English Dub Review: Overlord “Preparation for War”

War. War sometimes changes.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

By the herald of Baharuth Empire, Nazarick has been announced to the world as a sovereign nation. What’s more, Baharuth has announced that Ains Ooal Gown and his followers have claim to the lands of E-Rantel. Ains’s claim is illegitimate, but as King Ramposa and his nobles discuss, this makes conflict inevitable, especially since Baharuth has sponsored Sorcerer King Ains’s fledgling nation. Gazef believes they should surrender the city to Ains, but the king cannot simply give cities away when threatened.

The nobles of the kingdom pledge themselves to King Ramposa, and they begin preparations for the war to come, with Prince Barbro offering to go into battle. One noble, Marquis Raeven, ponders in his study that the kingdom is in pretty bad shape, with corruption and in-fighting present among the nobles.

In two months time, the nobles are gathered once again, preparing their strategy against Nazarick. The threat of Ains Ooal Gown is taken seriously by the war council; they deliberate tactics and prepare to scout out Carne Village for information about Ains. In addition, Marquis Raeven is named the commander in charge of their forces on this mission and the battle to come. A moment is shared between Raeven, Gazef, and the king, as Marquis and Gazef find respect for each other as equals.

As E-Rantel’s armies prepare for battle, Climb, Brain and Gazef meet to discuss what’s to come. Brain is lectured by the two senior swordsman, who offer their advice, and their apologies, for not giving Climb as much training as he should have received. Brain offers to watch Climb’s back, but Gazef warns Brain that should he come across Ains Ooal Gown, then he’ll be in real trouble. With the day’s business done, the three of them decide to head to the pub together, to give Climb a taste of what it’s like to be drunk.

Our Take:

Overlord takes a bit of a downturn from the last few episodes it had. With things ramping up between Nazarick and E-Rantel, this is an episode more about setting up its players than anything else. It tells an acceptable little story but runs too slow and doesn’t capture the audience’s interest with the same gravitas that the last three episodes have had.

We see a lot of old characters brought back that haven’t been around for some time. Gazef, Brain and Climb are old favorites, always welcome to show up for another round of being the coolest guys in the room, but they’re underutilized here, to say the least. They get a nice moment of camaraderie together, but I think it would be more interesting to actually see them drinking at the pub together, showing off different sides of themselves. As it stands, they were all functional characters, but not put into anything really demanding.

What makes this episode so lukewarm is the central lack of conflict that our characters. There is some tension as to what’s to come and get ready for the battle to come, but it doesn’t feel like there’s anything worth viewing here. If we’re not going to see the most interesting moments in our character’s lives, then why are we watching them in the first place?

There’s a feeling that this whole episode could have been trimmed down quite a bit. Of course, it’s important to establish new characters for the story to come, but certainly more deliberate directing can be used to make the plot more interesting. It feels as if this episode’s main plots could have been covered in five minutes pretty easily. Not to mention, there is quite a large time skip placed in the middle of the episode which feels like a cop out to avoid showing us the interesting stuff of having these kingdoms prepare for war. That itself could have been quite a story.

The core issue that this episode has is that it doesn’t feel like much of an episode. It’s much more of a plot dump, never trying to be anything more than a way for the show to gives us more information about what’s going on without bothering anyone or keeping things moving. It’s almost as if this episode is here as some kind of “Filler” so that the season can meet its goal number of episodes. But filler or not, there’s no doubt this episode just isn’t where it needs to be.