English Dub Review: Overlord “Invitation to Death”

Our heroes are cordially invited to death.

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Momon heads to the city of Arwintar, the capital of the Baharuth Empire, to try and get his name out as an adventurer in this region. While the story follows him there, we shift perspectives to see what the different denizens of Baharuth are up to.

On the imperial side of things, Emperor El Nix, AKA the “Bloody Emperor” is curious about Jaldabaoth and the recent happenings in E-Rantel. He dispatches his men to learn more about their neighboring kingdom’s run-in with the powerful demon and also seeks to learn more about Momon, the “adventurer” who stopped the demon.

We also meet Team Foresight, an adventurer team who works outside the rules of the Adventurer’s Guild as “workers” in Arwintar. Their next mission is set to take them to the kingdom of Re-Estize, where they’re to help find an ancient tomb, presumably filled with magical goodies. One of their members, Arche, is also the daughter of a fallen noble house and struggling to support her family, who are too dandy and arrogant to live as commoners.

The episode ends on Team Foresight and other adventuring teams gathering to go on their collective mission. We also see that Momon has taken the mission as well, and is sure to run into Team Foresight in the episode to come.

Our Take:

This week, we get something fresh for Overlord. Shifting gears from the contested Carne Village, we head on over to the city of Arwintar, where its time for something completely different. This is one of those episodes that does a splendid job of fleshing out the world of Overlord further, instead of just focusing on plot. Arwintar, though familiar aesthetically, offers some cool new developments with its empiricism and the Ministry of Magic. The Baharuth Empire exists as perhaps the first nation-state in the Overlord world, which is a nice deviation from the typical fantasy setting we’ve seen so far. It’s like Rome, but with more magic. Overlord does a great job keeping things interesting by exploring the realities of a fantasy world instead of just leaving out these details.

We get some new characters added to our expansive cast this episode. The emperor of Baharuth, El Nix, is the most prominent, but we also get his cadre of elite knights who all have irregularly blonde hair, and of course, Prince Barbaro, who’s as crass as he is arrogant; to name a few. They’re not bad characters by any means, (Well, perhaps its too early to tell) but this show is making it really hard to keep track of all these people. When a cast grows to around 30-40 characters of importance, it gets hard to keep a connection with them, especially when you have a story that’s mostly dialogue driven through a conventional storytelling format. Anime like Baccano and Durarara are able to keep everyone in their cast interesting, but those two use technique-driven directing styles to keep everything focused and interesting.

More and more, the story of Overlord seems to be more of a history and less of traditional plot. Each of these arcs has been quite distinct from the other, often introducing entirely new sets of characters to the fray. That’s not unheard of in most stories, but Overlord usually discards them when their arc is finished. Perhaps a necessary move, but it makes it harder to care about the cast when we know they might just fall off the face of the plot in a few episodes. Anyone remember the lizardmen?

Overall, this is a good episode, but not one where a whole lot happens. The dialogue is pretty on-point, and so is the characterization, but these exposition heavy episodes tend to drag on a bit. It’s what I’ve come to expect, but Overlord leans pretty damn heavy on political intrigue and leaves very little room for character depth. The story needs us to understand who these characters are right off the bat so it can keep the story moving, but I prefer characters who are a little more complex. I can’t complain, though, and I imagine you’ll have a good time with this episode, even if it is a bit lacking.