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

Episode 17

This episode of I'm Standing on 1,000,000 Lives opens with a sentimental flashback at the seeming struggles of the Orc Queen that led her to end up on the island of Jiffon in the first place. It's yet another of the show's efforts to impart sympathy for the orcs apart from what was originally presented as a black-and-white struggle for survival against them on the part of the humans. And as with similar efforts in the last few episodes, I honestly can't muster up that kind of care for someone whose first order of business upon arriving in her new location was to conquer the area and start eating people. The Queen got dealt a nasty hand, sure, but there must have been better ways to go about adapting to that, and if you're going to make clear that beings like this have sympathetic sapience driving their actions, you should also expect us to hold the characters accountable for the choices they make.

Since I've reiterated my issues with that thematic point enough already, I will at least detail how I think Million Lives is making a solid effort to tie the concept into its broader ideas. Impressing upon the heroes 'the value of a life' naturally graduates to considering how those lives being valued need not all be human. Despite being borne out of a vengeful queen vore-ing the island's population to oppress them, the struggles of one particular orc to protect his daughter for only a moment longer, glimpsed by Yuusuke as he kills them as he has so many already, does drive home how these beings are still actually 'people'. I think this is more successful than the aforementioned simple sympathy play, instead acknowledging the complexity of engaging in armed conflict with other beings, and carrying that weight apart from simply viewing them as mere experience-point-dispensing obstacles. The Heroes may wield the power of respawning, but it's swiftly become obvious that their own pile of lives are only some of the millions they're standing on.

The resonant takeaway from all this comes not from those orcs they want us to care about, but from Yuusuke himself. It feels like it's been a while since the show visited his emergent conflict from the end of the first season: That for all his posturing about his misanthropy and coldly effective pragmatism, he's actually affected by more empathy than he lets on. He gives away his internal struggles here in his moments watching the orc parent and child die, not wanting to be betrayed by sympathetic feelings as we've still only teased he has in the past, but also recognizing that cultivating that kind of caring is a major element of why the Game Master has had them doing all this in the first place. That's also reflected in his self-admitted admiration of people like Torii, who can wear their heart on their sleeves in their interactions with others in spite (or possibly because) of their even harsher environmental upbringing. All that reinforces the interesting question of how much of this scenario was deliberately laid out, at least for Yuusuke's part, to construct a situation where he sees this supposed tragedy he inflicts on those orcs and forces him to reflect on it.

Million Lives makes moments like that work tonally (if not totally ideologically) because it wisely pulls back from a lot of the other elements it threatened to overindulge in last week. That dragon from the very end barely gets a remark before the end of this episode itself, amusingly backtracked by Yuusuke straight-up acknowledging he forgot about it! That's a fine way to prioritize plot points by utilizing the same kind of irreverence the show has partially powered itself with. In fact, much of the plot centered on the side of Yuusuke's group feels purposefully driven by that kind of relevant absurdity, from Torii getting his legs eaten leading to Yuusuke holding his torso up while he wields his own weapon, to the critical distraction of the orcs coming in the form of Aoiu yelling a nonsense phrase in their own language that also just happens to sound like a very dirty term. Yes, Million Lives hinges a turning point of this multi-episode plot on having storied voice actress Aoi Yuuki repeatedly shout "D*ck Throbbin'!", and if you ask me, that's a more impressive storytelling accomplishment than getting me to feel bad about some dead orcs.

The end of the Orc Queen is decidedly less driven by absurd additions of levity, but still only slightly less clever in its convergences. My main issue with the structure is the apparent backtrack that the Queen didn't actually know that throwing Iu into the ocean would inflict permadeath, with the heroine incidentally ending up in a spot where the receding tide allowed her to respawn anyway. Still, it treats us to the entertaining swerve of Iu surfing to the rescue. And the other bits feel like a more natural coming-together of events. Is it coincidental that the ship just happened to land onshore in time for Kusue to have a spare bolt loaded to shoot at the Queen? Sure, but it all feels foreshadowed in hindsight, so there's still narrative satisfaction in how it comes together.

All this is to say that the show keeps trucking on effectively, deftly tying parts of its plot into the story's broader themes despite the more slapdash elements still on the fringe of it. I almost wonder if they shouldn't have delayed the introduction of the dragon altogether if they weren't going to actually acknowledge it until the end of this episode, though I guess it did also let them seed the additional plot point about the villagers having their life-force drained. It does conjure a question of pacing around all this though, as it feels like the big battle against the orcs has run a little too long before finally finishing here, and now there's a surprise new antagonist pulling the strings with a dragon that the heroes will have to confront. As detailed, I'm sure Million Lives will at least continue to make it engaging on a thematic level, but I can't help but feel like we're due for a moment of breathing room rather than yet another big boss battle.

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

Chris is a freelance writer who appreciates anime, action figures, and additional ancillary artistry. He can be found staying up way too late posting screencaps on his Twitter.