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

Episode 9

Lesson learned in this episode: don't get on Kahvel's bad side.

We already knew from previous episodes that, while she may not be top-of-the-line talent, she's still quite tough and capable, and she also has a rather unique fetish. She has also shown to have at least some strategic sense and no qualms about killing, and last episode suggested that she could have a vengeful side as well. The early part of this episode demonstrates just how far that goes; when it comes to getting retribution, she can be a real demon, mercilessly slicing the throat of one remaining Doekk soldier before de-limbing and then decapitating the captain. For all of the artistic shortcomings that this series has, it occasionally produces some great individual shots, and both the screenshot I used and a close-up of Kahvel's face shortly after this are among them.

A good chunk of the rest of the episode is wasted by Yuka trying to fit Yusuke and Kahvell into the parameters of her favorite otome game, based on the misperception that Kahvell might be falling for Yusuke. The episode's production certainly tries its hardest to paint things in that direction, what with Kahvell blushing around Yusuke while trying to speak to him individually about something, but anyone who has been paying attention so far knows that this cannot be the real case. Kahvell is not oblivious to romance – the fact that she asked in a previous episode if any of the girls were romantically involved with Yusuke indicates that – but she has been firmly-established with other priorities. The real truth of the matter – that she was anxious about properly expressing her gratitude for Yusuke's help in getting retribution – was no surprise at all, though it was a little fun seeing Yuka so badly miss the mark and make a fool of herself in the process.

The rest of the episode is about completing the quest, and after all that has happened to this point, the part about “delivering the goods” almost proves to be anticlimactic. The twist about what “the goods” proved to be was a nasty one, but the earlier stages of the episode provided no shortage of hints, and the logic of the way the series works just pointed too strongly in that direction. That made the actions of Iu and Kusue into an exercise in “covering all our bases” rather than a mainline contribution, but that should leave exploring another .17% of the map to be a relatively simple task to round up.

While I have given up hope of seeing even decent animation accomplishments out of this series, at least a couple of shots in this episode nevertheless gave me pause. One is the CG animation of the “horses,” which is not well integrated at all in certain shots. Another is the scene where Kahvell cut off the captain's limbs. Her movement jumped so suddenly that it felt like some in-betweens were outright missing. Hopefully this gets cleaned up a bit for any eventual physical release.

The quest is now almost done (or at least seems to be), so what is the series going to do for the remaining three episodes? The wizard-type guy from Doekk being assigned to find a way to kill the heroes seems ominous, but I cannot see this having time to come into play this season. Right now the series feels more like it is approaching a halfway point than going into the last quarter.

Rating:

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