The universe may be doomed. That’s because the “Plundering Count,” Liam Sera Banfield—with loyal and powerful servants like the A.I. maid Amagi and princess pilot Christiana by his side—is on a mission to put his happiness first, which, as it so happens, means being evil and destroying humanity. Though to be fair, he has good reason to be suspicious of humans. As a child, Liam was abandoned by his parents and weighed down by a kingdom’s worth of debt—but that’s just his current life. Before being born into this sci-fantasy world, Liam was a husband, father, and employee here on Earth, where he was betrayed by those he loved and framed for illegal activities by his employer. On the brink of death and having lost everything except an online friendship with otaku Nitta, he is visited by one he calls “The Guide,” who gives him several choices for a new life, which the soon-to-be-count decides to use to “exact revenge”! And Liam’s new evil life all begins with…A.I.?
Yes, there’s A.I., though even a robot story, which I tend to love, couldn’t help episode one of I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire!, which wrapped with me giving the biggest eye roll of all time. Random fanservice, a staid storyline, and a downfall so over-the-top and unbelievable that I almost checked out right then and there, all had me ready to immediately declare this a series to stay away from. But then episode two streamed on autoplay afterward. While I’ve been in the contingent expressing derision toward double-episode premieres, in this case, it was necessary because of the tonal and thematic shift in episode two. Following Liam on his 5th birthday in this world and the days that followed, episode two shows him once again getting the shaft, but it also shows him solidifying his new credo and transforming from a self-sacrificing, loving, and meek man in his first life, to a selfish, evil figure in the second. But it’s really the tone of episode two that turned me: it’s much lighter than the first, featuring quite a lot of humor (some of it sexual) and giving hope that this series will be more than your basic revenge tale, which, at its worst, is both overly simple in form and script, and an encouragement for the audience to support terrible thoughts and deeds. For instance, Amagi—the A.I. maid that Liam’s parents order for him—is a robot that supports Liam in his quest for revenge, but whose ideas and actions support her master in a way that resembles love. The two even talk about human emotions for a short time. In light of this, short conversations from the first episode between the now-older Liam and his crew, which at first just seemed to point toward an “evil girl harem,” now seem to indicate more than skin-deep reasons for the loyalty they have toward the count—and which will certainly be explored in future episodes.
The second episode showed that this series is entertaining. But is it good? I certainly think the potential is there. The scene in which the main character signs away his life to “The Guide” recalls similar scenes in media relating to selling one’s soul to the devil; there’s rich material to mine here, including the thought of the protagonist being like a “faithless” version of Job interacting with the devil. And this isn’t the only reference to other media in this series. The Terminator franchise is quite clearly signalled, as is Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. The animation is average, but I enjoyed the callback to some older animation styles during the fights (the space punks in one scene reminded me of The Irresponsible Captain Tylor), and I thought the fights themselves featured pretty strong CGI and mecha that were vintage and cool. I also have a number of questions, the answers to which might end up proving the series’ worth, such as: Who is Nitta-kun and how is he (or probably “she”) involved in all this? Is this truly a revenge story or is it a redemption tale (or something in between)? And will doggos save the day? Yes, really—dogs do seem to be an important part of the story. For now, I plan to tune in for a while at least, and maybe longer, if the season ends up being light on shows I’m interested in. Thankfully, I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! made the right call by starting out with two episodes, with a third to be streamed before many of the other spring 2025 anime even premiere; that should give us some time and content to judge whether the anime generally reflects the poor quality of episode one or the better side featured in episode two.
I’m the Evil Lord of an Intergalactic Empire! is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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Liam being framed by his boss definitely isn’t that far out there. At my last job, we got a horrible new manager after our good one retired. He ran the store into the ground in three months, then blamed the assistant store manager. She was demoted and transferred.
I’m sorry to hear that. 🙁
This is by far my favorite Light Novel Series. They stayed faithful to the series while adding in some spice to make it make sense for an anime throwing things out of order. I think you’ll find you won’t be disappointed I can’t say there’s a series like it having seen hundreds
What is it about the LN series that you would say makes it so special?