Overlord - TV Series

Introduction

Overlord isn’t exactly what one would call a mainstream anime. Although it has a fair number of viewers, you can’t really say that it “took off” in the way that other major shounen and isekai anime have in the past. I’d heard several mentions of Overlord in the community over the years, especially after the release of the sequel to Isekai Quartet.

Deciding that I wanted to watch all the anime that the characters in Isekai Quartet came from was probably the dominating factor that led me to watch Overlord, and I was pleasantly surprised when I did come to watch it. Its plot progression isn’t great, but it did pretty well overall.

Overlord originally came out in 2015 and was produced by Madhouse, the legendary studio behind Hunter x Hunter (2011), Death Note, One Punch Man, and a lot of other anime ingrained in the public mind. The show currently has an 8.02 out of 10 on MyAnimeList which, while a fair score, may not represent the totality of Overlord’s situation.

Plot and Story

Overlord’s basis in a typical isekai format, although partially melded with the VRMMO genre. Actually, Overlord’s premise is pretty similar, in essence to that of Log Horizon. The main character, at first named Momonga, is the sorcerer leader of the guild Ainz Ooal Gown in the Dive MMORPG known as Yggdrasil.

Yggdrasil is outdated, however, and the show begins on the final day of its operation. Momonga tours his guild’s base, the Tomb of Nazarick, and spends some time with the NPCs they created, having a little fun with them before the servers finally shut down for good. However, when the clock strikes midnight, Momonga finds himself still fully immersed in the world around him, and the NPCs have also gained new, richer personalities.

Just like in Log Horizon, the character is transported to another world identical to that of his video game and with similar mechanics. However, unlike in Log Horizon, I felt as though the initial transfer was a lot clearer and less ambiguous in Overlord. I was able to fully grasp the reality of the new world, figured out what was new to Momonga and what was familiar, and Momonga himself began questioning things around him, something very important to establishing plot details and informed characters.

The first few episodes of Overlord begin to set up the world around Momonga, his objective, and the personalities of the various NPCs around him. Interestingly enough, Momonga is clearly made overpowered on purpose, but the world around him is unfamiliar enough to demand improvisation and exploration on his part.

At first, and in the opening theme, Momonga makes it clear that his objective is to explore the new world he’s found himself in, since the geography and map around him was changed from Yggdrasil’s despite maintaining Yggdrasil’s magic and mechanics. From here, the main premise of the show is introduced; Momonga explores the world around him and interacts with it in his new body and position as a master undead sorcerer with an army of lethal servants at his beck and call.

He continues to do so over the first three or four episodes, gathering intelligence and organizing his small army of followers, and later going to rescue a nearby village from an attack by an opposing nation. This first, introductory segment felt very fresh and new. Very few anime I’d seen before held a similar concept, and the idea of an overpowered Overlord conquering the world around him, exploring, and raising his flag from a position of excessive power and ability was fresh.

However, the middle of the show, the second arc covered by the season, reverted to a very traditional, and boring, isekai protagonist setup. Momonga and one of his guardians, Narberal Gamma, take on aliases and join the local adventurer’s guild in order to establish themselves in the national order of warriors.

They have a series of pretty inconsequential adventures where Momonga pretends to be a warrior looking for glory and battle, and they end up putting down a small conspiracy that was set on raiding E-Rantel (the city closest to the Tomb of Nazarik in the New World) using an army of undead. This arc was pretty useless, to be frank, and while it did give the anime space to play around with its characters and develop them a little, it really wasn’t something I felt was building on the potential introduced in the beginning.

It felt almost like a safe play; instead of pushing onwards through the middle of the series with more expansion on Momonga’s plans and his invasion, we get this basic “undercover” mission that follows stereotypical adventure plotlines. Not bad, just not overly great either, especially when we already know so much about how the series is actually going and who Momonga really is.

In any case, the final arc also felt dry. Shalltear, another of Momonga’s guardians falls under the mind control of an unknown entity. Momonga drags out his most powerful weapons to protect his other guardians and engages Shalltear in combat, in an attempt to recover the honor he lost in allowing one of his servants to fall under mind control.

He bests Shalltear and kills her, later reviving her to break the mind control. This honestly felt more like a time burner than anything, but I did appreciate the glimpse this arc gave us into Nazarik’s treasury and the remnants of Momonga’s old comrades. Also, based on Momonga’s comments, this suggests that other entities, possibly ex-players like Momonga, exist in the New World, entities that Momonga will have to fight and defeat to continue spreading his name.