The thing that bothers me most about the show is the main character. If the wish fulfillment bullshit was absent in the show I think it would be a jolly good time. Nothing particularly deep or well written, but with fun action, a neat world to explore, and interesting characters to meet.
The main character is by far the worst thing in this show. All his faults can be boiled down to two points.
1. The way the NPC's interact with him. Re-writing the main hot chick to love you is stupid and cringy. But the worst thing about it is its totally unnecessary, since all of the female NPC's, even the male ones sometimes, want the MC's dick anyways. Adding this only serves to make the MC out to be a complete weirdo, which IS the point of his character, but it messes the whole dynamic of the show up for me. Since every character already acts like this, it ONLY serves to taint my opinion of the MC and the Albedo. Her whole character is just devoted to being in love with MC, and MC just becomes a creep.
I have a problem with this because it ruins a theme that could actually be really interesting to explore, which they hint at. And that is the dynamic between creator and creation. Having the NPC's love the MC because he helped create them and then stayed with them when all of the other guild members left is a really cool idea. Especially if they found out what Ains is really like. That hes not the "overlord" but just some nerd. I think that could be really fun, and heartwarming. For them, it would be accepting that their creator is a weirdo, and for him allowing himself to show his true side. But that is all ruined by the fact that albedo is demoted to being just a slave with a sole personality trait that every other character has anyways.
2. Ains is fucking boring. I like the joke that this guy does not know what hes doing. I genuinely think its funny. But just imagine, if he was allowed to have emotions on top of it.
It boggles my mind that this guy is not allowed to have emotions by some bullshit green lights. I simply cannot wrap my head around the justification for restricting him to being generic and vaguely evil.
Just imagine, Ains being allowed to react in a way that might get him into some hot water. Like he gets embarrassed by some social interaction and he has to justify it to the people loyal to him. He could pull out some BS, make it out to be a positive, and everybody would love him for it. This happens already, but just at the absolute base level, and without much of Ains' input at all.
When the joke stops being funny, you can pull back the veil, and you can do the interesting character stuff from my last point. I think that would be great. As it stands now hes just a boring, husk of a character. Again, they hint at this concept, allowing us to hear his inner thoughts. But actually allowing him to stumble, then try to pick himself up would be 10x better.
The rest of the show is pretty alright. Season 2 onward raised this show from a 3 to a 5, with its emphasis on other characters besides Ains. Season three broght it back down to a 3.
The world and characters are pretty fun to learn about, its just a shame the main character drags the whole thing down so much.
