English Dub Review: I’m Standing on a Million Lives “Help Me”

Overview:

Yotsuya is tasked with a most unusual request from the Game Master: To hit on a girl he’s never met before. After saving her from being bullied, he walks her home and that is, seemingly, the end of it. However, matters are made worse when she joins their party and damages his reputation within the group. 

Our Take:

The self-aware nature of this series never ceases to both entertain and amaze me as it continues. Having the newest member, Yuka Tokitate, be both an otaku and a streamer highlights how progressive and cognizant the anime is of genre as a whole. She seems endearing enough on her own with her nerdy love for magical girl anime and mobile dating simulators being indicative of that. One can only hope though that the show will not be impeded with an overabundance of modern references and stereotypical characteristics as it moves forward. 

However, I can’t say I’m completely on board with the execution of her introduction either. When she first arrives, she creates a false narrative about Yotsuya. Because she doesn’t want to create strife with the others that harassed her previously and continue to get bullied in the process, she created a common enemy in Yotsuya by positioning him as some type of creep they can rally behind and hate. While it’s understandable why she chooses this route as she assumed she would never see him again, it creates contrived conflict later on. Rather than tell her new teammates she keeps up the ruse…for some reason. It makes absolutely no sense why she would feel the need to do that to complete strangers she has never met before. Not to mention, Yotsuya, idiotically, never informs Iu and Kusue it was a mission given to him by the Game Master. To make matters worse, she reveals the truth within minutes after lying to Iu. The tension could have been initiated differently and in a more organic fashion rather than just feel forced and tacked on. 

But what is a detriment to Yuka’s arrival is added complexity to that of Iu’s character as a whole with further development. The grueling pain she experienced as a child perfectly positions how the strong confident girl she inevitably evolved into. It also, like with Kusue’s past, allows one to sympathize with her and more greatly appreciate how much of a change she underwent as well. The scenes, however, are a little underwhelming in some aspects that they are flat, animation wise, and feature characters that appear to be nothing more than caricatures, like her father. Hopefully, further scenes of her childhood later on will change that.