Overlord II

The greatest allure and strength of the Overlord narrative has always been Ainz’s delicate dance between the ordinary dime-a-dozen salary man of Earth and his Overlord status in this other world. His utterly devoted fanatical underlings treat him like that of a god who can do no wrong. He can’t afford to make mistakes because his servants cannot imagine him making one. To make one is to not be a god. And he intends to keep that image because anything else might disrupt the equilibrium of Nazarick and, more importantly, jeopardize his safety and base of operations. In the strange world he finds himself in, ... the most powerful known beings who can threaten his safety are those under him. On and on, his everyman impulses struggles with what he thinks a supreme ruler should act. He must pretend to be prescient when he knows next to nothing and carefully delegate his subordinates in a way that gets his wishes done without revealing that he knows less than them on how to carry it out.

He’s a man trapped in a situation that already slipped out of his control, propelled by his ever-faithful minions’ tendency misconstrue his words as gospel, his musings as genius, and his luck as omniscience, as well as their fear that he would leave them as his guildmates already have. He’s all they have left of the great beings they worship, and by jove they will raze the world to the ground in his name if that’s what it takes to keep him by their side.

Everything else about Overlord is just barely decent. The problem with the anime series is that it fails so hard to translate and convey the strongest core selling point of Overlord.

What Overlord S2 is trying to sell now is the idea of a world bigger than its protagonist and that one fails too on two fronts: the core idea itself and the execution of that idea.

Overlord, due to the nature of the LN, is a series that adds and adds, but rarely expands. You might wonder how can adding more and more detracts from a narrative. It does when you keep adding without expanding on what is already established. Overlord has multiple plot points and threads hanging in the air, the energy and time establishing them being wasted away. We’re not going to tackle the source materials here though because it is a review of the anime adaptation so let’s keep it to the anime adaptation.

Suffice is it to say that the way Overlord is setup forces a quandary on the series. The first season does not easily expand into this second season and the first arc of this season does not expand into the second arc. You could say that they are merely individual build-ups sections – badly done build-ups at that, not because there is no immediate pay-off but because they feel like (and probably are) build-up to different things. It’s risking the fact that you may not get invested in the flow of the story because there is really no smooth flow of the story yet. Again, this isn’t a fault of the adaptation and it can very easily be rectified by solid execution. It starts off with a little bit of disadvantage but just really needs to present itself right and everything will fall into place.

Does it?

Season 2 is an adaptation of Volumes 4, 5, and 6 of the light novel. Volumes 5 and 6 are two continuous stories, a mega-arc if you will. Volume 4, however, connects to Volume 5 with only the barest, thinnest of threads. These are two very different arcs with vastly different locales, (massive) set of characters, and conflicts that need to be established all under 13 episodes. That’s simply not enough time for two different stories (with at least two different storylines running in parallel.) in two different types of settings. That is insane.

The characters could have been the saving grace in the transition but here’s the thing: Overlord S2 sidelines the Season 1 characters with significant screentime to side character status. That’s not a bad thing. Heck, done well it could have been a good thing. The problem is that the new season starts with a new set of characters you don’t really care about and then the show botched its attempt at making you care about them and then uses them for only five episodes before they are then discarded to introduce yet another fresh batch of characters. The problem here isn’t even in you losing track of who they all are. The problem here is if you even care at all who they are. It’s a large mess that frankly is easier to follow than to care about.

Madhouse forgot one simple Ron Swanson principle: never half-ass two things; whole-ass one thing. You can feel the oozing, overpowering, rank mediocrity as the studio rushes through the Lizardman Arc to get to the next arc. Rather than skip the first arc to focus on the next or give the first arc justice, they decide to do the first arc but do it in such a way that they get to the next arc faster, a decision that they didn’t even do justice come the next arc. This decision gives us a lot of hastened info dumps, uninspired character designs, insipid backdrops, and budget fight scenes.

What few genuinely strong moments it could have had, it squanders for lack of pacing. A painful example of this is Zaryusu's rather interesting and compelling argument (on why they should fight) that lost every sense of impact possible due to the fact that it was said immediately with nary a proper establishment of the Lizardmen economy and culture or Zaryusu's place in all that. It was pulled out of the hat and we're supposed to just accept it because it was said so without planting the seeds of ideas first in the viewers (sadly this isn’t an isolated case or adaptation specific failure even). It didn't even need to go to great lengths for its setting. It just needs to establish the setting enough to ground the arc's main character in it. It failed. It simply did not have the luxury of time for the size of the story it attempted to tell.

Imagine if it developed that. Imagine a tribal setting, a rarity in anime, with Lizardmen instead of humans as the main characters, which is even rarer. Imagine how much it could have had expanded on what little the LN established. Imagine the different tribal colors and patterns depending on the locale of a specific tribe: say solid, blocky lines for the mountainous, flowing curves for the lake-bound. Paint a picture in your mind’s eyes, a cacophony of colors and patterns anime never tackled before. Imagine the new-ness, the fresh-ness of it all. Can you see it? It’s only a simple scenario of how they could have gone with the series if they focused on one arc and did it justice.

To be frank, Overlord S2 is boring. Not because it’s too slow but because it’s too fast. The entire season feels like it’s just a pure un-distilled fan-service for the LN readers. It’s a chance for them to see their favourite scenes and characters animated and acted out. If you’re an anime-only watcher, expect not to care about anything because this show is the equivalent of you in a tour through a safari/wildlife preserve and your tour vehicle is moving at 100km/h. There’s something out there, you just can’t savour it.

In fact, the second season seemed like it was made just to keep the Overlord flame going. The studio realized they have a popular IP and they need to keep what little hype was left from the first season two+ years ago so that they can revisit the idea of another season down the road if they need to. And it shows. This is as cheap, as rushed, and as unimaginative as they can make it. Frankly you should ask yourself this: if Madhouse couldn’t be arsed enough to care, why should you?

Review written at episode 4. I have not read the light novel. Will update nearer the end of the season.

tl;dr: So far, worthless.

Whether it be because the manga went through a slump, or whether Madhouse simply didn't try with this arc, the end result is terrible. The character designs are uninspiring, the plot is boring, and the character interactions felt as though they'd been lifted from a template. Compared to the first season, which I loved every moment of, this is abysmal.

Is there anything that Madhouse did right?

Yes. The moments where it paid attention to Shalltear's inner turmoil about what ... happened at the end of last season, and the thought cocyutus put into his answers when interrogated by Ains were well done. They may have been a tad obvious (shallow), but still appropriate and well executed. However, these moments don't even account for a whole episode's worth of screen time.

Also, with the exception of the lizardmen, the characters are well-designed (and drawn) and the soundtrack is pretty good.

So what could Madhouse have done better?

- If they really had no choice but to include all of this, they could have reformatted it into flashbacks. The biggest problem with this garbage is that it's four episodes of continuous garbage. If it were broken down into chunks, as could be done with a flashback, then it would be more tolerable. As it is, it's just going to turn people away before it gets good.

- Preferrably, though, don't include this rubbish in the first place. There is a rather large amount of "character development" that serves no benefit to the story. If said character development was done well, then this wouldn't be a problem, but it's heavy-handedness and outright sillyness simply makes the characters seem superficial. Had Madhouse decided to distribute this arc through flashbacks, this would be the perfect excuse to remove all the lazy character development. By starting off with "these two are in a relationship" then later clarifying on the important points of "how it happened", the majority of the uninteresting content could be cut, giving more time for the development of the interesting characters.

* let me be clear, I am not a particular fan of flashbacks, I just support their appropriate use to remove periods of boredom or inactivity.

- Alternatively, they could have simply put more effort into the first four episodes. While some are hardcore fans of remaining true to the source, if the source contains a clearly sub-par section, minor, targeted revisions can be beneficial. If this was merely a matter of madhouse not caring about these episodes and simply rushing them, then they've dug their own grave.

(minor spoiler) The first season was quite good. It wasn't really anything new but it was entertaining none the less. I've seen 5 episodes from this season and it's just awful. It's like they gave up on the story and decided to aim this arc at the furry community by adding a bunch of furry references so they can get the ratings up from brigading furrys. They've even added a yiffing scene. It makes me cringe but i'll finish it since i really liked the first one. The art and sound is about the same as the first season except the action scenes look really ... half assed.

not enough hamsuke screen time hamsuke is the greatest character in history and for them to just blatantly ignore hamsuke this season should be considered a crime against all of humanity ainz is a total pushover who gets peer pressured into conquering the world by a bunch of npcs who technically arent real like the shows literally called overlord he could really just be like lmao i dont really wanna do any of that im your boss lmao listen to me and they really cant do anything about it considering that they all pretty much worship him also best outro but worst opening ik thats ... all personal but im just stretching this out cause MAL wanted me to make this longer the only thing i actually wanted to talk about was the hamsuke part

Why did they even bother? Perhaps that single question summarizes the second season of Overlord the best. Because, and I say this with the best intentions, this is one of the least interesting 2nd seasons of anything I've had displeasure of watching. I enjoyed the first season of Overlord quite a bit despite its numerous flaws, and large portion of that enjoyment came directly from the main cast. Expecting more of them, I dwell into the second season only to find out that the main cast has turned into background characters that do nothing.

First portion of the season - which is an arc, I ... suppose, about lizardmen or whatever - is tantamount to watching paint dry on the wall. Lizard characters are uninspired, drab, boring, and their circumstances are less than interesting. I couldn't be bothered to care, so I couldn't wait for it to be over with. It took way too long as it was, yet they still couldn't properly build up even a single character or a single plot thread.

Despite that, however, my greatest gripe with the story is that it's confusing as hell. And I don't mean that it's confusing just for viewers, it's self-confusing, if that makes any sense. It has no direction to speak of. Transitioning from parallel storylines is atrocious. New characters are just thrown at the viewers non-stop without taking even a second to build up the already present characters properly. New plot threads are introduced without ever having resolved the already lingering one. The major plot point of the first season (who was it that controlled the vampire) is thrown into the background, and is mentioned once or twice when the creator decides to show us the main cast. Not only is it all over the place, but even what we get is just... boring. I don't care about the fucking bottom-feeder lizards. I don't care about do-goody princess trying to fix the Kingdom or something. I don't care about the shady organization pumping kids full of drugs and selling slaves. Why don't I care? Because I was given about 30 seconds to process that information and was expected to just go with it and care.

Story is a disaster. I'm sure that, at least in LN, all these seemingly loose plot threads eventually tangle up and it all makes sense, but it's hard to care and truck through to get to that point. If, IF, these side-stories we're given were interesting, then perhaps I would give a dime about what's going on - but they're not. They're rushed, and we're given nothing except info dump after info dump. Characters are expositing to the point of insanity, and I can't be bothered to care anymore.

Next up - art. Oh. Sweet. Jesus. Christ. I know that art wasn't a strong suite of the first season, but this is atrocious. First 7 episodes feel like they gathered a baker's dozen intern scrubs and told them 'do whatever you want, nobody cares'. 'Fights' - it hurts me to even call them that - last about 10 seconds, and they couldn't even bothered to properly animate even that. Stills. Stills everywhere. Uninspiring designs. Every bit of charm that the first season had when it comes to designs is lost. Then we have lizard sex. It can't be unseen! Well, I hope she got pregnant anyway. I'm a good guy.

The only reason I've given characters such a high score is because of the main cast. While seeing them on screen feels like finding a cute, naked girl in your bedroom who swears to be your servant until the end of days, they're still relatively interesting. Besides them, nothing. Void. Absolute fuckery of nothingness. Lizards? Nope. I can't remember a single name of 10 or so lizards that were named. The only name I actually do remember is that guy Climb. Because his name is Climb. Fucking Climb.

Because of the sheer quantity of the characters, quality is nowhere to be found. Personally, I haven't read a light novel, so I don't know how it is handled there. But, however it is handled, this isn't the way to go about it. Not an episode goes by without being introduced to yet another character. Oh, because Clementine's character from the first season was so interesting, we also got a look at her(his?) long-lost twin-sister. Yaaaaay.......

I'll finish the season for the sake of finishing it, but unless quality suddenly rises by umpth degree, this won't be going past 5. Final conclusion? Colossal disappointment.

STORY: 1

I'd like to begin by asking the following: What story? What exactly is this show about? Season 1 of Overlord couldn't really make up its mind either, but at least it was an enjoyable time enough for me to not mind. In fact, I marathoned all of Season 1 faster than I have ever watched an anime before in my life. Season 2 of Overlord got lost in a rabbithole.

After Momonga becomes a part of his MMORPG, but is simultaneously transported to a different setting (starting to get a little convoluted, but it's workable), he decides to do... Well, it's not really clear. He ... eventually decides to spread the name of his guild across the lands with the hope that someone else from his MMORPG is there also, which is a rather weak goal for an entire series to hinge on. BUT! Earlier he considers taking over the world as an evil overlord since he and his crew of NPCs have all the powers they acquired in the game while the people of the world they find themselves in are comparably weak. It would be the same as waking up in DragonAge Origins as your max-level character from World of WarCraft.

The problems start right out the gate because Momonga doesn't want to start a conflict he can't win, so is very slow and deliberate, scouting the world to see what powers he might be up against and if other players like himself are there. This grinds the pacing down to less than a crawl. The fact that Momonga can't be sure if he's 100% invincible in this world is an artificial barrier that prevents the story from pumping along at a nice even pace. More importantly though, while much is cut out from the original light novels, I believe much more should have been cut. For example, most events (in both seasons) take several episodes to complete when they could be done in just one, (mostly by removing extraneous dialogue that accomplishes nothing), making that event more impactful and freeing up time for more character development and story progression. It would bother those who have read the light novels since they would know just how much was excluded, but it would be necessary for the sake of making the adaptation into an anime even slightly functional.

The pacing problems carry on in Season 2 but are far worse. We never really know what the story is about because we don't see Momonga or his crew enough to stay saddled onto the overarching story. We divert to new characters as they rally to defend their homes from an invasion by Momonga's forces. That may sound interesting, but it's not. Seeing the conflict from the lizards' perspective (they're lizardmen, by the way) could be good, but it's jarring to focus on them so completely when this isn't their story to tell. This is Momonga's story of how he slowly learns more about the setting and, we assume despite him never really confirming it's actually his ambition, take over the world. This season doesn't allow us to follow along with that premise because we get bogged down in the immediate plot and endless and awkwardly written info dumps about history that really doesn't matter going forward, and could be safely left out, freeing up time for more interesting and relevant world building.

As we continue in Season 2, we shift focus to another series of new characters that aren't all that interesting as they go about their generic lives. They all have goals and pasts to tell, but none of it is relevant to the story of Momonga (presumably) taking over the world.

Just as an aside, I must mention the indecisiveness of the character of Momonga. He never really decides to be a villain protagonist. Even until the end of Season 2 he is only acting in small ways to gain resources and information and otherwise just react to events rather than causing them. He doesn't clearly act towards a greater goal, and many times appears to go out of his way to not be a villain. It's hard to describe, but it's like the writer couldn't make up his mind what kind of character he wanted Momonga to be. Does he want to be an evil overlord? Does he want to be a compassionate ruler who all the people love? We really need to stick to one or the other so we can have a unified point to the story.

I could ramble at length about the utter atrocity Overlord Season 2 is in the story and plot department, but I'll leave it here for now.




ART: 8

I've seen talk of the art quality going down and up and being overall bad through the middle of Season 2, but I didn't notice it. It looks quite nice to me, but doesn't have the flair for a higher score.




SOUND: 5

The sound is there. The music works, but it's very generic. Some of the pieces are overdramatic and it makes me roll my eyes. Sometimes less is more.




CHARACTERS: 1

What characters? We rarely see the protagonist, Momonga. The scenes with his crew of other main characters (that we didn't really get established in Season 1 but we loved all the same just because we appreciated them being there and the promise of new and interesting interactions when they got to make their debut in the story) are similarly shafted in favour of bland, generic characters that, in some cases, are simply frustrating to watch. Characters like Stronof or Climb (what a name...) are the embodiment of NPC. No one has ever wanted to know the entire life story of an NPC. A little background is nice, little humanizing moments are great, but giving so much focus on characters that can't drive the story forward (think Yamcha) and are boring anyway, is an awful decision for the writer and doubly bad for the team who adapted the source material. It's a season of anime that you weren't sure you were even going to make, and without any certainty that there would be a Season 3. You can cut these characters or at least give them less screentime without having to worry about needing them later. Just look at the lizardmen for example. We got all that development for them, but does it pay off with them doing something later in the season? Nope.

It's been said side-characters are what's interesting and important about Overlord. This is absolutely mind-baffling. Side-characters are great! Do you remember Jeremiah Gottwald from Code Geass? I DO! But he was also interesting from his first appearance, which is something Overlord can't do with its side-characters to save its life. The show is trying to reassure us with each episode that these characters will be important later, which I doubt, but regardless, they're worthless now. And even if they do become important later, they're still only side-characters and should never overshadow the main cast when it's not their time to steal the scene completely, otherwise what's the point of having a main cast or protagonist at all?

I'm not saying the main characters have to be in every scene, but if they are quite literally absent from the show, not even being in some way related to the events that are being portrayed onscreen, then you're doing it wrong. They aren't really main characters if that's the case. If the show is about the setting and showing it off, then don't have main characters. Make it an anthology series.




ENJOYMENT: 1

The pacing is a sin. Most the characters aside from the main cast (which you can largely rename Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Anime) are cringe. The dialogue is trite and redundant and forced. Every episode is a 'build-up' episode but without there ever being an equal payoff. Characters are dumb sometimes which strains our ability to stay invested. For example, Sebastian and Solution are going to leave their recon assignment but first they have to go on an errand - "Better leave the human girl who's completely defenseless and also wanted by the mob completely alone for a long period of time so she can get kidnapped, otherwise the rest of the season's plot wouldn't happen!" It's contrived.

And the action! Oh, the action... One isn't automatically an action junkie for demanding SOMETHING happen that we can all be invested in at constant intervals. All we get is extended dialogue scenes between two or more characters who we don't really care about on a subject that we don't really care about because it doesn't relate to the main cast.

When we do get fight scenes they're abysmal. The characters just shout names of attacks and stuff happens, usually after a transmutation circle appears. Then they stop to talk. Then someone else comes and they all stop to talk. Then the new guy fights the other guy calling out names of attacks, usually accompanied by transmutation circles, then they stop to talk again, then the fight's over. It's not the definition of heart-pounding, I'm telling you now.

One reason I keep seeing why there's so much dialogue and time spent without the main characters is because the show is trying to do world building. While I'll agree that's what it's trying and succeeding to do, it's doing it wrong. Completely disengaging from the overarching story is bad. Completely disengaging from the overarching story for characters we don't know or care about or are actively annoyed by just to have a meaningless conversation or practice swordfight is very bad.

Even if the world building wasn't shoved in your face like a child showing off how much spaghetti they got on their hands, it would still be bad because the world itself isn't interesting. For all intents and purposes, the world that Overlord takes place in is a reskinned Middle Earth or generic D&D setting, just like a lot of fantasy stories, whether high fantasy, dark fantasy, or whathaveyou. As a result, we don't need to spend an exceptional amount of time exploring the world because looking at a map is enough for us to begin guessing the state of the world and who exists in it. Simply looking at the side-characters is enough for us to more or less understand what they're like going forward. And if that isn't enough, a few lines of dialogue makes it clear.

Compare this to Swort Art Online. How that show does world building is by having the protagonist go on many unrelated adventures to various, interesting locations, meeting new friends and enemies along the way. We see the world, we hear the world, Kirito interacts with the world. We get enough of the world to feel like we know it without being inundating with information, while also implying that there's much more to the world than what we've seen. This is not the only way of doing world building, but it's vastly more effective than whatever Overlord is doing. I imagine it's trying to go for the Lord of the Rings approach, but you never read in the books or saw in the movies that one time when Jim and Pillock were standing on the walls of Minas Tirith before the armies of Minas Morgul showed up, talking about their pasts or explaining the hierarchy of their government to each other. To sum this up, what I'm saying is Sword Art Online does better world building than Overlord. To say that Sword Art Online does anything better than anything else is not a compliment.

Just as a side-note, I don't know if it's just Japan or what, because I've seen this in other anime too: Nobody ever mentions the fact that a kingdom is a kingdom in real life unless it's because they're being formal. If a guy was a messenger in Medieval France and was going to travel across the border to Aragon, he wouldn't say that he's going to the Aragon Kingdom. He'd just say he's going to Aragon. The Re-Estize Kingdom, the Slane Theocracy, the token evil empire that I've already forgotten its name (Bahamut? Or is that Final Fantasy?) really should not have their form of government mentioned aside from when it's revealed what kind of government it is. Imagine if we went around saying that we took a vacation in the France Presidency, or the United States Representative Republic. It's just silly.




OVERALL: 2

This season of Overlord misses the mark in every single major way, undermining what was good and making the whole thing an absolute slog to get through. To top this review off, I'll paraphrase something I once read on the subject of the main cast and action: I would rather watch Ainz (Momonga) sit at his desk and do his taxes for an entire episode than see characters we don't care about fighting in an epic battle. Because I don't care about those characters or that battle.

I have never understood why Overlord receives so much praise.

It is practically a generic isekai light novel adaptation, but with older characters, giving it the illusion of maturity. Overlord is not mature, it's not remotely well written, its visuals don't even look good. The character designs look cool, and all but that isn't enough to carry a boatload of mediocrity. Both this season and the first were at best disposable entertainment, like any other isekai light novel adaptation. What's the appeal of it? Is it that Momonga is a ridiculously overpowered self-insert protagonist and his legion of ladies all want him?

Momonga is a typical isekai ... protagonist. An overpowered character doesn't become good just by not being a teenage boy. Skeleton or kid, there is no difference. Skeletons are cool and all. I like them as much as the next guy, but he's not a very interesting character beyond his intimidating design. He is entirely devoid of substance, only existing to continue the story. Even his character art fails at conveying the intimidation. The light novel's designs look amazing—but this adaptation's art lacks detail. His skeleton face remains unanimated in conversations; his voice is undeniably booming, the actor puts on a fantastic show, but there's no impact.

Momonga being a villain changes almost nothing. Everyone still loves him anyway, and he acts like the generic 'nice guy' harem protagonist. He's always speaking in his friendly guy voice in his head to remind us, he's not actually a real villain. It's lovely how nice of a guy he is really–wait, stop right there... If the villain protagonist isn't even a villain, then this show is literally just the same as anything else… Like the meek voice hiding behind the intimidating demonic skeleton exterior, Overlord masquerades as something far better and more original than it actually is. The philosophy of: "How can I self-insert if my main character isn't a good guy?" breaks any potential this show had to become something original.

It's funny how Overlord shamelessly admits that its female characters are coded to love Momonga, but that doesn't make it better writing. A story's world should ebb and flow without the audience needing to be there. Here it feels like a pandering fest; the characters bend over backward to praise Mr. Skeletor, he wins nearly every fight, and there is no substance.

This new season of Overlord isn't all harem bullshit; it tries a few new things… and fails at all of them. For some reason, whenever the story follows any character other than Momonga, it becomes insufferably dull. We got classic stories to be loved for ages, like the tribe of lizard idiots who inevitably get taken over by Momonga, the compelling backstory for Momonga's butler (aka Plank of Wood), some random knight guy, and a princess with a dark secret! Remember how Overlord's first season had somewhat slow pacing at times? This is 10 times worse! Entire episodes are dedicated to characters that we don't have a reason to care about. We're forced to watch them fighting in their stupid battles and their boring melodrama, and all of it barely connected to the characters introduced in the first season. In the end, the stories come together, but does the moderately entertaining end justify the tiresome means? Not at all.

It's rare for anime to put me to sleep, but Overlord's first three (lizard-focused) episodes truly tested my fortitude. The only plausible reason for the story breaking off from Ainz to follow the lizard people is to keep his harem junk from becoming too repetitive. The thing is, Overlord will be redundant no matter what crap they shove down our throats during the filler episodes. Isekai anime are so oversaturated that only making more of the same isn't enough these days. I've seen so many of these isekai power fantasies—perhaps Overlord was more original when the light novel first began publication, but today it's trite, overdone, a waste of time.

At least the few episodes Momonga gets are slightly more entertaining than the filler ones. He and the people around him have eye-catching character designs, wacky personalities, and enjoyably overdone voice acting. There's almost no substance to any of them, but at least they're fun to watch in small doses. The thing is, this new season is barely about the actually exciting characters. The only one in Momonga's legion who gets a backstory is his butler (the blandest of them all). He has an even intimidating personality but none of the charisma necessary to hold up entire episodes independently. There was a small amount of development seen for a few members of the enormous cast, but it's for the boring ones that no one is watching the show for. An occasional twist in a character's personality following a surprising betrayal may offer some fleeting intrigue, but you will quickly realize that all those twists exist. To momentarily add a fresh coat of paint to a cast of rotting cardboard cutouts.

Momga's episodes were at least better than those about random bland side characters, especially during the last three episodes of this season. We see all-out violence using nonsensical magic to create exciting gorefests and lots of angry expressions. It's still never what I'd call good, but it's passable entertainment. Momonga's storylines do tend to get repetitive quickly. An issue arises among his legion or in the world; he is literally the most powerful being in the universe and kills shit, then gives us a comment on it in his 'nice guy' voice, rinse and repeat. The only reprieve from the mind-numbing formula is the final few episodes, full of gory action, plot twists, and even betrayals that actually had me surprised. Although I struggled to care about the turns the plot took or the characters who took radical changes, it provided a fresh perspective on the tired story, even if for a moment. Sadly, the action-packed moments weren't much better than what we've seen before from Overlord, plagued with issues caused by a rushed production.

The action scenes are lackluster at best. Madhouse is airing three anime just this season alone, so it would be unreasonable to expect flawless quality, but this is just flat out the same mediocre visuals as the first season. Action scenes rely on zoom in on still shots, unanimated motion tweens, and jarring CGI. Environments are dreadfully ugly to look at; dull colors, low res repeated textures, a lack of detail, and defining traits. It all feels so lifeless and flat. It's the kind of show I would have forgotten entirely if I wasn't reviewing it.

The soundtrack is equally mediocre, totally forgettable. The bog-standard sort of booming orchestral music fades into the background. The opening was ok; a generic rock song. The ending track "Hydra" was wonderfully wispy with haunting vocals. It was the best part of the show, the only reason why I was hesitant to drop it all season.

Anything separating Overlord from the hordes of low effort isekai adaptations we see every season is only superficial; neither the audiovisual nor writing are above average. The main character being a 'villain' is just a cheap facade, the setting is lifeless, and even the cool designs are diminished by lackluster visuals. Overlord is overrated. It's just more of the same boring isekai drivel.

Spoilers ahead after the second paragraph.
After finishing Overlord II, I was left with a single question in my head. What did I just watch? My mind refused to comprehend what just happened. Unfortunately, this wasn't in the standard anime fashion where robots the size of universes throw galaxies at each other and you're left in sheer awe of what you're looking at. This was the same 'What did I just watch?' that you ask yourself when you see your dog take a turd, sniff it, give it a little lick and walk off. Why did the dog do that? I have no clue. Why did ... the Overlord do anything? I also have no clue.

First of all. What is Overlord? It's a show about a man who gets trapped in a MMO as a max level character. After being the concept has been tried by everyone's parapelgic grandmother and her litter of fifty cats, it's far from interesting. Overlord's one saving grace is that it is about THE Overlord, he's a spooky skeleton with unlimited power and a thirst to conquer the world. This is actually quite fresh compared to the legions of just-post-puberty angry manlets with black hair that is usually seen in anime. Issue is, Overlord is that. Don't be fooled into thinking this is about an anti-hero like Hellsing, what you are watching is asset-flipped Kirito.

Every issue with Overlord stems from the main character, who is literally a skeleton and figuratively an empty husk of a character. He is also stupid. By this, I don't mean he's unable to do maths, his decisions make almost zero sense even though his monologue tries to assure you he's playing 6-Quintillion Dimensional Chess. Don't forget every character around him tell him he's extremely intelligent and the fact he chooses to get out of bed in the morning is actually a masterstroke of genius. The joke may be funny the first time, I fail to see the humour at the end of the second season. I want to tear my eardrums out whenever I have to listen to his highpitched inner thoughts, the show would actually be better if we did not know he was thinking. Then he would simply be all-knowing, now we know that he accidently stumbles and lies his way through every conversation he's ever had. Still, that should not be a surprise, the entire show is a lie.

The Overlord is NOT an Overlord. The entire second half of the season is spent not Overlord-ing. There is only ONE skeletal horde summoned. He can effortlessly create 5000 undead soldiers and a lich to lead them, (as in, actually effortlessly, he says the equivalent of "who cares lol" when they get wiped). Why do we not see mass assualts on cities? Huge armies fighting each other? Heroes battling it out in the field of battle? This would actually make the story more interesting because even if The Overlord is omnipotent, he is not all-present. He would have to delegate forces and constantly summon skeletals to fight a war of attrition against the living world. There is one part of show that actually has a skelly horde, it's the lizardmen arc. Basically The Overlord decides he wants to kill some lizardmen and sends Beetleman and the aforementioned skelly horde of 5K skellies.

The issue with the lizardman arc is that it's about the lizardmen. No one cares about these character, the story forgets about them after episode 6 and they are never mentioned again. They also some of the worst looking CGI in anime ever but that's a comparatively minor issue. We see hardcore lizardman on lizardgirl action but there's nothing else to take out of this arc. What do I care if the lizardman tribe became cannibals? The show is called Overlord, not Lizardman. I want to see the spooky skeleton murder these beasts, not the plight of some random tribe. We get 4 episodes of nothing, 1 episode of a battle and 1 episode of a fight. The battle is pretty interesting actually, even though there aren't any special tactics used or anything like that. The spectacle itself is simply engaging.

The fight on the other hand is one of the worst, most uninteresting fights in all of anime. It's Beetleman versus some lizzie-bois. Unfortunately for the lizzie-bois, Beetleman is literally immune to anything they can do. Not even in the sense of "My armour is impenetrable", it's more like "Yeah but no". A lizard stabs him with an ice sword and Beetleman says "Yeah but I'm immune to magic though" and a forcefield deflects the blow. A lizard shoots him and Beetleman says "Yeah but I'm immune to range".

The second half is completely disconnected from the first half. There is zero continuum. Zilch. Nada. I call it the City Arc because it takes place in a city. Its' divided into two smaller arcs that only correlate with each other because they take place in the same city. The Bulter GF arc and the last two episodes. The Butler GF arc follows the butler, he looks cool but he's level 80 or somehting and the city is level 30. There's a lot of talking about nothing. A princess is set up to be a yandere about some manlet. There's a drug operation led by a crime gang. If those previous sentences where random and had no flow to them, I was just giving a realistic representation of Overlord's storytelling. The final fight is laughably bad, it's between a guy with a million tattoos and the Butler. The guy names each of his tattoos, activates their power, does a cool pose and falcon punches the butler. The butler says "Yeah but no" and kicks the guy in the head to kill him in one shot. This antagonist was set up for entire episodes worth, he was the leader of the crime gang's defense division and gets killed via heel to the forehead.

The last two episodes are just what. I will simply say what happens because I don't understand anyone's logic in anything. The Overlord wants to be a hero because reasons (it's the standard hero guild with ranks and stuff you've seen before) so he makes a fake attack on the city to fight his subordinate and gain everyone's respect, I guess. The issues are: Firstly, the fight isn't a fight, it's a play and the audience knows it. Secondly, why? He's the Overlord. Why is he still doing this hero crap that should have ended in season 1. It's boring. Every fight is decided before it's started. The Overlord is so powerful that even though he's a mage, he can outfight swordsmen.

The art is terrible. It's absolutely horrendous. The 3D animation is worse here than it's in the new Berserk anime and the hydra. Oh God. Simply search in google images "Overlord RORORO" to see the level of 3D animation you will experience. The music is meh. The theme is quite catchy but I dare you to remember the tune of any of the background tracks. All in all, the show is terrible.

It's easy to complain though. Everyone can do it. The real question is "How can Overlord be fixed?". Can it even? Yes it can, although I severely doubt it. Firstly, cut the chaff. We're here for the spooky skeleton. No one cares for lizardmen. No one cares for the yandere princess and her shota. No one cares for the struggle that one wannabe-samurai feels after getting buttblasted by the Vampire gf. No one cares about the drugs. Most importantly, no one cares for the stupid alt-identity the Overlord has in the heroe's guild. We're here to be spooky and to see hordes of skeletons. The fact there's one horde of skeletons and then a tiny horde-let of demons at the end is a crime. We should be seeing huge battles every episode. You can't tell me "muh budget constraits" because the show already looks like hot garbage. The skeletons are all the same model copy/pasted with the same looping animation.

Once the chaff is removed, make the show about the Overlord. The easy method would be to say "make him less powerful" to make him interesting. That could work, or the show would follow my previous suggestion. The guy who is stook in the Overlord is some worthless NEET. He doesn't understand strategy and planning and just decides to summon a million skeletons and declare war upon the whole world. Suddenly, there is an actual power struggle in the world. Could the United Nations defeat him? They would certainly be able to beat back his armies since 1.3K lizardmen demolish 5K skellies. Now, there could be actual choices the Overlord has to make, which nation he pushes against most, which battles he participates in. The other members of his team, like the Vampire gf, the Succubus gf, Beetleman, maid brigade and whatever else I've missed would actuall have a use now too. They would have to fight the battles the Overlord does not participate in and they actually have a chance at being defeated. It raises the stakes, you know, unlike now where the job of anyone who is currently at the Overlord's side is to remind him of his own grand intelligence.

By the story aiming for an audience of worthless NEETs, it makes the main character a worthless NEET who overthinks issues for no reason. His raw power is simply a league above everyone else and the story stops being a push and pull of the protagonist vs the antagonist, it becomes that scenario you get into when you play video games, where you've all but won but there's still twenty enemy units remaining and you just have to chase them down. That's what you watch when you watch Overlord. He's simply chasing down whoever he wants because even though he's the most powerful creature in existence, his lack of confidence creates a lack of initiative and all he does is roleplay as a hero.

The show refuses to accept we are watching a villain. There's constant HILARIOUS AND DEFINITELY NOT OVERUSED, STALE AND UNFUNNY hijinks that occur with the worthless NEET Overlord getting flustered because he sees boobs. I was actually quite impressed when he sentenced several hundred people to die, but the show is sure to remind you how even though he's heartless and was planning to wipe out the entire nation of lizardmen off the map, he's actually a much better choice than everyone else. Every nation is corrupt and rampant with drugs and slavery. The show fixing this issue would make it bearable at least because it's schizophrenic identity crisis would finally be put to rest.

Alright, that's it. I've decided to end this review jarringly to remind you of how smoothly Overlord itself en-

(My english is not very good, haven't read the light novels, I only typed what's on my mind and what i remember + spoilers) There are 2 types of cancer in the world of Overlord. First the fanboys of the light novel who thinks that this piece of shit is a masterpiece and second are the sao haters who compare every isekai to sao. These fags who compare Ainz to Kirito are just absurd. Ainz is someone who's already OP because he is OP. He put his blood, sweat, tears and probably money and with the help from his guild members to become OP. Meanwhile ... Kirito summons an excalibur up his ass. How? Da hell should I know? This anime has harem to but it's not SAO level kind of harem. Now onto the review... I have never skipped any episode in season 1 because season 1 is so good, here I have skipped the crocodile recruitment program and I have seen fanboys who defended this arc saying you have no idea how deep and complex and political... man shut the hell up! You know instead of recruiting the lizards why not recruit another undead faction from this world? Wouldn't that be cool? Another undead leader proclaiming he's the lord of the undead from this world. It took inspiration from that 6 fingers vs sebas scene where the 1 finger proclaimed that he's the lord of the dead but what we get is Lizard sex and feeling sorry for these lizards being slaves. There is this episode and it's a cool episode where Ainz make a throne made of undead soldiers and right there he showcase his power to these Lizards and they already want to pledge to him and what did Ainz do? He rejected it so that we could go to more unnecessary battle between beetlejuice and icelizard. I thought they're just gonna beat the Lizards up but no they fucking killed them and bring them back to life and they pledge allegiance. I was like waaaaa? After everything that has happened they didn't even use these Lizards on the next arc. The screen writer was like fuck this lizards! Chekovs gun my friend! Chekovs GUN! The next arc wasn't terrible but the characters oh God! Climb and Tea Parties!? Climb, Princesses and Tea Parties? Sebas arc is good and the last 2 episodes are great. I want more of that last 2 episodes, it's the overlord that I watched in S1 where there's this sense of blood pumping adrenaline for being overpowered. That's overlord to me! Not these Lizards, not climb, not princesses, and definitely not tea parties!

It is a bad sign if a show titled “Overlord“ has no such character in it. Instead, the viewer is bored with secondary characters, who may or may not be relevant in the future. This low budget production has nothing going for it, even the one feature that defined Overlord among the oversaturated “Isekai” genre is lost in the second season. As far as I can tell part of the problem lies within the source material itself.
VERDICT: 3 – Bad.

STORY: Like a skeleton – no meat and no soul.
Opening gives a 1:1 ratio of Overlord’s presence in his own show; focus is on ... secondary characters from the world and Tomb of Nazarick. Due to almost entirely new cast a lot of screen time has to be spent on dry expositions and introductions, leaving dynamic storytelling or world building behind. Early episodes are a necessary info dump, just like political talk in fast forward mode between the princess and some nobles in ep 10, because the viewer knows nothing about society and ongoing political intrigues at this point.
The lizard arc is a pointless uphill battle without any tension, due to immense power gap of the combatants. The capital arc is a convoluted mess with the quality of a B plot. At the end the viewer learns about scheming ongoing behind the scenes, and those events sound more exciting than the actual plot. If you intend to do a shift in perspective, fill it with purpose; doing it just for giggles won’t improve the experience.
It seems like this adaption is missing some inner monologues that define characters and their actions; at least in manga, while meeting Lulu, Ainz has an important thought process analyzing the situation and using his experience from the real world. Instead, we got an awkward and utterly pointless lizard snu snu scene.

CHARACTERS: Like maggots – bland, dispensable and there are too many of them.
Overlord already had a big cast and the second season expands it even further. Lizards in general behave like reskinned humans with a strong mating urge and your typical Alpha Lizard hero on the front: kind, brave and strong. Everyone else is a redshirt.
Capital arc utilizes many characters, and even after 10 minutes of thinking, I cannot write positive words about them, they are just so bland and one-dimensional. Brain, the bandit from the first season, is the only remotely interesting character, because after his encounter with Shalltear he develops a different worldview.
Did I mention there is no Overlord?

ARTWORK & ANIMATION: Like a zombie – slow, unimpressive and decaying over time.
While the first episode had some quality artwork, the show declined afterwards, reaching its low point in ep 8 missing any animation and plagued with off model characters as well as bland, colorless backgrounds. Ep 11 & 13 surprised with noteworthy action scenes, however, cannot redeem a whole season of mediocrity.
Furthermore, the none-existent budget can be seen in horrible CGI lizards and skeletons in the first arc. Wisely, Madhouse spent money on a much better show airing at the same time - Sora yori mo Tooi Basho.

SOUND: Like a ghost – is there, but you do not notice its presence.
OP is forgettable, so is all of the background music. Voice actors also do a mediocre job, no one stands out positively, like Clementine did in the first season.

If you are looking for a competent “trapped in a video game world” anime with a clear goal, superb world building, diplomacy, smart use of game mechanics and successful focus on NPCs, try Log Horizon.

I just cannot fathom why this show is so applauded by the masses. Season 1 is what I would consider a show carried by its premise; it's execution was mediocre at best but it's base concept appealed to people and I can understand that. But *this*...

The plot is a broken mess, with gaping holes from last season completely ignored while several new side stories are piled on top. The writing is awful, with bland dialogue and exposition dumps as far as the eye can see. And, perhaps its greatest sin, is that the majority of the season is devoted to an entirely new cast ... of characters that can only be described as the most generic and forgettable lineup I think I've ever seen.

Instead of building on what the previous season established, Overlord inexplicably decided on quantity over quality and just screamed "MORE!" while it dumped everything it could on top of what little it had; more stories, more exposition, more characters, quality be damned. Overlord II is the epitome of superficial; if you were to simply remove the overlord branding this show would be drowning and forgotten in the sea of mediocrity as it deserves.

I have just finished watching Overlord II and I still cannot figure out what its plot is. Other people writing reviews for the show seem to understand what it is all about. Maybe they read the manga, maybe they connected the dots themselves by some mystical work of wonders. I could not do it (well, I have some hypothesis of course but... it's just a shot in the dark). And that is why, despite the pleasing aesthetics and the AMAZING premises, I find this show utterly dreadful.

To me, a person who never read the whole manga, this show is just a series of scenes showing ... the same characters in different situations without any meaning to it. I spent 90% of the time wondering "Why are they doing that???". Nothing is ever explained or even hinted at. While the show has PLENTY of dialogues, I mean, a lot! All of them either are praises for our Lord the Great One, or a series of pathetic exchanges of pleasantries. In the end, I stared at the screen thinking "So what?": everything they "build" across all the episodes is never used.

The main character does not have a clue about anything and all other characters are mono-dimensional and boring. Some even incoherent with themselves, failing to even be mono thematic. Some are barely introduced and then killed or dismisses without much ceremony. Especially in the first arc... which I assume should have been sort of heart-felt by fan? Well, it gave nothing to me. Lord Ainz also gives explicitly contradicting orders to his subordinate for this fight. I cannot tell in detail without spoilering what happens so I won't, but you will understand when you see it.

Battles are more hinted than actually fought. They dismiss opponents with a couple of quick blows and that's it. I'd rather have had less battles with a deeper strategy than a plethora of insignificant skirmishes that are mostly outrageously one-sided.

This is the only one single show that - among all anime I watched in the past years - most blatantly failed in telling its own story.

WHAT THE F***, like WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.

The second season of Overlord, in my opinion, was amazingly... horrible. Starts off dreadfully with uninteresting and dull lizardmen, ends with no meaningful impact on the story whatsoever.
I'm not complaining about less Ainz, I'm complaining about how long it took for this to finally get to a watchable pace. Absolutely boring until around Episode 7 and up, which are still quite mediocre. Season 1 was a billion times better, please don't waste your time being excited for the second season of Overlord, because it was not good at all and ruined my expectations. I still stuck with ... it, though, since I really like the characters of Overlord as a whole. I painfully binged through Season 2, desperately waiting for it to get better; Alas, my wish was never granted as it only got more and more uninteresting with its corny new characters and awful romance with totally unnecessary CGI nonsense. The dumb blonde kid was so cringey and uninteresting, along with his love interest. The attempts at humor were painfully just not funny, like oh my god... I thought Overlord would be better than this on its second appearance. I guess you have to watch S2 to be up to date with the story, so have fun making your way through this absolute disaster. Argh, I love the characters that we have from S1, but.. no. Not S2. Just.. no.

Overall Rating: 4
(Terrible. Just... terrible. Trash. Sorry for the hateful review, but I really didn't enjoy S2.)

One of the most horrible sequels I have ever watched. I am not sure I will be able to watch season three now that I watched that. Look if you like it you like it but I certainly didn't. I won't spoil it but some of the characters are in the intro and outro music that are gone after half the anime and you don't even see them again. To be honest I don't see the point of even having them in the series in the first place if the people aren't even there for most of the anime. I am sorry if this sounds ... confusing just trying not to spoil it for people.

I can see the light novel being worthwhile, but the adaptation lacks in many aspects, namely pacing, action, script, character interaction... Jesus, they can't even do fanservice properly, more than half of Albedo's screentime consists of her static images in the ED. Pretty much the same goes for Ainz and the OP.

I should be talking about the story now, but... I don't know, it's a clusterfuck.
We basically have 2 halves, first one is about a questionably motivated genocide carried out by the main cast, mostly from the POV of the victims and focused on Cocytus. Not the most enjoyable narrative, but executed quite well. I ... have no idea how is the outcome relevant to the story in long-term, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt, at least there was an outcome... on the other hand...
The second half is about... about what, exactly? Royal intrigues? Underground crime? A simple boy unknowingly haunted by a yandere genius? Ainz doing his undercover stuff? Sebas getting game by being a badass? Demiurge being a fuckboi in all of that? Evileye being cute?...
Well, whatever it is, the pacing of the second half is all over the place. It's dragged-out, then suddenly rushed, then dragged-out even more and then again rushed to the finish. What's even worse, nothing from what I've mentioned comes to any kind of conclusion. Ainz gains some prestige, Sebas gets the kitten. Wow. That's literally it.

Not sure what I'm thinking about the general consensus that Madhouse releases tend to be polished and beautiful... I guess the animation is okay-ish, but nothing worthy of special praise.

Soundtrack is totally plain, I didn't ever notice music playing during the scenes. Nothing amazing in the VA department, either, they are all being overly melodramatic as always. OP is meh, ED is quite memorable on the other hand.

Characters are the redeeming quality of this series. Almost every single character introduced and developed in both halves of this season is to some degree likeable and/or interesting. Except for Climb (the aforementioned simple boy), that guy's only ability is to steal screentime from relevant NPCs. Considering that the show's success is heavily reliant on fanservice, the lack of Albedo and Shalltear sucks major balls, even though they are substituted by various cutiepies in their absence. Shame that we don't see much character development, too.

Even though this anime is average at best as a whole, I wasn't bored at all while watching it, didn't skip a scene. That's some alien shit. I guess the fanservice was done properly afterall.
However, I feel like they went for "low effort, high profit" kind of production, that's why I'm giving it a below average score. The source material does deserve better.

Story 3/10
Art 5/10
Sound 2/10
Characters 6/10
Enjoyment 6/10
Final 4/10

REVIEW WITH NO SPOILERS

The first season of Overlord showed me a premise cliché, with some new elements that had potential to become something totally different from animes with a similar premise.

This season confirmed something that I realized watching the middle of the first season: This anime will not reach you expectations John.
The focus on secondary stories is really problematic, because this stories are boring, forgetable and REALLY predictable.

I really don't think that I liked one of the new characthers of this season.
The animation is regular, but becomes really bad in the last 4 episodes. So, it becomes irregular.

Well if you liked the first season you'll ... like this one. Nothing really new here (actually, nothing really INTERESTING and NEW). That's it!
Oh, and if there will be a third season, I'll watch as well.

I had high hopes for this anime after watching the first season, but the continuation came to be an utter disappointment.

From the start, Momoga seemed like a confused character, who had to play the role of an evil overlord and hold to the expectations of his servants, yet still helping others making it seem as though he did it for his own benefit. Unfortunately, that was just a false impression, and with the events of the 2nd season, we can definitely see that he is actually a villain who tries to create an impression of a fair ruler. He claims to bring prosperity to those ... who submit to his will, but he won't even offer that choice until he slaughters a number of people, like he did with lizardmen; he would summon his minions to a city and allow men, women, and children to be captured for experiments by his servants, just to get more famous as an adventurer. Does this seem like a protagonist? Hardly. He is an antagonist, and a poor one at that: unlike typical antagonists he has no motivation to conquer the world, he wants it just because he wants it; there's not even an "even greater evil" to justify his actions.
Another false impression I had while watching the season 2 is that he is an antagonist who's fate is to be defeated by an antagonist, but there is little to none suggestions that that would ever come true: none of the supporting characters bears any significance or is even hinted to become one.
So in the end we have a poorly written villain whom we are supposed to follow for unclear reasons.

Another downfall of this anime is 0 character developments: neither Momoga, nor any of his servants display any signs of evolution or any sort of change. Just like the NPCs from the game they all come from, they have their pre-written behavior that they firmly follow. The one and only character in his clique that is somewhat likeable, Sebas, is just like all of the other servants ridiculously overpowered, which makes his arc predictable and boring.

There are a few exceptions, of course, like the twisted Golden Princess, who is far more well written and appealing character than Momoga, despite her dark nature, and the desperate Brain Unglaus, who seems like the only one to get character development, but as mentioned above, there are no hints that they will ever gain any more significance further down the story.

One last thing is that everyone, absolutely everyone other than Momoga and his clique are dumb as hell. During the 2 seasons there was only a single character who found out that Momon is Ainz, and that was a pure luck because Momoga's subordinate was stupid to keep her mouth shut. Other than that, there isn't a character who would be a bit suspicious towards an adventurer who rose from the lowest to the highest rank in a matter of days, surpassing any known person. It is especially hilarious when you combine that with Momoga's constant thoughts that somebody starts suspecting him because he did something out of the character as and adventurer, when, in fact, they blindly ignore it.

Well. Bad news. They had a good thing going, but they blew it and flushed it down the toilet. As a result we have a very flawed anime - with VERY well done moments, overshadowed by VERY badly done moments.

Now, good news first. The anime has multiple arcs, and the FIRST one is amazingly well done. I was sitting at the edge of my seat, and I was surprised by it. The arc is 8/10 material, easily, and if ONLY the rest of the anime was as good as this arc....

Unfortunatley, past the first arc (which goes for 5 or 6 episodes), the qulity goes ... to hell, and they start prolonging. Episode after episode characters do as little as possible, are animated as little as possible, and every episode ends with a cliffhanger. Heck, they even start fighting as if it was a shounen anime - with speeches and all. The "faulty arc", unfortunately takes bigger portion of the anime, and its quality is so low compared to beginning so I've been wondering if the studio blew too much money at one of those huge battle scenes.

The good and noticeable thing about the anime is that it excels in a few moments where it displays ainz's companions as what they are - meaning monsters and demons. There are few scenes, where they managed to portray them in truly chilling way, where you couldn't help but feel respect the power of those creatures and their inhuman behavior. But. There aren't a lot of those scenes - the number is tiny, and they appear very rarely, with total combined time of all those scenes under 10 minutes at best. IT is really unfortunate.

Details.

Story: 3/10.

To be fair, the story for the first arc is 8/10, but the rest of the anime brings the score down due to being prolonged, relying on cliffhangers, etc.

They did the right thing by dropping the "game-like world" aspect and concentrating on the world itself, also the show feels significantly darker on occasions, now.

Art: 5/10.

IT is okay. I think it is a slight improvement compared to the first season of the Overlord, but it is not very high. The notable thing is taht they have MASSIVE battle scenes on a few occasions, but those scenes utilize CG, and it is quite obvious that it is CG.

In the second arc, they seem to be cutting animation cost, because there are battles that happen off-screen. Meaning yo uwait several episode till the central figure of the arc gets to show what they're capable of and.... you don't see the scene. Instead of showing an awesome fight, the anime shows something else.

Sound: 6/10:
Opening scene is catchy, and menacing tune that plays in a few of the "monster scenes" is quite chilling.Music is good, but it doesn't take the spotlight.

Characters: 3/10:

Well... same deal as before. There are incredibly (7/10 material) believable, well written /side/ characters in the first arc, which are so well done, that you can't help but feel sympathetic to them. However, once the arc is over, those characters are gone, and they're replaced by some sort of awkward automations with confusing motivations. Most of the characters in the second part aren't convincing at all, with exceptions of a very few. Heck, it is bad to the point where one of the most convincing characters (Nabe) has something like 5 lines total in the whole anime.

Sigh.

Enjoyment: 4/10:

I loved the first arc, but endless cliffhangers and poor pacing of the second arc seriously ticked me off, and killed the fun for me. So for the most part I wasn't enjoying it.

Overall: 4/10.

The good parts of the anime are episodes 1-6 and second half of the episode 11. If you skip the rest you'll lose very little, next to nothing.

I can recommend watching the first arc, but I should warn you that if you expect the same quality for the rest of the anime, you'll be incredibly disappointing. Further arcs fail to deliver.

So, proceed with caution, at your own risk.

In all honesty, Overlord II was disappointing. The first season wasn't that bad, I like having a more evil roll for a protagonist, and having less of a generic underdog character. Having said that, this season did not live up to the hype. The story branches out to many side character and while I usually enjoy something like this, you don't really grow attached to anyone and none of the fight scenes carried any weight as a result.
The animation overall wasn't that bad, the 2D scenes seemed pretty standard but oh god, the 3D was so bad. Copy pasted ... soldiers, poorly rendered monsters, etc. I don't think all 3D in anime is bad but it doesn't blend well at all here and really breaks your immersion.

[This review is spoiler free!] TL;DR: Unlike Season 1 which gave you crumbles of something to enjoy, Season 2 of Overlord left me bored, disappointed and confused.

Overlord II is very true to its name.

In this season, don't expect much screen time from our favorite skeleton man. He is literally the overlord this season, watching from a safe distance as the season begins the long process of world building. Normally, this would've been fine. However, if you are someone like me who was looking for action and adventure, you won't be seeing much of it.

Instead, season two focuses more on the political side of things ... as you watch and listen to officials gear up their war plans for their impending doom. From what? I have absolutely no idea. For a show with "action" listed as it's first genre, I was almost bored to death from start to finish. For minutes on end, I'd simply being watch monotone characters read out their lines like a Japanese audiobook.

From episode 3 onward, I painfully skipped through minutes of war plans. They'd sit in a single room with Aniz on the throne and chat for anywhere to 5 to 7 minutes. None of this feels worth it when in all 13 episodes, there is maybe 4 full-blown fights. Not a single one of these fights were engaging or memorable for me to even bother analyzing it. You know something is wrong when even skipping through the episodes is becoming a pain. As much as I watched to watch Overlord and see if it lived up to the hype, season two felt like a total waste of time.

Instead of Aniz, you watch two lizards and their tribes do,,,, lizardmen and woman things. Why? I have no idea. It may be because I didn't watch half of it that I am feeling so confused, but the long winded dialogue and failed attempts at humor made the show almost intolerable. I feel like I would much rather someone giving me a summary of the season rather than wasting anymore time by sitting and watching all 24 minutes of all 13 episodes.

Again, the animation and music (the ending especially) saved the show. However, was it enough to keep me interested? No.

There is still apart of me hoping that Overlord lives up to the hype people have given it. Yet, at the same time, I don't think I can bare another season of whatever this was. I was bored, and could have easily watched something that would've made me feel much better. I don't know if the hype killed the series for me, or if Overlord is simply not my cup of tea.

Either way, you won't be seeing me return for another review of the anime series. I still have some hope though, and will try my luck with the manga however I am very doubtful for the things to come.

You must really **really** like the characters to still be motivated to watch another season of this show. For me, this was very disappointing.