mind as another series which emphasized this point. However, I have never seen this aversion portrayed more viscerally than it is here. When she has to run through a goblin and later a kobold, the cross-section visuals of the blade penetrating the creature's flesh are unsettling. So is everything else about her experiences; her eyewitness view of the bandits who were their jailers being struck down, the bodies of the bandits being dumped into a mass grave, and the systematic looting of the bodies. (I could not help but think of this song while watching that scene.) The first and third of those items are just standard practices in any fantasy RPG, so much so that players joke about them. However, they come across as vastly less savory when portrayed like this, and I'm sure that was the point.

This also raises questions about how much of a true game world this actually is. Most signs pointed to that at the beginning, but things like dealing with the practical matters of the bodies is not something you would see in a normal fantasy RPG. Also, the confused reaction of one character to the mention of “stats” suggests that even if the heroes can see stat breakdowns just like in a game, the denizens of the world cannot.

Basically, this is the first episode where the title of the series has carried much weight, and the series is better off for it.

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I'm Standing on 1,000,000 Lives. is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.