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

Episode 4

”There's nothing I love more than cleaving the flesh of living things! That's why, even though I'm a woman, I chose to be a knight and not a housewife! Because I can slice flesh!”

Oh, Yosuke. You should be worried. You should be very, very worried about what you're getting into with this one.

That was my first thought when the female knight Kahvel, who had teamed up with Yosuke to attack the bandits that captured the rest of his party, started spouting off about her motivations. As perfectly cheery as she seems (and she says the above line about as cheerily as possible), there is some serious bloodthirst at her core, and she seems to think Yosuke's ability to be revived makes him an ideal plaything. Frankly, I don't think he's concerned enough about that when he agrees to allow Kahvel to escort him and the girls cross-country at the end of the episode, and her over-the-top enthusiasm for training them is also suspicious. But at least she should be an entertaining addition to the regular cast, as she adds a dose of energy that is decidedly lacking among the four isekai characters. She also looks significantly more competent as a warrior than the rest.

Sadly, most of the rest of the episode depended on the other girls being far less competent, to the point of being captured by bandits. (And not very high-level ones, from the looks of it.) Yosuke at least was able to level up by slaughtering goblins (even if he was no match for Kahvel in the tournament) and so now has some new tricks that don't just involve ordinary jobs; I honestly expected that to continue to be a running gag. Iu establishes herself better by talking about her background: she is the daughter of a “biker punk” and so had to work hard to overcome the reputation that came with that. Last episode implied that the older girl which befriended her when she was young may have committed suicide, and this episode confirms that it was probably in response to bullying. That is a pretty stiff and stark motivator to not let herself be shaped by the same forces, although the fact that supportive classmates helped turn her around is an important inclusion; as the series shows here, that can make all of the difference. (I also have a problem with the teachers holding the behavior of her father and elder brothers against her. Kids from the same family can be very different in behavior, so that's not professional.)

Anyway, the more I see of this series, the more I have to wonder how seriously it is intending to take itself. The stuff about Iu early on is weighty, and there are moments later on which seem heavy (the implication about two bandits meeting a bloody end, for instance), but a lot of the rest seems almost silly, such as a harness for the “horses” that looks more like motorcycle handlebars. There is also a running gimmick that I did not initially notice: the Game Master seems to be voiced by a different seiyuu in each episode. (Or at least this episode's seiyuu is definitely not the same as last episode's.) That this series is at the lower end of the quality scale this season on animation and visuals is also even more readily-apparent here than before; only that berserker's height made him at all menacing.

Still, the series at least continues to offer some entertainment value.

Rating:

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