Overlord was one of the first anime shows I had ever watched, back in 2015 when the first season aired. Prior to this wonderful series, my only exposure to anime had been through One Punch Man and Death Note, which are both remarkable shows in their own regards, however they are quite unique in the realm of anime. Death Note features a very detailed, in depth story that drives the show much more than the animation and is thus the main reason for watching it. One Punch Man on the other hand relies heavily on the awesome animations and uses the shallow ended story to make fun of other popular anime and manga.

Overlord was my first real experience of a more traditionally styled and formatted anime, and I’m glad it was. I chose the series solely for the plot summary: hardcore gamer gets sucked into game. I mean, let’s be honest… who wouldn’t want to experience that? Anybody who’s played an MMO before and spent countless hours grinding out gear knows what kind of time and dedication it takes to achieve the ultimate character. If you’ve achieved the “ultimate character”, you’d also know how OP you are and how things can get boring pretty quickly.

Then you know how our main character, Ainz feels. Our boy Ainz isn’t Saitama level strong, but he’s the top of the crop when it comes to game characters — and it’s pretty damn awesome to witness as a viewer.

Basic Synopsis

In the year 2126, a DMMO-RPG (Dive Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) game called YGGDRASIL is released in Japan. For 12 years, the game goes strong until it’s servers are shut down in 2138. During it’s final hours, a player named Momonga who had dedicated years of his life to the game and his guild spent the last of it’s time reminiscing in-game. Choosing to sleep in the Throne Room of his Guild Hall awaiting the game to automatically log him out, he awakes to find himself still in his avatar — but the world around him is quickly changing…

Detail to the Game World

Both with details included in Seasons 1-3, as well as information from the Manga and wiki sites, Overlord has some detailed background to it’s story. It’s not only the concept of being in an MMO game that makes this anime great, it’s the actual concept behind the MMO itself that makes this amazing. We all dream of that perfect MMORPG that seems boundless in it’s rules and possibilities. Well, YGGDRASIL and the New World are based on that perfect ideal game. Extreme character customization when it comes to race, skills, and abilities. Endless possibilities for loot, monsters, and dungeons. According to the wiki for YGGDRASIL:

“YGGDRASIL was a game of exploration, and so many things were mysteries left unknown for players to discover on their own or in groups. It was a game where all you were told was the controls before being thrown into the deep end. In other words, the special thing about YGGDRASIL was the incredible amount of freedom given to players, compared to any other DMMO-RPGs out there.

In a world like this, one had to investigate and discover things on one’s own. In fact, even the items that one could and could not use could only be felt out through repeated trial and error on the player’s part. There were walkthrough sites and news sites, but those sites only hosted a compilation of publicly known information or very untrustworthy rumors. YGGDRASIL was a game of exploring the unknown. Thus, any information one uncovered would be very valuable. There was no merit in publishing this valuable information for any stranger to view free of charge.

Although a lot of information had already been collected, most of it pertained to dungeons or other locations, and it was estimated that only 30% of the nine worlds had been mapped so far.”

Now take all of this, and add it on to the fact that the main character of the story, Momonga, is one of the best players in the games’ history and has extensive knowledge over things most people wouldn’t even think to consider. This makes for an anime that is any gamer’s wet dream.

Animation

The quality of the Animation in Overlord isn’t the greatest, if I’m going to be honest. Again, being introduced to it as my third anime I wasn’t too disappointed. However, 5 years later and now looking back at the overall quality of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seasons of the running series, I’ve seen enough to say that the animation is not the top priority for this series. There are some significant fights seen throughout the seasons, but the most notably animated one was during the first season and since then the quality has dropped.

Madhouse, the producers of Overlord, use a weird 3D animation blend for certain scenes which frankly just looks bad when mixed in with the anime drawing style. The 3D computer animations look clunky and obviously stick out from the rest of scene, somewhat taking you out of place and defeating the purpose of using awesome animation for creating amazing concepts like Overlord.

Story

Where Madhouse fails in the Animation department, the writing for the story definitely makes up for it. It can be both serious, dark and thrilling, while just a few minutes later followed up by lightly sexualized humor. The first two or so episodes of the first season may be a bit slow for some, but I highly recommend getting at least 5 episodes in before giving up.

Conclusion: Worth It

If you’re a gamer and a fan of anime that follows the “game” genre, then this series is definitely a good choice for you. As I’m a fan of English Dubbed versions of anime, you might be glad to hear that Funimation stays up to date with their English Dubbed version of Overlord. When new seasons are released, the English dubbed episodes are released concurrently (usually 2 or 3 episodes behind the English subbed version).