Overlord: A Review of Season 1 - Glass Reflection

Oh, look! Another wish-fulfillment, power fantasy, Isekai anime about a guy getting trapped in an MMO and being a complete badass that no one can defeat. NEVER SEEN THIS ONE BEFORE. This is going to be so much fun…

Okay, yeah. Yeah, no, that was better than I expected. Well done! Well done!

Overlord is an anime that has been around for a number of years, but I ended up avoiding it largely because Isekai anime have increasingly become boring to me over the last little while and there are only so many power fantasies that I can take. We all wish that we could live in a fantasy world. Our world sucks, I get it, but variety is the spice of life and this genre is one that has gotten saturated by the same kinda shit hella quick. So do you want to know how you get me interested in a “From another world” anime? Be bold. Be bold, even if it fails.

Like, bringing the fantasy to the real world? O-Ki. Fantasy world, but with a magical smartphone? Not O-ki. Teaching fantasy denizens the glory of otaku culture? O-ki! Sword Art Online? Not O-ki! I know I am just beating a dead horse with jumper cables at this point by mentioning SAO, but really it is the most well-known example from the genre that helps me get my point across. I’m not going to mention it again, anyway.

SO OVERLORD! It is the story that makes your protagonist a villain.

In Overlord, our main character Momonga is getting the last few hours of entertainment that he can out of his favourite MMO before it apparently goes offline forever. He looks after the spoils of his long-fought career, last-minute upkeep on the guild hall for memory’s sake, screwing around with his friend’s custom built NPCs, because hey the servers are closing down anyway, who’s there to get mad?

Only problem being that the server didn’t stop. Or, maybe it did, but that quickly becomes neither here nor there. At the moment of shutdown, instead of being logged out, our protagonist finds himself living in the body of his Lich avatar, sitting on his throne, surrounded by suddenly very active and emoting former NPCs.

What follows is the traditional Isekai story. Character finds the limits of what used to be the game and is now “real life”. He uses his overpowered abilities to show the world how awesome he is, etc, etc.

Overlord’s twist in the genre however is that our protagonist is playing a character who is, traditionally, a villain. Lich’s are evil, and he has demons and aberrations under his employ, all of whom despise and loathe the smelly humans. But this Lich is technically just a regular Japanese citizen thrust into a fantasy world. So how evil does that make him really?

Over the course of the series, I’d say that he’s less evil and more just trying to not be bored while doing his best to discover the limits of his circumstances. He doesn’t know why he lives in this world now, nor what about it is similar to the game that he remembers. He doesn’t know if anybody else got transported with him, what their thoughts and motivations on the subject will be. But he does know that he is thus far the most badass evil overlord in the land and no one’s power seems to even come close to his own. Which begs the inevitable question that I doubt will be directly asked: Even if he figures out how to get home, will he want to? Probably not.

Because that, in essence, is why this genre has been so popular. Everyone to some extent has dreams at some point in their life about living in another world, a better world, and stories about characters getting to do just that are engrossing because of it.

But Overlord rides a fine line between a fantasy that you could follow along with and be interested in, despite it not being about you, and masturbatory fanfiction about what the author wishes their life is like. Mechanically, Momonga is all-powerful, but the way that he lives acts as guidelines that keep him in check. Could he start a harem at his home base between all of the female minions and demons currently living there? Sure, he is a great and powerful overlord! But he doesn’t. It doesn’t fit the character he’s trying to portray. Which is important.

He’s playing a villain, a traditional fantasy villain at that. Like you can’t imagine Sauron, Dark Lord of All, starting a harem in Mordor, just because he can. It’s not done. So being able to stick to his character is what makes him intriguing. Audiences love a good bad guy. But at the same time, he was originally a human, a closeted nerd, and some of those tendencies do end up surfacing from time to time. That’s what makes him relatable. He’s not necessarily good at interacting with people, and even less so when they are ones who used to be his unmoving, emotionless NPC characters. So at first he does struggle with how he should interact with them, but eventually he starts to form bonds with those that he spends time with, and if you try to take those bonds away from him, his wrath with be swift and without mercy.

But I’m not saying he’s perfect, and that’s what I like about him. The subject of the power he wields is still a tenuous one. He still has yet to face any enemy that even comes close to him in power. He hasn’t had any real challenge in that regard. The closest yet wasn’t even all that close because with the “masterful planning” and strategy that he has – because, you know, power fantasy protagonist – he had the fight on lockdown from the get-go.

But there is a new season in town, which is odd considering how long that it’s been since this first season wrapped up. But with any luck, in this new season Momonga will finally have a good and proper challenge, one where he could and does lose. That’s the next scenario I want to see. But we’ll get to that.

Another nice thing that Overlord as a series does and has a leg up on other enjoyable shows in the genre (like say Log Horizon or King’s Avatar), is that they never spend a lot of time trying to explain the minute details of this MMO world that our villain finds himself in. It’s just kind of assumed you know. But at the same time there’s just enough remnants remaining to make it believable that this was at one point a playable MMO world and not just some fantasy world look-alike. Just enough to flesh out the world, but not so much that it feels like the show wants to educate – or needs to educate – its audience, which is its own kind of refreshing.

But there is a slight disappointment with the show. The animation.

Now, having said that, I need to be perfectly clear. The animation in Overlord is not bad. Hell, by most standards it’s actually really good. So why would I call it a disappointment though? Because this is a Madhouse show. Madhouse for me has a history of extremely stylized and fluid animation, and for years they have been one of my favourite studios to produce anime for television. They still are, to be clear, but while watching Overlord, I had to remind myself that they produced this because it didn’t feel like a work that they had anything to do with. Oh hey, it’s the cousin to Deen/Stay Night’s dragon! What the hell are you doing here? So it’s just unfortunate that, to me, Madhouse is not what it used to be. But times change, and studios have dropped far lower than this.

But back to Overlord.

Overlord is an example of a series that attempts to invert some of the tropes that made its genre a hit, trying to give its own spin on a genre that we are slowly getting more and more tired of as time passes. Like, I’m already kinda spent on it. I know some people aren’t, but I totally am. This is a power fantasy of a guy who could very well be extremely similar demographically to the audience that the show is trying to cater to, but not overly so and has enough limits on both his power and personality to stop him from being obnoxious. His supporting cast may be filled with cliché tried and true tropes, but the method in which they are integrated into the story makes them far more endearing than they would be otherwise. Because of course otaku overlords would create a squadron of battle-ready maids to protect their guild hall. Wouldn’t you?

Overall, I’d like to present Overlord with the recommendation to buy it. Although I would have been far more disappointed in this show had I watched it when it aired, as the first season leaves the story kind of in a lurch, and there’s nothing more at the end than just a massive tease at what could be upcoming in its future. And this has kind of prevented me from recommending it any higher, even with the second season currently airing. Because for the longest time – knowing Madhouse’s track record with sequels – it was unlikely to ever get a second season…until it happened. Which is surprising. A nice surprise, but still surprising.

Far too often we see shows, Madhouse shows in particular, getting released as nothing more than glorified advertisements for their source material that we as North American fans can’t partake in because most times said source material isn’t available to us over here. And it’s a sad and depressing reality that I wish just wasn’t the case.

The series itself is available to watch over on Crunchyroll, with a dub of season one as well as a simuldub of season two available from Funimation. But if you’ve watched Overlord and are looking for something else of similar quality, the aforementioned Log Horizon will fulfil most of your trapped-in-an-MMO needs. There’s also a show from late last year, Recovery of an MMO Junkie, which offers a humorous take on MMO gamers specifically, although they are not trapped in the fantasy world itself. Unless, of course, you consider spending hours upon hours in front of a monitor playing an MMO to be being trapped in it.

Until next time – ladies, gentlemen, and others – stay frosty.

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