English Dub Review: Overlord “Another Battle”

This week, Enri goes full commander.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Prince Barbro leads his forces to Carne Village, but the ambitious prince, unsatisfied with his mission, believes that if he can capture the village, he can use it to make Ains Ooal Gown give up his conquest. Meanwhile, at Carne Village, everyone is just peachy keen on Enri’s leadership as village chief, though she’s still a bit shy about people calling her as such.

As Barbro’s forces begin to approach the village, Ains Ooal Gown scries the situation and sees the Re-Estize forces approaching. Barbro’s herald announces their presence and declares their intentions to go to war with Sorcerer King Ains. Chief Enri does a great job of stalling for time while the goblins and ogres hide away from prying eyes. Barbro is impatient, however, and orders his arches to light the town’s watchtower aflame with fire arrows. For the people of Carne Village, this means war.

The villagers, including their goblin and ogre allies, usher Enri away to safety to lead the village’s escapees from the town. As Enri escapes, Barbro’s forces break in, only to be met by ogres raining death down upon them. The battle commences, and the Carne Village forces fight tooth and nail against Barbro’s men.

Enri manages to get to safety, but her instincts as chief take over, and unable to just watch her villagers fight on her behalf, she uses her Goblin Horn to summon more forces to aid them. Amazingly, however, the Goblin Horn summons more than just a small squad of goblins, but an immense army of specially trained goblin warriors numbered 5,000 strong. The new goblin army, led by a brilliant goblin strategist, swiftly routs Barbro’s forces, forcing the prince and his remaining men to retreat.

Later that night, Barbro is met by Lupusregina and 13 elite goblins, deployed by Ains to enact retribution to the prince for his attack. His fate is certainly a grim one.

Our Take:

Overlord manages to keep the fun this week but pulls to the end with middling quality. It’s not really an episode worth writing home about but has enough entertainment value to keep you watching to the end, even if things are a little rocky along the way.

This a “Battle episode”, where the main attraction is the war between the defenders of Carne Village and the Prince Barbro’s army. Yet, despite this being a war, the battle never really elevates itself to “Epic” status. Even before Barbro arrives in the village, his ploy to take Carne doesn’t feel like much of a threat, since the prince is bumbling enough and arrogant enough that you already know he’s going to an ass whooping in the battle to come.

And that’s exactly what happens. One knows its only a matter of time to before our heroes at Carne rout the attackers and put a swift end to the battle, so the tension in the fight never really shows up.

Strangely enough, the best part of the episode is also the worst, namely the part where Enri summons her goblin army to save the day. It’s a good twist, and an unexpected turn of fortune that works as a representation of her growth as a leader, but its army is a bit…unfortunate. This episode could have been a whole lot better if it didn’t shoot itself in the foot with the cursed bullet of bad CGI. The battle of Carne Village is just so unrelentingly ugly to look at, its entertainment value almost completely bottoms out. Bad CGI is nothing new for Overlord, but that doesn’t make it any more tolerable to watch. What could have been a great battle ends up looking like a joke?

When all is said and done, this episode doesn’t really amount to much and feels more like a filler than anything else. Enri deserves her moment in the sun to be a badass military leader, but there were better ways of doing that other than having this little in-between episode to water down the war between Ains and the kingdoms of humanity. Not to mention, since this episode’s story is open and shut in one stretch, there isn’t any real need for it except to take up a slot. Certainly, things will go back to being a little more interesting next week, and maybe Enri will have a bigger role to play from this experience.

Score
6/10