Time: Overlord

Around two months ago, I received word of an anime club on my college campus and was intrigued at first. My last university only had a "Japanese club", which was basically a small group of Japanese students or Japanese-looking students surrounded by a bunch of neckbeards who argued over who best fit the word "waifu". So what did I find when I went to this one? Basically the same thing, minus the Japanese students. Well anyway, I saw on their Facebook page that they were planning on watching two shows: Bakemonogatari, a series with so much symbolic symbolism that it's symbolism's symbolism's symbolism has symbolism, and Overlord, a series that, in my opinion, is like the relative that brought a bag a chips to a Thanksgiving dinner: they're bringing nothing new to the table. And how fitting, because it's almost Thanksgiving. But whatever, let's get on with the review, shall we?

Story:

One thing I did not mention in my preface was the fact that the club was watching episodes 4-6, meaning I was starting it in the thick of things. They assured me "you don't need to watch it from the beginning to understand the story". For a bit, they were right. You could sit in in the middle of the show and completely understand the story regardless of where you picked it up from, but I suppose starting it from the beginning helps you understand the premise. However, what bored me to death about the story is its overuse of the "stuck in/transported to another word story" that we've seen time and time and time again. In addition to this, it seems to me that they've done zero to change the formula, especially when it came to the characters.

Characters:

The character cast of this show is a fair bit large (not Naruto, One Piece, or Fairy Tail large, mind you), but in all honesty, most of them aren't even worth mention. Pretty much every character in the show sticks to their roles and they don't really venture anywhere outside of them. Not even the main character Momonga who, in my opinion, is basically just a carbon-copy or Kirito from Sword Art Online, except Kirito isn't a skeleton and Momonga isn't a wannabe loner. I say they're starkly similar because of the fact that both are overleveled as all hell and both basically just have the same "my stick is bigger than yours" weapon that crushes their opponent into putty.

Sound:

The music for the show isn't really anything of worthy mention or merit. I didn't really care for any of the soundtracks playing throughout the series. Even after a while I skipped the opening because I started to get really sick of the vocalist's Engrish.

The one saving grace that I can say about this series is its English cast. Yes, I did watch those couple of episodes of the show in subs and did enjoy it to an extent, but seeing that the dub was by Funimation, I couldn't refuse. Though there weren't many voices I recognized from it, I did thoroughly enjoy it.

Animation:

Despite this show being from studio Madhouse, I can't really say I cared much for the animation department of this anime. Even the fight scenes were a bit lackluster and don't deserve much praise. Maybe I just didn't pay much attention to it, but I just didn't care for it.

Verdict:

I can't say that this show was an absolute dumpster fire, but it certainly isn't something I would go out of my way to watch again. Even if a buddy of mine said "Hey, let's watch Overlord!", I'd probably say "Sure", but I'd most likely fall asleep during the majority of the show. As for the unanswered questions of the show, I've heard it's been greenlit for a second season (why I don't know), but I highly doubt I'm going to invest any more time and energy into this show for future use, be it light novel, anime, or whatever.

 

.... I disagree completely overlord is pretty much a not shit SAO and is wayy WAY better then that shit. It improves on that kind of show immensely.

wait is this a different overlord....

 

Thank you for your reviews. Good job.