Review of I'm Standing on a Million Lives

Isekai type of anime has seemingly gained lots of traction and because of that, we have stuff like this. Because there are so many different titles offered, we witness the bold attempts of others trying to adapt the genre to make something different and unique. Although it is a commendable sentiment it does not always work and sometimes instead of standing out for the right reasons it becomes more of an eyesore. That being said, let's get to the actual review, Narrative: I can't really talk much about it because there really isn't one, not only did the story lack inspiration but the general scope ofit made no sense. Perhaps I didn't catch it while watching the series but it felt like individuals were plucked at random to conduct an experiment of sorts. It is never explained or given any form of meaning apart from being thrown into an isekai/game-like reality which is what's troubling. The caveat, however, is your typical permadeath nonsense within the virtual system. Even after such a lacklustre world-building, it goes into the psych! route and tries to bamboozle the audience and the characters within the series. (I guess, the author really wanted some form of twist to keep the audience engaged but because it was so nonsensical I really have no comments it was just bad.) [TLDR: There isn't an actual narrative]

However, there are good points in the anime and these 2 factors are the only good thing about it and I am referring to the art and music. (Well, that is if you're able to get through the first 5 episode threshold, I kid you not, the animations felt like they lost their budget during production. During the series, you will witness event logs and these are not animate you will be introduced to a picture drama or visual novel like setting which is kinda unique, I guess? But it didn't work for me, there was also a scene that made my eyes hurt because of how funky the animation was. [But the music will most likely grow on you if you watch it till the end.]

On to characters: The series tries really hard to build an edgelord that suffers from a personality disorder, and not surprising the guy is practically the only useful person in the series. Not your average comedy? No problem, the way some of the main characters behave will make you believe that the drama is really there just for the sake of it. You will barely feel any form of worry of intensity from the action scenes because respawning is a thing "just like a game" and typically characters grow from some form of a traumatic incident, then they grow and become a better version of themselves. That is not the case for this anime, you will barely see any growth, in fact, you will start feeling sorry for the edgelord and start agreeing with his point of view, not saying that I do but it is kinda justified. As the party grows so does the burden one has to carry, imagine an NPC having more flavour than the main cast, OUCH. We have a few cliche types of personalities that do nothing but complain, literally freeload off the party and 'stir shit up' I could go on but really some characters grow just to see a degression which is quite disappointing. The main problem is, trying to adapt the cast as being 'normal' within a functioning society whilst being in a life or death virtual reality it feels paradoxical but really it is just trying to seem more intelligent than it really is. And honestly, edgy character work in some settings because the narrative made sense, you have characters here that perform ironically stating stuff like 'reading the room to survive' and yet doesn't perform in that line of logic and because of that, the party gets thrown into another mess. Apart from multiple delusions and a bunch of rip-offs here and there, the characters are nothing but bland and in most cases irritating.

Needless to say, I didn't really enjoy watching this title and I could not derive any form of depth from it because of its terrible character development and world-building. The potential was there but it just couldn't progress beyond being a generic isekai.

Also, I would like to add, the direction of 100-man no Inochi no Ue ni Ore wa Tatteiru was rather interesting but it didn't work and that is because it tried to blend an isekai's reality with that of a normal-world reality. Anime is anime I get it, and even the best titles struggle with getting it right because when done right it works and suddenly that is the best thing people has ever seen. But when it fails, it is so jarring that it is painful. (Perhaps this would've been something amazing had the direction been different.)