My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon, I’m Out for Revenge! – Episode 1

Content Warning: Blood, Nudity

What’s it about? When Light, a young adventurer, finds himself on the fringe, his former comrades turn against him. Betrayed and broken, he narrowly escapes, only to leap out of the frying pan and into the proverbial fire of the Abyss. Using his magical skill, Unlimited Gacha, he finds himself armed with the ultimate tool to start plotting his revenge…

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My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon, I’m Out for Revenge! is the kind of Shield Hero adjacent anime that always makes me feel…anxious. It’s the kind of title, both literally  and in terms of a series, that has me awaiting that moment when it becomes clear that this show hates women, is human supremacist, and also just sucks.

I’m going to spoil things before you get to the first image: the shoe drops eight minutes in and it’s covered in maggots. Proverbially, not literally: that’d be gross, but what this premiere does after Light faces his inciting event is disgustin and feels rather at odds with the story we’re presented with in this slopped-together series. 

But you didn’t come here to see me yap: well, maybe you did. Regardless, I’ve got a review to flesh out so…let’s get into it.

Episode 1 starts in classic style: a continent born of fantasy beginnings under the crafting hand of a benevolent Goddess. Ranging from elves to centaurs to humans, this world is, naturally, still stuck in a medieval era, like all good stock fantasy series, do. Still, that’s not going to stop…Light?!

Oh no, not that name…Are we gonna have a kira on our hands?

Okay, joking aside, Light is an adventurer, or at least a hopeful one, and when he gets betrayed by a collective of non-human species. Such is the staple of young men who just want to adventure around a fantasy world and collect girls like me doing free pulls in Genshin Impact. Naturally, he becomes to villain to others and the hero in his own story, but how does he do it?

By using his super special skill, Unlimited Gacha, to summon a bunch of level 9999 babes to fight with and for him, starting with one single maid.

I’m covering this while sick from a fever and not-COVID, not-Influenza, but some shitty third thing that made me take yet another day off my hourly day job. This might be the best motivation to sleep all day and shower to get gussied up for my 8 AM work meeting tomorrow, because Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon (I’m not typing that entire name, nor am I copy-pasting it each time) sucks as much as the moldy bread, rotten apple, and bent fork Light received upon becoming a Rank F adventurer.

Forget the anime giving away its entire game in the outrageously long title: this is just more slop for slops’ sake, and I’m sick of fantasy anime treating its readership, and in this case viewership, like we’ll hork it down. I get that there’s a place for anime like this: they’re the potato chips of a season, filling out seasons that are already bursting at the seams. But instead of Lay’s or even a bespoke, small batch kettle chip, I’m getting told to dip my off brand crisps in shit dip and enjoy it. I really don’t think viewers of any level deserve shows like this.

It irritates me because shows like this are giving nothing. They’re serving nothing. They’re offering up NOTHING. And while I’m 100% sure this frustration is because I’ve had six hours of sleep over the past two days, I also know that it’s frustration at the ongoing spoonification of subpar anime adaptations of equally milquetoast source material for…what? Business? Money? Just because? I don’t know, but for some reason, this one stands out as particularly miserable and cynical in a time where I’d love to see anything but this type of unsubtle, sexist revenge narrative.

Worse, this plot feels entirely preventable. Light is discriminated against because…because? There’s no context, no reason, no reasoning to make me understand the nature of humans in this world other than being like, the least aesthetically pleasant species when you can be born as a centaur or something. Plus, we don’t really get into the nitty gritty of why Light is betrayed: instead, we get this borderline incel explanation where he goes from Just Fine youth to like…having a maid, and the ability to summon more comely warriors for his fighting harem, and let me tell you, you don’t want the smoke from me being angry about that at the buttcrack of dawn on a Saturday.

I don’t enjoy disliking or even hating anime series because I, at my core, understand. But within my perspective, shows like this cheapen the dynamic work done by others within a season, and really reflect a troubling horizon: the ongoing rise of male revenge series in a world that already hates anyone who isn’t a cis man to begin with. In truth, I’d say this if we had a female lead, but I also think those stories tend to engage with the notion better. Even at their worst, there’s still something interesting about a woman getting what she wants, and while I’m not universally for women’s wrongs, I am more interested in seeing messiness when applied to marginalized genders versus yet another young man who can do no wrong.

Ultimately, My Gift Lvl 9999 Unlimited Gacha: Backstabbed in a Backwater Dungeon, I’m Out for Revenge! (this is the one time you’ll get it c+p’d into the article outside the intro, okay?) is just weak and unproductive storytelling. Light is as uninspired as unseasoned the BRAT diet when you’re sick, leaving me feeling like this desaturated, mean-spirited mess of a premiere is best left in my distant memories alongside all those times I’ve publicly embarrassed myself over a decade ago. Let this not wake me in the middle of the night and instead just fade from my mind, please and thank you.