Review of I'm Standing on a Million Lives

"100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru" is at first glance the typical cardboard cut-out isekai anime we get every season, however this anime has an intriguing world building and base plot with lots of initial potential, this made me super exited for the future of this title but sadly it ended up not living to such expectations due to all the other factors especially the lack of compelling characters in the main cast. Plot: As mentioned this is the average isekai fantasy world type anime where the characters are viewed as heroes by the civilians in said world, however the wholegist of this anime to try and stand out from all the other anime in it's genre are mainly three aspects: 1st is the fact that our main cast goes back and forth between the two worlds rather than stay stuck in the fantasy world as the usual isekai goes; 2nd is the fact that our main cast is being guided by a gamemaster and ordered to complete various quest where after each of these quests a new member is to be brought from the real world and will join the party for the next quest; 3rd is the aspect of roles or "jobs" like warrior and spellcaster that traditionally are assigned to the characters and the show moves on whereas in this show the characters are assigned one of these at random and will have various opportunities to change these roles throughout the episodes. These unique aspects the anime brought to the isekai genre were actually really intriguing and were the main reason for me to start the show since it seemed like it was trying to innovate within the genre, unfortunately, the story progression and the other aspects of the anime that I will talk further below didn't pull their wait to push this anime beyond the average making "100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru" be just another bland and forgettable isekai in the end.

Art: The art style in the anime is a pretty standard one for isekai anime which means the characters don't have memorable designs making them really forgettable in the long run, however the monsters design was actually a pleasant surprise although you get the typical isekai monsters such as goblins, orcs and trolls they had some creativity put into their designs and didn't look like carbon copies of other shows; the gamemasters design was also really quirky and interesting and, honestly, it is the only character you will probably visually remember after some time passes. The animation is not that good and we can clearly see the budget for this show was not the best, we have several instances of poor 3D animation throughout the show that feel super out of place for example on those dinosaur looking creatures they use to pull the carts, but ultimately it is not bad enough to be a sole reason to drop the show and it's still pretty watchable although in some instances you will see something that'll get you thinking to yourself "that feels out of place".

Sound: The opening song is actually pretty enjoyable and I'm almost certain I didn't skip it a single time, however it's not good enough in my opinion to be added to a playlist and listened to outside of the anime. The ending song is a classic anime ending song just a smooth melancholic music with nothing remarkable to highlight; the ending is definitely worse than the opening and I skipped it for the majority of episodes. The voice acting is also nothing too special although decent and the sound effects, especially, during fights were a bit clunky and just felt a bit off in my opinion.

Characters: In my opinion the two most important aspects in an anime are the characters and the plot along with the world building, sadly having this in mind, the characters are my biggest complaint with this anime since the cast massively brought down my levels of enjoyment for this show even though the plot and specifically the world building actually had tons of potential. The main cast is easily divided into two categories: the ones that are one-dimensional annoying and with not even and attempt buy the show to develop and the ones that the anime tried, with no avail, to develop and give depth to them which ended with them constantly contradicting themselves and merely become confusing and annoying characters. With this said the characters that fall into the first category would be "Hakozaki" and "Tokitate" whilst the characters that fall into the second category are "Yuusuke" and "Shindou". Ironically the main cast is a group of super bland characters while the few characters that were actually really intriguing are are a character that would only be developed near the end of the story itself or not developed at all a.k.a the grandmaster and a character that was linked to a quest and will probably not even appear again in the show a.k.a Kahabell.

Overall: It's a bit of a shame that I can't brong myself to give this show more than a mediocre 5/10 rating, I seriously started this anime with high expectations for how the story would develop itself based on how the whole world works in the show. The music was average and the sound effects felt weird; the animations were lacking a bit even by average isekai standards; the plot started strong but the quests portrayed throughout the episodes felt a bit dragged and lacked cohesion; and the character were either getting poor development or non at all making them confusing and one-dimensional. All in all it is pretty watchable if you are bored and don't have anything much to do but it isn't anything you will profoundly enjoy.

P.S. I don't know if a lot of viewers also felt this way or if it was just me but I was constantly getting annoyed by our main cast whilst they were completing their quests since they always seemed to make the worst decisions possible for the situations they found themselves in.