Genre(s): Isekai, Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure
Age-Appropriatness: 16+ (Scenes of graphic violence, profanity, Suggestive Themes)
Platforms: Crunchyroll, Hulu, Funimation
Episodes: 39
TheAwersome Rating: 7.6 / 10 (A good’un)
Premise: The final hour of the popular virtual reality game Yggdrasil has come. However, Momonga, a powerful wizard and master of the dark guild Ainz Ooal Gown, decides to spend his last few moments in the game as the servers begin to shut down. To his surprise, despite the clock having struck midnight, Momonga is still logged in as his character and, moreover, the non-player characters appear to have developed personalities of their own! Confronted with this abnormal situation in a world reminiscent of Yggdrasil yet different, Momonga commands his loyal servants to help him investigate and take control of this new world, with the hopes of figuring out what has caused this development and if there may be others in the same predicament.
TheAwersome’s Thoughts: This show was a good fun time, despite being about exactly what you’d expect from a Fantasy Isekai Comedy, though it does have some of its own unique flair as well. As an undead, Momonga doesn’t have the same emotions and innate conscience he once did, but still has a softer spot for humans than his non-human NPC servants. His desire to maintain the respect of them as a strong leader, however, causes his humanity to slip over time.
There’s a good amount of absolute garbage-people getting their comeuppance in this show and it is crazy satisfying. Where Overlord falls short in my opinion is direction. Each season seems to open two major plot points that you’d think would be the focus of next season, but they just get tossed aside and don’t get visited again. This also goes for characters; they’ll have soliloquys where they lay out their plans and motivations and then don’t… do any of it.
TLDR: A fun and good watch but a bit lacking in direction.
There is a fourth season titled Overlord IV.
This gives us a similar scenario to Saga of Tanya the Evil, where our main character is also somewhat the villain. Overlord takes its time to get to that point, however, and does a good job of making you feel something for the fall from Hero, to Anti-hero, to Anti-villain. Something I do like about Overlord is that the other characters get a lot of story and screen time, so we get to see just what effect Momonga has on the world around him. This leads to the deeper questioning of how much we approve of our main character’s actions. It brings in to question the glorification of popular “Anti-Hero” type characters. Yeah, it’s “super sick and gnarly” to decimate an army with a single spell, but when we know the stories of a lot of the soldiers and adventurers, it throws a thick wet blanket on the fires of righteous indignation and vengeful justice.
At a Glance Anime 