How story’s indecisiveness ruins it.
Summary
- Overlord’s premise is fantastic.
- It’s too grimdark to be a good comedy.
- It’s too apologetic to be a good tragedy.
Overlord has an amazing premise
At the very last hour of a closing MMO, a player sitting alone in his guild hall is transported into another world. He is brought there along with his guild hall and every NPC delving in it, and is now possessing the body of his avatar. And that’s not even the biggest issue — because his avatar is a 2-meter tall skeletal lich, and all the NPCs suddenly became fully sapient and quite Evil. Which is a bit too much for a simple guy playing an MMO to deal with.
The premise of Overlord is indeed very fun — our main character, nicknamed Momonga and renamed Ainz Ooal Gown, found himself bearing a monstrous appearance in an entirely new world full of unknown dangers, surrounded by almost comically Evil minions, and with no apparent way to get home or reunite with his guild members. From here, the author Maruyama Kugane could go one of two ways — either make Overlord a comedy in which Ainz has to navigate through his minions’ expectations and machinations, or make it a tragedy about how due to the world’s treatment of him Ainz is slowly turning into what he is perceived as.
Sadly, the story tried to do both, and achieved neither.
The story’s execution is middling at best
True, the show tries to delve into comedy by occasionally revealing the main character’s inner monologue — yet, it hampered this aspect by introducing an ‘emotion suppression’ mechanic, making him more and more complacent and subdued. Moreover, the tone of Overlord is almost grimdark, as lives don’t cost the spell slots used to extinguish them. On his misadventures, Ainz murders thousands of people in the most unpleasant ways (and trust us, it’s even worse in the novels), making these comedic bits less and less believable or enjoyable.
On the other hand, Ainz’ tragic decline into villainy is also undercut by the author’s decisions. He is not getting more cruel and unhinged as a result of how the world treats him — rather, it’s that same ‘emotion suppression’ mechanic at play, as his minions keep nudging him to commit further atrocities. And even that is contradicted by the world’s reactions to him — the enemies Ainz is about to slaughter (like prince Zanac in the latest season) believe him to be the most human of them all, while the allies his minions are secretly undermining believe him to be the epitome of a king. Or, in other words, the story is trying its hardest to be apologetic for Ainz even as he commits genocide.
Unfortunately, Overlord has bigger issues than its horrible CGI — its story doesn’t know what it wants to be, so it does a middling job trying to be everything at once. It could’ve been one of the best stories of the decade — and instead, we just find it cool to watch.