Manga: I'm Standing On A Million Lives

I'm Standing on a Million Lives Vol 1 
Rating: 4/5
Buy or Borrow: Buy
Source: Copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review! 

Yusuke doesn't care about getting into a good high school. He just wants to get away from people and make it home to his video games. But when he suddenly finds himself in a real-life fantasy game alongside his two gorgeous classmates, he discovers it's not as easy as he thought, especially when there's a headless man "from the future" assigning him missions and his character class is...farmer. Before long, the unlikely trio find that they're not just battling for their own lives, but for the lives of millions!

To be perfectly honest with you guys, I'm kind of getting bored of the whole "born in another world" or game in another world kind of manga series because they're all getting to be quite samey, but this one sounded like it had an interesting twist to all the other ones out there so I decided to give it a chance. 

The art for this one is nice, relatively simple with clean lines and character designs but a nice amount of detailed when needed. As we start the volume we immediately meet our three characters and get a quick intro to them via Yotsuya and his inner thoughts before we're quickly off to the other world. From there the rules and how this is going to work are quickly explained, and it seems like they can actually die in the real world if they all die at the same time, if only one or two of them die they revive after 30 seconds, of course the revive time gets longer each round and there are 8 rounds to the game when he joins. Each new round a new party member is added in which added an element of anticipation for the upcoming characters in coming volumes. But we also get a lot of intrigue from the start as each time you win a round not only do you get to live, yay, you get to ask the game master a question. The girls have already done this so their answers certainly created some mystery, which was only added to when Yotsuya got his. 

As for Yotsuya, he's a game nerd and in this other world he gets to be a farmer. It's also swiftly apparent he was somewhat of a dark side at points. He's kind of selfish and only thinks of himself initially but I appreciated the fact he realised this himself. What I found interesting about his character is that once he'd levelled up his farmer occupation, he got to change his occupation, although he did only get chef this time...so I'm curious about this element as he's going to switch occupations every time he levels up his current one but he has no choice of which one he gets. I feel like this is an interesting addition with plenty of potential. 

As for the other characters we've got Shindo who's scouted to be a model and she gets to be a wind wizard. For some reason she gives me low key shady vibes, possibly because she was the first one picked. Hakozaki is quiet and weak in the real world but in the other world she gets to be a sword warrior. She was sick back in Tokyo hence why she was so weak but in this other world she doesn't have that problem and wants to get stronger to stop holding her team back. But I mean...she has an actual sword and Yotsuya has nothing so who's holding who back, really? The final addition to our team in this volume is Tokitate, who we get to meet slightly before the fourth round. She's an anime nerd, and she ends up as a heat wizard. I have to say she seems kind of cocky about her new powers before reality slaps her back down which was hilarious to me. 

I did enjoy the humour to this, and it did have me snorting and chuckling. There were a lot of 'sods law' moments that had me going of course. There's a few fun elements to enhance the story, there's log points which are a great way to show flashes of what happened when our main character wasn't present and that fills in some background on characters, or rather motivations I guess. 

I have to say, this volume surprised me multiple times, not least because I had assumed they'd be stuck in the game world the whole time, so I wasn't expecting them to only be there when each round starts and during each round. The mystery element of who's behind it all was yet another surprise, along with various other things. I have to say, the game master creeps me out a little bit, he's missing half of his head, he's from the future which just makes him rather ominous and he speaks like a computer or a robot that's shorting out with words cut off or missing which again...kind of creepy. Although his creepiness took a hilarious turn when he called Yotsuya because it turns out that the game world can bleed in to the real world and the game master can contact them outside of the game. Not only do they have their quests each round of the game in the other world, but they have missions in the real world too in order to increase their chances in the next round. 

For a first volume, this does an excellent job at piquing your interest as it gives you action and mystery early on, and its fast pace means we cover a lot of ground in just the one volume with the initial hints of mystery deepened even more so by the end of the volume. It's also full of surprises and I got quite drawn in to this, and I do admit that when I started this I wasn't too sure what to expect or how this was going to go. Our main character has a tendency to seem a little bit dark and selfish which offsets his more idiotic and useless moments, the girls are realistic, and the stakes get higher each round as it gets harder. I have plenty of questions and I'm definitely curious to see what's going to happen next!