Overlord Review — B

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The MMO game becomes real! Except this time there’s only one human and he is an evil skeletal overlord that decides to conquer the world.

I quite liked this, actually. There’s just something about an evil skeletal overlord that rides into battle on a hamster. And thematically it was quite interesting, with the focus on someone who played an MMO but all his friends have quit, and he’s trapped in a world where he’s the only human and everything he sees reminds him of his friends.

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It does lose focus a bit (the part in the middle where he went adventuring was especially out of place). But overall, Overlord is a big improvement over the other recent MMO games. Compared to Log Horizon, it doesn’t get bogged down in so many details and remains much more fun. And unlike SAO, it isn’t bad porn.

My biggest complaint is that the show didn’t seem to get too far into the story.

  • Storytelling – B – Some arcs were out of place.
  • Voice – B – Love the “evil” main character.
  • Characters – B – The main guy is great, the underlings are perhaps too obedient to be that interesting.
  • Attention Grab – B – One of the shows I anticipated most this season.
  • Production – B – Looks fine.
  • Overall – B

Recommendations – Log Horizon, Sword Art Online

17 thoughts on “Overlord Review — B

    1. It’s really hard to achieve decent pace in LN adapations. Two volumes would be slow and they need to show as much as they can, because the main purpuse of adaptations is to advertise the source material and boost sales.

  1. >Compared to Log Horizon, it doesn’t get bogged down in so many details and remains much more fun

    Overlord was fun? Where? I found it utterly boring once they had the evil skeleton take on the world’s most boring adventure and easily curb-stomp a few villains. Does it get a lot better in the last two episodes or something?

    By contrast Log Horizon’s “evil” guy was far more compelling, at least for the first season, and I found it was a lot more fun because of that. Some mopey chump riding a random giant hamster isn’t nearly as fun as a guy taking over a city through devious political machinations.

    1. I don’t know, I thought the devious political machinations in Log Horizon were pretty boring. It mostly consisted of people giggling while adjusting their glasses…

      1. I thought that that was one of the best things in log horizon, the political view, making it more “real”.
        Overlord had its good laughing moments but it waste soooo much time. It would have been different if they put more plot into it, but it kinda felt empty like filler episodes. Could have done more with it, hope they learn from mistakes and do better. Looking forward

  2. “The MMO game becomes real!”

    I’m not sure why many viewers think that this is what happened.

    It became obvious after 3 episodes that he’s not in the game’s world, because almost everything is unknown to him. He was transported to a real fantasy world, that has some familiar things from the game – for example items and magic – that was introduced by other players who came before Ainz.

      1. The possibility to return home makes a huge difference and that the way to use magic, items,change armor,etc. isn’t with a panel like in log horizon or SAO there is more if you look.

        1. Well, the thing is, story-wise, it doesn’t make much difference. It changes how things work but not much in the plot. The main thing is perhaps since he’s in a real world he can contemplate just staying there without caring, while in a SAO kind of situation even if he wanted he’d have to worry about his real body shrivelling and dying in a hospital bed. Besides that, in a SAO sort of situation the NPCs would stay such and killing them would have no ethical implications. Here the NPCs have become people, so killing them carries more weight.

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