I'm going to be completely honest, I came into this show fully expecting it to be trash. Can you blame me? With a name as edgy as I'm Standing on a Million Lives, this looked primed to be the new Arifureta-shaped isekai punching bag of the season. But a curious thing happened when I started watching it: I actually liked it. And not ironically; I actually liked liked it. Okay, it's far from perfect, but this was genuinely one of the shows I most looked forward to throughout this anime season. And considering the absolute dragging it's getting in the score department, I wanted to put my two cents in and tell you why it actually deserves a shot.

So, premise: it's an isekai, obviously, but it puts a bit of a spin on it. Instead of being trapped in the fantasy world that's a lot like a video game, protagonist Yusuke Yotsuya is just called into it periodically to carry out certain missions. And he's not alone: he's actually the third to join an entire group of people being called in to undertake these missions. Every time they complete a mission, they're sent back into the normal world with no time passed, and they live their lives as normal until they're called in for the next mission, with a new party member joining each mission. There's some more complicated mechanics to how it all works, but suffice to say, this isn't just some otaku wish-fulfillment fantasy; there are actual story reasons for why this state of affairs is the way it is, and Yusuke can't just power-scale his way to cheap victory like Kirito and his ilk. He and his comrades in arms have to fight and struggle through difficult challenges- monsters, bandits, bad weather, unclear objectives- to achieve victory. On the plus side, they respawn like video game protagonists if they die, so they can take a lot of beating. On the downside, if they all die at once, or they fail the mission, they do actually die in real life. So no pressure.

There's a lot of questions still left unanswered about the nature of this situation by the end of this season, but with a season 2 announced, I'm sure we'll get those answers in time. For now, the focus is on the characters and the struggles they go through. And this is where this show caught me off guard, because the characters are... surprisingly good. Yusuke is an absolute edgelord who hates other people, but instead of wallowing in his misanthropy, his character arc is one of overcoming his jaded perspective. Through his struggles in the game world and his interactions with his teammates, he starts to grow out of his immaturity, slowly realizing the worth in other people and recognizing his need improve as a person so he can continue to be worthy of fighting alongside them. In a way, it's like a direct subversion of edgy "me against the world"-style isekai protagonists. Thankfully, his teammates are all given full characters of their own as well, with goals and personalities and motivations and fears independent of Yusuke. Yes, so far they're all his female classmates, but they're far from a bland harem of mindless body pillows. None of them have even expressed romantic interest in him, and their character arcs are all about their own personal struggles rather than for the self-insert protagonist to make them swoon over him helping them. I found this all really refreshing

That being said, no, this show is not perfect. And pretty much all the issues come down to adaptation. I haven't read the manga A Million Lives is based on, but I can tell that it could have been handled much better. The animation, while not atrocious, is never any better than functional, which makes the show pretty boring to look at. The direction itself actually is pretty good, though, which covers for a lot of that. The worse issue, in my opinion, is the editing; this show's editing is baaaaaaad. Lots of scene transitions cut at awkward points and lead you into the next scene too fast, or lacking establishing shots. And the tone can swing wildly from scene to scene with not enough time to prep you for the change. One moment we're in light-hearted hijinks as the characters banter among each other, the next moment Yusuke's going all edgelord talking about how much he hates the city he lives in and wants to see it burn. On their own, these scenes work fine, but the show does a pretty abysmal job transitioning between them, and it leads to a lot of moments that leave you confused and struggling to catch up to the emotional flow. Maho Film does not strike me as a particularly skilled studio, is me point. So maybe you'd be better off reading the manga, which probably does this story much better justice.

Still, though, if you're an anime-only kind of guy, I recommend you at least give I'm Standing on a Million Lives a try. It's flawed, but it's far better than it has any right to be, and it's definitely better than its current score suggests. And who knows? Maybe with how successful this season apparently was in Japan, season 2 will be able to patch up those awkward points and bring this show to its full potential. I hope that happens. Because from what I've seen here, I think it has the potential to become something really special.