Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Overlord (2012)

Go To

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Is Renner a psychopathic yandere who only puts up a nice front when Climb is around while reverting to her true, vicious, and calculating personality when alone or with her allies, or are her outbursts and slasher-smiles just another layer of deception in order to keep the prince and Marquis Raeven off-balance while she goes after her own, long-term agenda? Later on, it's pretty clearly shown that it is the former, but even still the full extent to which she is this remains up for interpretation since one could easily argue that her sadistic and calculating personality is a defensive mechanism she developed.
    • Demiurge often praises Ainz for his brilliant schemes, but how much of it is genuine, and how much of it is part of his role as Ainz's advisor and underling? Does he really think that Ainz' is an unparalleled genius whose schemes constantly impress and surprise him, or is he playing it up as part of his duty as an underling who's praising his boss to keep up appearances and morale amongst the other Guardians?
    • Did Ainz offer to recruit Gazef because he genuinely respected his code of honor and conduct or was it generally because his personality reminded him of Touch Me?
  • Awesome Music: Songs worthy of Lord Ainz's greatness can be found here.
  • Broken Base:
    • The Lizardmen arc is a polarizing arc, especially for anime-only fans. For those who dislike it, the main arguments against it are it taking focus away from the main characters, and for the perceived Romantic Plot Tumor often derisively called "lizard porn". There's also the issue that the arc comes across as filler in nature, and there are few long-lasting effects of it. Those who enjoy it cite things such as the hilarious interactions between Zaryasu and Lulu, giving the audience the first look at Ainz's conquests from the other side, Cocytus' Character Development, Ainz's epic royal procession, etc. It also helps that the arc serves as a perspective flip by showing how truly insane Ainz and Nazarick would look to a group of just regular people.
    • The anime in general: does it compare to the light novel or not? The backlash against it got worse after the first season and intensified further in the third, where a seemingly rushed development led to some serious abuse of CGI (especially during the otherwise awesome moments of Enri summoning her goblin army and the Massacre on Katze Plains), leading to many an unfavorable comparison being made to Berserk (2016). For those who find it to be an issue, it's distracting and ruins the awesome moments from the source material, but for those who don't mind it, they find that while it isn't up to bar with the normal animation, some of the stuff it's used for somewhat justifies it due to how difficult animating some of it can be, such as the summoned creatures.
    • If anything, the entire premise of this story and where it leads up to in general. While it's a different flavor than most contemporaries as it's rather clear that no one in Nazarick is ever considered a saint, there's people who like the story purely because of the amount of one sided fights Nazarick dishes out while another group of people also hate it for that reason alone and wants the tomb to actually struggle in some circumstances.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • After sitting through several episodes of Clementine being an overly-smug psychopath, watching her get brutally crushed to death by Ains is extremely gratifying.
    • While certainly not a good experience for Ainz, watching Shalltear get beaten and killed twice by him after she gets brainwashed is very cathartic. Especially given how much of an arrogant and petty monster she is (to the point that she was willing to kill Sebas for slightly criticizing her role in a mission) and the fact that nothing bad happens to her aftermath. As a bonus, watching Ainz being injured and having to fight with all he has is something enjoyable as well, since he faces no real challenge or punishment after that battle.
    • Evileye beating up Entoma along with her teammates. It's the first time a denizen from Nazarick gets defeated, which can be a joy for those who got sick of them always winning in one-sided fights.
    • After showing himself to be a racist and awful person, watching Hamsuke easily beat Erya Uzruth, and then his slaves beating his corpse up after, is satisfying.
  • Creepy Cute: Someone had to have thought an insectoid maid was cute to have created Entoma in the first place. She even fulfills the Token Mini-Moe trope dynamic with the other maids.
  • Death of the Author: Some fans were so put off by Maruyama's statement on Arche's (and her sister's) fate in the light novel explanation that they decided to pretend it never happened and substitute it with the Web Novel version, explaining their absence in the later books as being Put on a Bus.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Nazarick all get several huge pairs (likely sourced straight from humans) from fans who justify their atrocities as "just looking out for Nazarick's interests" and insist that they cannot be judged by human morality. Not even the genocide of the Re-Estize kingdom could convince them otherwise. Ainz is probably the biggest case, as even to this day, there are several people who choose to see Ainz as an anti-hero or at least a neutral character rather than an evil Overlord, which could be explained by most of these people being fans who'd only have watched the anime or manga adaptation and haven't read the light novels, thus being unaware of his most despicable actions. However, his servants, particularly the guardians, don't have that excuse. They are depicted as being (most of them anyway) evil monsters with no redeeming qualities or morals beyond their loyalty and care for Ainz and Nazarick, with many committing several horrible crimes, in particular, Demiurge's "farm". People still like them and ignore their monstrous personalities because of their funny/emotional moments around Ainz, being attractive humanoid creatures (specially Albedo, Shalltear, and the Pleiades) and as some people argue, they are not guilty of being that way, since they were created and programmed to behave like that.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Cocytus is one of the most popular of Ainz's followers, thanks to his cool and unique design, hardcore fighting skills, and is one of the most honorable of the Nazarick warriors.
    • Lupusregina Beta is surprisingly popular with the fan base. Everyone knows that her Genki Girl "nice" persona is merely an act and that she's really, and literally, a sadistic Bitch in Sheep's Clothing that happily dreams of witnessing the agonizing screams of every last man, woman, and child in Carne Village which by the way, are people she LIKES, but everyone loves her anyway.
    • Pandora's Actor is a very popular character despite his minimal screentime given every second he spends in his scenes is deliciously hammy, befitting his Chuunibyou inspiration.
    • Sebas Tian, Touch Me's personal NPC who is a heroic character among the denizens of Nazarick, gained a ton of fans in his Day in the Limelight episodes, and his interactions with Tuare is perhaps one of the healthiest relationships. Especially considering what she went through, Sebas makes it known he'll protect her in the name of his master.
    • Neia is so popular on the subreddit that memes involving her are posted daily. This can be attributed to being given a chance to get, in a way, a better life than before, alongside having a cute design.
    • Clementine of all characters is surprisingly popular for a throw-away, not very fleshed-out Arc Villain that dies in the same volume where she first appeared, receiving many fan-content for such a short-lived character. This is mostly attributed to her good looks, memorable death scene and Aoi Yūki's good voice acting.
  • Fandom Rivalry:
    • Although this may sound incredibly bizarre, there's a one-sided rivalry between the fans of this series and the ones from Albedo: Erma Felna EDF, a furry comic, since the comic shares the same name with the character of the same name, and for many fans of the former, it's very difficult to find information about Albedo in the net, only just to end up finding pics of the Overlord one. The same could be also applied to any other character with the same name, like Albedo Piazolla and the Ben 10: Alien Force's one.note 
    • Another, slightly more understandable, and also mostly one-sided rivalry between this series and Sword Art Online. Dunking on Sword Art Online is pretty popular in anime circles in general, admittedly, but with Overlord there's the additional connection of being fellow isekai with video game elements (even though Overlord promptly dumps its when the New World comes into play and is revealed to be completely distinct from the game YGGDRASIL.)
    • Another one-sided rivalry, this time from Overlord fandom against fellow Isekai KonoSuba, came as a result of the Massive Multiplayer Crossover comedy anime Isekai Quartet showcasing Aqua doing considerable damage to Ainz with a single basic Turn Undead. This puts a significant crack in his Invincible Villain status, so expect certain Overlord fans to see red whenever the water goddess is brought up, or deny the scene altogether.
  • Fandom-Specific Plot:
    • It is incredibly common in fanfics to see an AU where Momonga wasn't the only Player member of Ainz Ooal Gown present in YGGDRASIL when it was shut down, and thus transported to the New World. Sometimes it will be one or more of the established canon members, but more often than not it'll be an OC/Author Avatar/self-insert instead. And in the case of the latter, they'll also usually have some more OCs in the form of their own NPCs with them.
    • There are also characters from another franchise that ends up siding with Momonga and the rest of Nazarick, usually already having met them as players in YGGDRASIL and serving as a Morality Chain to everyone within the tomb.
    • On the opposite end, there are characters in a different franchise that have been dropped off in the New World who eventually builds up enough of an influence and power that can combat Ainz and the tomb of Nazarick, which can be admittedly satisfying for those who are tired of Nazarick constantly outclassing the opposition in every fight and getting huge doses of Karma Houdini.
  • Fan Nickname: "Papa Bones" or "Bone Daddy" for Momonga/Ainz.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, many Overlord fans hopped on board with this series during the wait in-between seasons and got a similar albeit more lighthearted experience.
  • Ho Yay: Brain and Gazef's relationship has been interpreted by many as having quite a homoerotic underpinning, especially with Brain originally having a mild Foe Yay desire to prove himself as the stronger warrior of the two. Even after Gazef's death, Brain continues striving to honor Gazef's sacrifice, including giving his own life in a vain attempt to defend Re-Estize from Ainz's forces when battling Cocytus.
  • Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Remedios Custodio, despite being a support character than a villain, is despised by the fans for being harsh and unreasonable because of her lack of social skills and her utter tone-deafness to the point of being considered an annoying character, while Ainz and most of Nazarick, vile as they are, are at the least entertaining to watch.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Ainz himself is, despite his redeeming qualities, a hypocrite asshole who feels no empathy for anyone who is not from his kingdom, and has no problem subjecting people to all kinds of horrors for petty reasons. But given how he grew up without family, friends, or a girlfriend, and that he was an overworked and lonely man who could only find a place to belong in an MMO, it is not hard to feel a little pity for him. It's also implied his skeletal body is taking away his emotions with him being unable to stop it, and he clearly does everything he does because he wants to make everyone in Nazarick happy. How much sympathy he deserves, however, depends on the viewer.
    • The denizens of Nazarick, the Guardians, in particular, can fall under this. Yes, they are sadistic, evil racist monsters with almost no morals beyond their loyalty (some are worse than others, though) but they are like that because they were created that way by the supreme beings, who were having a hard time in their lives. And they feel like they've abandoned by whom they consider their parents, which is why they are so loyal to Ainz since he was the only one who didn't leave.
  • Memetic Badass: Ainz Ooal Gown is regarded as one of the most overpowered, invincible, and badass villains and protagonists in Isekai history. An unusual case in that Ainz is indeed invincible and in-universe everybody regards him as the ultimate superior being, but in reality, Ainz is far from being the unbeatable badass everyone thinks he is, he is just lucky to always meet foes weaker or dumber than him.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Clementine's Death by hug has become somewhat famous among the community in a similar way to "Nui losing her arms" being popular in Kill la Kill circles.
    • Ainz's face with Clementine's daggers in his eyes sees use as a reaction image denoting an "I can't unsee this" reaction.
    • The phrase "like a puppet whose strings had been cut" is used so often in the light novels that it's become a meme.
    • Zaryusu's Love at First Sight scene with Crusch Lulu in Episode 2 of Season 2.
    • Ainz applying endless Status Buffs to himself before fighting Shalltear has also become rather memetic, complete with subtitle variations such as him getting ready to shitpost a thread to oblivion.
    • The phrase "Sasuga Ainz-sama!" is pretty popular among the fandom, especially when they are discussing Ainz.
    • Since Enri had summoned an army of 5000 goblins, it's now joked that Carne Village is now a Superpower nation with its own army loyal to Enri and Ainz.
    • One of Demiurge's worst atrocities, his scroll farms around the Albelion Hills where he flays people and heals them, forces parents to eat each other's children For the Evulz and slices meat out from people are sarcastically called by fans as "Happy Farms". In a similar vein, his brutal proxy murder of the Holy Kingdom's Queen (where his summoned high-level demon used her body as a bludgeon against her own troops) was infamously called "the Holy Bludgeon" and "the ultimate weapon".
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Prince Barbro's boorish antics at Carne Village rattled the citizens, but not their loyalty to the kingdom, until he got the self-proclaimed "brilliant" idea of using flame arrows against one of the town's watchtowers. Burning buildings being a trigger for the people of Carne Village apparently never occurred to him. This one act motivated every single one of the villagers to take up arms, and fight him, even if it meant certain death. For quite a few of them, it did.
    • Ainz's attack on E-Rantel in vol 9. Using a super tier spell to insta-kill some seventy thousand soldiers—many of whom were conscripts— is one thing, but using their deaths to fuel the summoning of five unstoppable abominations who proceeded to kill countless more is another. While these events are indeed horrible, Ainz didn't feel even the slightest bit of guilt from any of it, and his response is glee upon breaking a record nobody managed to obtain back when he was still a salaryman playing a video game. This marks the moment where Ainz's humanity is mostly gone, and whatever is left of the former Satoru is an inhuman monster who is on the point of no return in his global conquest.
    • Demiurge easily crosses it when he set up a parchment farm right inside Holy Kingdom territory where he kidnaps innocent people to use as livestock for magic scrolls, peeling off his victim's skins and regenerating them using healing magic, then forcing the women inside to eat each other's sons (that he didn't force them to eat their own sons is considered mercy). Said farms also have experiments that create human chimeras though inter-species rape. If that doesn't cross it too, then there's his attack against Holy Kingdom that he mostly does through proxying with a summoned Demon Lord. Demiurge indirectly conquers the demi-humans in the hills next to the Holy Kingdom this way, and using his new army, Demiurge conquered the Northern Holy Kingdom. Aside from the borderline acceptable massacre of the Holy Kingdom's armies (it's war after all and soldiers are prepared to die), the treatment suffered by the humans under the demi-humans in Demiurge's army was atrocious and invokes images of the Holocaust. Even worse is that the ones following Demiurge were the worst and most dangerous of the demi-human tribes, as the demi-human tribes that didn't want to get involved and, you know, commit war crimes were captured and treated no better than the humans. While one could excuse the horrible stuff Demiurge and his army do to the combatants on the battlefield, you most certainly can't towards the treatment of non-combatants.
    • Princess Renner easily establishes herself as the vilest human being in the New World when she poisons her entire orphanage of children and nuns to activate her transformation into an imp, then kills King Ramposa with the Razor Edge before letting Ainz, Albedo and Demiurge occupy his throne. You know that this is horrible when Demiurge and Albedo, both of them who are considered Extremely Evil with -500 Karma and the former has consistently proven this through his forced breeding and mass murder farm, view her as being admirable because of how evil she is.
    • The Elf King Decem Hougan crossed it before the story even began by abducting and raping an elite of the Slane Theocracy for the sake of siring an all-powerful God-Kin, causing the once-friendly Theocracy to break all relations with his Elf Kingdom and declare war with him.
  • Narm:
    • All of the player names are said with complete seriousness, no matter how silly. Seeing Ainz fight as a warrior is awesome, hearing someone talk in an awed/reverent tone of voice about how he's using the same powers as "Touch Me" is hilarious.
    • In the anime adaptation of the Battle of Carne Village, the kingdom's spearmen charge the Goblin Heavy Infantry, and just... bounce off without the goblins doing anything but walking forwards.
    • The demon summons temporarily breaking character to shill Neia's bow in the Holy Kingdom arc. The first time it happens it was when Evil Lord Wrath "Jaldabaoth" approaches Remedios and Neia supposedly trying to kill them with Calca's rotten lower body and the second time it was from a demon underling who had Kelart's head hung on its body and spoke using its voice. It's outright ridiculous to see especially from what is supposed to be a horrifically nightmarish sight. It's not helped by how Neia has no idea that the Demons are making it clear that this is a Nazarick false flag antic intended to soft-manipulate the entire country into abandoning its former system for Ainz.
  • Nightmare Retardant:
    • In the anime, Ainz casting "Ia Shub Niggurath" and wiping out 70,000 soldiers looks silly rather than frightening due to how the CGI soldiers simply fall down like rag dolls when the spell hits them.
    • In the Holy Kingdom arc, Neia and CZ fight a demon summon who had Kelart's head pinned on its body, spoke in her voice and used her magic spells, with the horrifying sight even depicted on page artwork... then at the end of that fight, the demon suddenly breaks character to shill for Neia's runecraft bow.
  • Popular with Furries: Scalies love the Lizard Folk, especially Crusch Lulu. The sex scene between Crusch and Zaryusu made a lot of scalies happy.
  • Rooting for the Empire: It's rather hard to root for Ainz and the rest of the gang when they act like your typical Fantasy JRPG villains. The fact that they easily steamroll through any obstacle or foe, all the while acting over the top arrogant and snide at the other races and people around them does not help matters. You WISH the antagonist of the arc would actually smack the smirks right off of their faces just for a change of pace (though a bunch of them, such as the Eight Fingers, are even worse than them). The Tomb of Nazarick's over-the-top entrance and sadistic subjugation of the Lizardfolk (a peaceful community they went to war with just as an "experiment") has been seen as rather infuriating for readers. Though, after they were conquered, Ainz then ordered Cocytus to rule over them with the carrot and not the stick, showing that he's not a total sadist. However, Ainz later unleashed five abominations on a huge, mostly conscript, army and showed nothing but glee towards breaking the record of how many monsters were summoned at once, not even feeling anything about all those who his summoned monstrosities slaughtered. And then there's everything about Demiurge's "livestock".
  • The Scrappy: Remedios of the Holy Kingdom arc is infamous for being hated by fans because of her tone-deaf stubbornness and prejudice against anyone that isn't human, combined with her sheer incompetence, borderline lethal stupidity, and an extremely awful Jerkass attitude. And unlike Clementine or Renner who are utterly vile in a Love to Hate way, she's not even considered entertaining to begin with.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Quite a few fans were not happy with the way the fight between Shalltear Bloodfallen and Brain Ungulus was animated. The compression of several chapters into a few minutes (if that) makes Brain look like an arrogant fool and a coward, which doesn't provide an accurate depiction of his growing desperation and helplessness before finally breaking and fleeing in terror. The series does explore the topic later, but given how important it is for Brain as a character, its change is more of a problem than initially thought.
  • Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: The main characters are hopelessly overpowered when compared to the rest of the cast, and also, for the most part, extremely evil. It's very clear how most plot arcs are going to turn out; the only question is the level of collateral damage caused in the process. And even if you ignore Ainz and his servants, almost everybody in Overlord is either evil, cowardly, smug, amoral, depraved, pathetic, or all in one, with some characters being even worse than Ainz or any of his most evil followers. Depending on your level of tolerance and patience, it can become very difficult to care about how any of this ends. While the whole point of Overlord is exploring the story with an evil protagonist, Ainz and Nazarick's ridiculous power superiority and lack of ANY challenges at all (that do not necessarily include battles) along with them being so over-the-top evil and unstoppable, can make the story empty and repetitive even for those who enjoy watching the villains win, to the point that some people (whether manga readers or anime-only watchers) dropped the series when things got to be too much.
  • Too Cool to Live: You will be missed, Gazef Stronoff. Hell, let's not even sugarcoat it. When the newly self-appointed resident Evil Overlord goes HEADLONG out of his way to try and recruit you to his side (despite the fact that he himself and all of his top subordinates are all far far FAR stronger than you're ever gonna be) thanks to your sheer charisma alone, you know you're this trope.
  • Ugly Cute: Victim's portrayal in the manga. In Chapter 22, he gets wide-eyed apprehensive at Momonga expressing regret at the thought of sacrificing him, and he waves his stubby little arms wildly in protest. His default posture is also semi-quadrupedal, making him seem more like an angelic baby hippo than a fetus, and avoiding Unintentional Uncanny Valley.
  • Unintentionally Sympathetic: While Remedios is one of the most unpopular characters in the story, is seemingly made to be hated by the reader and is definitely not fun to be around, she's still a great hero of the nation, respected by many, and the leader of the paladin order who is stuck in the worst situation after Demiurge spurred on an invasion by the demihumans on the nation's borders. Everything she cared about was destroyed and she was thrust into a life of unending stress, which she started taking out on Neia. What little ability she had to make reasonable decisions decayed and she began to see that the people she had devoted her life to help didn't appreciate the sacrifices she and her subordinates made and immediately turned on the paladins in favor of a genocidal conqueror because he happened to have been more helpful in the last few months. As a result, while she's bitter and unpleasant, it's hard not to feel sorry for her once you stop to think about it.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
    • Ainz is supposed to be a Tragic Villain who had a miserable life when he was a human and is suffering from Emotion Suppression causing him to go onto greater acts of villainy due to the influence of the Floor Guardians. But his frequent villainy, for which he receives no punishment, makes it hard for many audience members to feel bad for. In particular, the fight where he had to kill Shalltear is often viewed as him getting what he deserves. There's also the fact that he is a hypocrite who never realizes how terrible his minions actually are.
    • The guardians, all of them actually. The story usually takes time to show how much they miss their creators and how hurt they are by them leaving. But considering that most of them are evil monsters who take pleasure in the suffering of others (especially humans) it can be a little hard to feel bad about them. Albedo, Demiurge, and Shalltear are perhaps the biggest examples, as they are the evilest and most depraved monsters in Nazarick, Demiurge, in particular, has his "farm" and Shalltear regularly rapes her vampires and looks down on everyone. Albedo's first action onscreen is attempting to kill a young woman (Enri) and her little sister and openly referring to humans as "lowly life forms". Shalltear getting brainwashed by the Theocracy can be seen as karma instead of something tragic.
  • The Woobie:
    • Climb clearly qualifies. Born in abysmal poverty, orphaned, went to bed hungry every night, adults destroying the house he built for himself at the age of 5, for fun, left under a makeshift roof of rags in a downpour to die of disease, taken in by a beautiful princess, out of pity, and hated by the nobility for it, bullied by the "noble" castle knights because ''he'' is the only one the princess can trust to be her bodyguard, and every time he performs a legitimate act of heroism, he fails to make a difference. That and the fact that he inherently has no talent for martial skills or magic, and it's a wonder he can even function at all. It gets worse when it comes to light that Renner is in love with him and that due to her own psychological baggage, her idea of "love" consists of chaining up Climb like an animal and making him her Sex Slave. It somehow got worse after he valiantly stood against Ainz, knowing he couldn't win anyway, and after being killed and revived, learned that Renner had become a Demon of Nazarick, at which point he's so desperate to protect her he offers to become a Demon as well.
    • Neia is not only treated very unfairly by Remedios despite everything she has done for her allies, but the first person bar her father (who was killed off by Demiurge) was Ainz, who was initially only trying to use her and orchestrated, or at least only participated in Demiurge's false flag attack intended to undermine her entire Kingdom. Despite Ainz showing genuine kindness to her later on because she reminded him of Gazef, someone he actually cared about more than most human beings, his influence towards her still gears more towards The Corruptor, and the poor girl ends up being an unaware pawn for Demiurge to completely subjugate her own Kingdom to Nazarick's control.
  • Woobie Species: Mankind in general becomes this in the New World. Humans in the New World are initially weak species that would probably go extinct after several generations until the Six Gods shown up and taught humans how to defend themselves from its predators with Tiered Magic. In the present day, their days are numbered since they are only fighting a futile struggle against the Demi-Humans who prey on them, and the human kingdoms tend to fight each other (if not getting themselves stuck in political struggles) and only cooperate when pressed. And that's way before Nazarick shows up to conquer or destroy everything they come across...

Top