Anime Spotlight #8: I'm Standing On A Million Lives

 Happy AniMonday!

And no, I'm not. I'm not standing anywhere near a million lives. I have barely been able to inch this blog to the brink of sixty thousand pageviews. That's not sixty-thousand per day or even sixty-thousand per post; that's sixty thousand total, for this entire blog, since I began writing it...one moment please...NINE YEARS AGO!!! And quite a few of those pageviews are just me, feeling nostalgic and bingeing as much of myself as I can before I fall asleep.

So, please, before you read any further, leave a like and a comment and share this post with as many people as you know because high numbers are good numbers--unless we're talking about debt, then it's bad (just ask our last President!). Sorry, I guess I haven't reached the point yet where making fun of Donald Trump has lost its magic. Perhaps a distraction with otherworldly matters will help?

Speaking of other worlds and magic, it's time to put the Anime Spotlight on another recently finished series. Actually..., it's technically not a finished series because a second, twelve-episode season is already in production for release in June. Of course, I'm talking about the isekai anime with the titular title, I'm Standing On A Million Lives. The series follows a reclusive loner who generally hates the human race because of a perceived pattern of mistreatment that has been perpetrated against him. You know, the whole, "people suck! I hate this world! I wish they would all just disappear and die" spiel. Seemingly, this would not make for the most lovable protagonist...and you would seem right. But by virtue of literal cosmic irony, he gets the escape he wishes for, but in exchange, he is forced to work together with a growing group of female classmates and male acquaintances to keep each other alive and save this new fantasy world (and thereby save his own world) one buzzer-beating quest and awkward truth-or-dare recruitment mission at a time. But the ironic humor and punishment doesn't end there, folks! While his fellow party members get cool character classes like a warrior or a mage, our "hero" gets stuck with battle-unfriendly classes like chef and farmer. But because he has been assigned the role of protagonist in this anime, he hones a number of highly situationally specific skills that make him the most overpowered fighter in their group. Oh, and the cosmic being behind all of this is a six-foot-tall, naked albino man with stars and handprints covering his suggestive areas, who is missing the top half of his head and can't ever finish a sentence...until the writers forget and he speaks perfectly for several episodes...until the writers remember and start cutting off his speech at random in the season finale. With the bizarre, dark, hilarious elements established and the "hero" sufficiently suffering a fate worse than Greek myth, the series rightly focuses on the supporting cast, their adventures and quests, and the literal worldbuilding that comes about as a result of those quests (each always has some kind of map exploring aspect to it). As I have come to expect of highly ambitious anime like this (and having not read any of the source manga for anything ever), the character- and quest-focused nature of the storytelling led me to believe that it would only get one season, find some way to force a climactic battle and a happy ending, and leave me with the dichotomy of wanting more but knowing there wouldn't ever be more. But then the finale came, and instead of a final battle...I got more character development, another recruitment mission, and a cliffhanger ending. And all I have to say is Thank Disney we live in a world where waiting through the credits is a thing, because I would have been doubly pissed off otherwise. I waited--by which I mean skipped--through the credits, where the message, "Season 2 Now In Production!" was there to greet me, along with the promise of...isekai in space? That's new! In fact, from its polarizing...atagonist? Protagonihilist? Yeah, "protagonihilist;" I like that one. From its polarizing protagonihilist to its supporting focus to its overall world mechanics, I'm Standing On A Million Lives goes in so many unique directions with its typical genre beats that it's easy to see why that second season is coming, and coming soon.

I thought I'd take a break from reviewing anime next week, as I have an important school deadline to prepare for, and I just realized that this was my three hundredth post on itsjusttheticket.blogspot.com, and I didn't bother to come up with anything special to commemorate the now-passed occasion. That sucks.... But at least I have future milestones to look forward to now, right?

If you haven't yet, smash those like buttons and drop a comment below, and as always, if you want to check out today's Spotlight selection, VRV (Crunchyroll, HiDIVE, and Rooster Teeth) is the place to go. For more anime content, other affordable subscriptions are available at the following links:
* Funimation
* Netflix
* Amazon Prime
* Hulu 👀

AniMeister,
out.