English Dub Review: OVERLORD: The Sacred Kingdom

Overview

Momonga is a regular salaryman who leads a guild in a MMORPG video game. After twelve years of playing the game, the servers are finally shutting down. Momonga logs in for the last time, seeing the game to its end. However, after the clock strikes midnight, nothing changes…and Momonga finds himself playing the game indefinitely and is transported into its world. Throughout his adventures, he ascends to the title of Sorcerer King Ains Ooal Gown.

After twelve years of playing his favorite MMORPG game, Momonga logs in for the last time only to find himself transported into its world playing it indefinitely. Throughout his adventures, his avatar ascends to the title of Sorcerer King Ains Ooal Gown.

Once prosperous but now on the brink of ruin, The Sacred Kingdom enjoyed years of peace after construction of an enormous wall protecting them from neighboring invasions. But, one day this comes to an end when the Demon Emperor Jaldabaoth arrives with an army of villainous demi-humans.

Fearing invasion of their own lands, the neighboring territory of the Slane Theocracy is forced to beg their enemies at the Sorcerer Kingdom for help. Heeding the call, Momonga, now known as the Sorcerer King Ains Ooal Gown, rallies the Sorcerer Kingdom and its undead army to join the fight alongside the Sacred Kingdom and the Slane Theocracy in hopes to defeat the Demon Emperor.

Our Take

This week may have featured a celebration of the players of Sword Art Online waking up, but it’s Momonga that’s keeping everyone busy in a different form of Isekai. Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom adapts the manga’s Holy Kingdom arc that introduces Neia Baraja, a much more terrifying figure that shows up in the manga’s future then pitched here, but you do get a sense that a bunch of the seeds are planted here.

Having said all of that, that’s what Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom really is, it’s just over two hours of worldbuilding that continues to show Ainz continuing to plot his exit and to make matters worse he tells everyone what his plan is about halfway through the entire deal which makes me wonder why Madhouse produced this thing to begin with. On one hand the gory-action sequences are fun and fans of the series should get a lot out of this, but they tell us what’s going to happen at the end of the movie fairly early on in this whole battle.

It would have been cooler if we had gotten to see more of Neia showcase her increasing skillset, but we just get a whole big journey of her and Remedios galavanting around really for what is no reason. It’s a SETUP! The only thing that moves any needle here is if a subject like Neia shows loyalty to Ainz, then they gain favor, but other than that it’s Spider-Man: Far From Home meets Lord of the Rings in a battle that doesn’t matter either way except for Ainz to eventually close up shop and gain further influence in the various cities.

The acting performances are actually so good that they kept me into the rather mundane plot, Christopher Gurerro’s take as Ains Ooal Gown is just as iconic as anyone in anime right now and does a great job of showcasing Ains’ lack of care for whatever is going on here and Chris’ levity really comes through in the performance not unlike James Earl Jones’ take as Darth Vader. Likewise, the legendary Sarah Wiedenheft dons the voice of newcomer Neia Baraja and I’m really looking forward to how she handles the growth of this character in future iterations of the series.

The voice performances and gory violence doesn’t do enough to justify the theatrical release of Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom. An over two-hour runtime seems like a chore for a worldbuilder like this that could gain additional importance as future seasons of the series come to be, but that’s why we have Crunchyroll streaming.