English Dub Review: Overlord Season Four

E-Rantel, the capital city of the newly established Sorcerer Kingdom, suffers from a dire shortage of goods. Once a prosperous city is known for its trade, it now faces a crisis due to its caution—or even fear—of its king, Ainz Ooal Gown. To make amends, Ainz sends Albedo to the city as a diplomatic envoy. Meanwhile, the cardinals of the Slane Theocracy discuss how to retaliate against Ainz after his attack crippled the Re-Estize Kingdom’s army, plotting for the Baharuth Empire to take over the Sorcerer Kingdom.

However, when Emperor Jircniv Rune Farlord El Nix arranges a meeting with the Theocracy’s messengers at a colosseum, he is confronted by none other than Ainz himself. With their secret gathering now out in the open, the emperor and his guests learn that Ainz has challenged the Warrior King, the empire’s greatest fighter, to a duel. With Ainz’s motivations beyond his comprehension, Jircniv can do nothing but watch as humanity’s future changes before his very eyes.

On the technical side, this is currently an ongoing anime adaptation of Kugane Maruyama’s light novel series animated by Madhouse and illustrated by so-bin. Season 4’s opening theme is “HOLLOW HUNGER” by OxT while the ending theme is “No Man’s Dawn” by Mayu Maeshima. and most of the English voice cast brings their A-Game especially the titular Overlord, Ainz Ooal Gown voiced by Chris Guerrero who consistently manages to pull off a double act as the inner-thoughts of Ainz and his out-loud voice that convincingly sounds like two separate people.

Since season one, I’ve been a huge fan of Overlord, and season IV delivers exactly what I love about this show. The strategizing, the unwavering loyalty, the overpowered nature of Ainz. It’s almost funny how we even focus on the efforts of other kingdoms considering how they’re all ultimately futile, corrupt, or backwards-thinking they are. The anti-hero premise is something I find especially refreshing considering how every isekai follows the same “I’m zapped into another world, so now I must protect innocent people and possibly fight a Dragon” formula but shows like this and “Shield Hero” work by setting themselves apart and somehow keep the formula fresh while highlighting that when it comes to certain characters and their motivations, appearances can be deceiving…

All the supporting cast is super intriguing and it’s a blast watching them and Ainz slowly but surely take over the entire world. While most of them come across as giddy fanboys who worship Ainz like a rockstar, they all have their personalities that seem to play off each other in entertaining and enjoyable ways. Not to mention of course how each of them are capable of tearing you into a million pieces and they know they can. The main flaw of most isekai is that it boils its settings and interactions to just a single kingdom and then a single village off to the side. Overlord, however, expands the world to multiple kingdoms that all have a relevant place in the story.

You can make the argument that an immortal/invincible character like Ainz could easily make the fights one-sided or at least painfully dull, but the show manages to show that when Ainz makes power-moves throughout the season, it isn’t always through brute force, but mostly out of sheer dumb luck or happenstance and helps remind the audience that Ainz is hilariously putting on an act as he rarely knows what’s going on but because he’s in such a high position, they all think he’s an evil mastermind genius which is a funny take on a protagonist and further emphasizes this in such an entertaining way where it counts. But when he does know what he wants, he can be seriously intimidating and show his true power.

Given that this is a long and drawn-out story that’s adapted from a series of Light Novels. It mostly suffers from most of the same problems as its previous seasons where certain parts of the show feel censored or character/plot details are sometimes ignored resulting in either YouTubers or fans who have actually read the light novels in advance pointing out certain pieces of the story and lore that were meant to be told that have consequently either been ignored entirely or left in the cutting room floor. And upon research, that’s sadly mostly the case here. The Casual viewer isn’t going to be given the same amount of detailed knowledge/info about character stats, skills, races, locations, powers, etc.

For example, While the presence of the character Shalltear Bloofallen within the show’s universe establishes the existence of Vampires, There’s a heroes guild called “Blue Roses” who also has a short vampire girl in their team named “Evileye” that was introduced in Season 2. And at one point, Evileye briefly mentions being part of a war hundreds of years ago. The main problem? The Anime itself never outright explains that she’s a Vampire, nor does it further talk about her experiences in that particular war which if better written within the Anime, would’ve given its audience better insight about her as a character. I had to look it up because not even the later seasons of the anime mention these details either. And it feels like a lot of these essential pieces of lore/info were clumsily left out for the sake of pacing and censoring the bloodier and more brutal moments the light novels were often known for.

A lot of the plot starts as a slow burn that begins to pick up when the character Phillip (who’s an absolute moron) makes an unthinkable decision that ends up costing the entire kingdom, while a long ongoing subplot regarding the character Princess Renner gets some payoff from her playing the long game with some unexpected people. In combination with various other characters/subplots that all culminate towards this chaotic and brutal ending that proceeds to unfold and leaves the audience wondering how could the show possibly continue after this?

Overall, while fewer things went wrong within Season 4. It got a lot of things right and worked as a major game changer for possibly future storylines. At the time of this review, It’s been announced that an upcoming Overlord anime film will be coming out taking place in the middle of Season 4’s Events called “Overlord: The Holy Kingdom” which is said to fill in specific narrative gaps of info, at least until Season 5 becomes a thing which I look forward to if it does. But we can only hope to see more of the antics of our titular Overlord and his Floor Guardians in the future.