Overlord (2015)

It's not particularly slow.

Yeah he sets himself up as a god emperor at least as early as volume four.

How far has the anime adapted into the manga, up to what volume?

And see that's the gist of my complaint. The anime has a glacial pace and so far the protagonists don't seem all that evil, not Ainz anyway. The character designs certainly imply it, but the most they've done in 10 episodes is saved 2 or 3 villages, tame a forest monster, and kill a sadistic bandit catgirl. And maybe I'm forgetting Ainz establishing camaraderie with his nakama guild and Albedo and Shalltear's antics, and maybe some scene between the human characters, who I care little about, but for the most part, I think that covers most of the anime's plot thus far.

I have to trust it gets better, but the anime, ironically enough, probably isn't for me. I don't care for the humor much, the action doesn't really keep me invested, and there a bunch of characters I give precious few craps about (read: Nfirea), too many characters who aren't part of Nazarick, the ones I wanted to know more about.

On top of that I'm watching it subbed, so I have to pay attention rather than listen to it while doing something else, that makes it particularly grating.

edited 16th Mar '16 7:08:38 AM by Soble

It only covered the first three volumes I think but drastically cut down on some of the later bits.

edited 16th Mar '16 7:04:15 AM by doineedaname

Thanks, but I'm to understand that shit starts really going down around Volume 9 then? Is this when Ainz realizes Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!, or declares himself god emperor?

edited 16th Mar '16 7:17:02 AM by Soble

Volume 9 is when he attacks the kingdom in an open war, conquers some territory after naming himself Sorcerer King and massacres an army for lulz with Eldritch Abominations after killing a huge portion of it with a single spell to show just why the territory is his now.

Technically it starts in volume 4 when he attacks and conquers a few thousand lizardmen and puts Cocytus in charge of their tribes.

edited 16th Mar '16 7:18:51 AM by doineedaname

...thinking I'm going to read ahead now.

If you're going to read it you might want to start from the beginning.

I think vol 3 is a good start. The anime is pretty straight adaption of vol 1-2 & it only starts distilling in the last third on vol 3.

True. There are lots of things in the climactic battle that aren't explained at all in the anime. Only the LNs give you any idea of just how powerful Ainz is, even when most of his strongest abilities are useless to him.

And if you want an idea of when things really start to pick up, that would be volume 6. It's a brilliant combination of epic battle and utter farce. Very characteristic. Very different from how stories usually go.

Actually, it's very similar to the other Overlord, isn't it? Just a little less tongue-in-cheek.

edited 16th Mar '16 9:39:02 AM by Montegoraon

Soble: Within the first three volumes he's already torturing prisoners and allowing Demiurge to skin them and turn their hides into magic scroll parchment before growing the skin back. He also feeds people their own children and such, sometimes before magically growing their limbs again and stuff. Ainz doesn't know about most of this, but he probably wouldn't care. Shalltear is also absolutely horrible, which again they cut down on as much as possible.

Volume four he sends hordes of weak undead to attack a tribe of peaceful lizardmen just to see if Cocytus is capable of growing and adapting and declares himself the lizardmen's god emperor at the end by taking advantage of their culture and blackmailing the nice albino lizard girl.

Volume five is boring. Sebastian's adventures with a prostitute. He's one of about four or five decent people in Nazarick but never bothers to object to anything.

Volume six and seven he and Demiurge basically burn half the capital to the ground to make Momonga look good for 'saving' them.

Volume eight and nine is him baiting in adventurers to test the guild's traps and defenses, then slaughtering them all in horrible ways while then getting offended that they took his bait and using it as an excuse to subjugate the empire that sent them. He later 'aids' them in a battle by slaughtering about a hundred thousand peasants with a single spell that summons Yog Sothoth type monsters and then unleashing the monsters on everyone.

So yeah, he's a baddie. Volume three just cuts out all the evil bits.

Another thing is that him becoming a Lich utterly killed his empathy and a good deal of his emotion.

Also, the anime presents his lack of sexual reciprocation of his second-in-command as ethical constraints, while the book makes it clear that he totally would bone her if not for his being a dongless litch. Can't he shapeshift?

They ain't adventurers though, technically.

Actually he can't I think. At beast he can put on an illusion to disguise himself as human but 9 volumes in he has made no mention or attempt at shapeshifting as far as I know.

Well also Ainz is totally respectful towards Albedo & wants to make sure that an event with her is completly consensual as his tampering with her code has always weighed heavily on his "conscious".

edited 17th Mar '16 5:38:21 AM by slimcoder

Correct. Illusions only. So he could make "equipment" for himself, but she wouldn't be able to feel it at all. Pandora's Actor would have no problem with that, though.

The second half of the bonus story about how the guild cleared Nazarick has been translated and released at the usual site.

The few details it mentions on the normal world makes it sound like a real Crapsack World.

I thought the anime did a really poor job of portraying how bad Nazarick can be towards non-Nazarick denizens, and really glossed over Ainz's more... questionable acts. Part of it is the lack of monologues while the other part is skimping over scenes. That scene where he causally ordered the death of those Adventurers that followed him to Shalltear was pretty chilling to read in the LN while it went by so quick in the anime, it had barely any impact.

It also turned Brain's confrontation from Shalter (which was pretty awesome even if it was hopeless) into a complete anti-climax.

Honestly, half the reason I'm even reading the novels now is the vain hope Ainz is going to die horribly for all the ridiculously evil shit he's pulled.

Volume 10 is out and being translated but won't be on the usual site. Its also going pretty slowly.

edited 5th Jun '16 5:36:40 PM by doineedaname

From what I've read so far, this is basically all consolidation and influence-mongering — see Ainz getting the Adventurer's Guild on his side by making them more or less his pathfinders and explorers, as well as subjugating the Empire.

Next volume looks like an actual expansion outside of Nazarick's new borders however, what with Slane Theocracy's renewed interest and the mention of the dragon and dwarven kingdoms.

I just bought volume 1 of the light novel recently.

I'm very proud that I own the book now.

I meant translation speed.

me too.