Overlord, and how NOT to write compelling characters

[Kaldrak]

Disclaimer:

I feel I should mention that before I start there will be significant plot spoilers contained in my analysis here, some of which come from the light novel version of the story and haven't been shown yet or may never be shown in the anime. If you don't want to know major spoilers, don't read this. I tried chopping it up with spoiler tags but it just made it unreadable, so I removed them.

We good? Okay then, down to business.


A while back, I sat down to watch this anime called Overlord.

I didn't really go into it expecting anything, other than another 'isekai' game world type storyline, where a person from the 'real' world, enters into another parallel world, sometimes with video game like mechanics. Also of note is the term LitRPG, which involves game challenges and a leveling system, though I'm not sure that Overlord quite fits the second subgenre due to most of the primary characters being so ridiculously overpowered and probably max level.

Overlord starts with the main character, Momonga, playing his favorite virtual reality MMO, a game called Yggdrasil (no, not the tree). It's the last day of the game, with the game servers shutting down at midnight. It is revealed to us that he is basically a no life king and spends almost all of his free time playing this game and he is understandably saddened by the game dying. He says goodbye to a few of his online friends who were a part of his ridiculously overpowered guild, named Ainz Ooal Gown, and then is determined to wait out the server shutdown while still online.

I've actually done this in an MMO before, logging in on the last day just to see who was there and say goodbye to anyone I could get a hold of that I had played with before and whoever was left online. So I was immediately sympathetic with the situation.

Boy was that a mistake.

Momonga's avatar is an evil lich king of sorts, and he resides in the grand Tomb of Nazarick, which is apparently a guild dungeon with overpowered NPCs guarding multiple floors. It even has a throne room and a treasure chamber, presumably the goal of any rival player guild who wanted to attempt raiding this place. Momonga has some of his loyal NPC guardians attend him in his throne room and edits the biography of one of them, a succubus named Albedo, to include the line that she has always been in love with him. It's sort of a practical joke on the friend of his who created the NPC, as Yggdrasil allows the creation of custom NPCs to serve the players.

Of course, as with most of these types of isekai stories, once the server shuts down the player is not logged out, and everything he is seeing and experiencing somehow becomes 'real.'

So, first things first. Momonga is now a skeleton.

There is some kind of effect on him that cancels out any strong emotion that he feels and kicks into gear whenever he gets upset or laughs or whatever.

The NPCs are now self aware.

The Tomb of Nazarick has been transported from the game world of Yggdrasil to a brand new realm no one recognizes.

A lot of game mechanics still work, but Momonga can't log out or use instant messages.
There's a period of disorientation, followed by him discovering that the NPCs can now interact with him at a level they've never been able to before.

And then there is his 'joke' where he rewrote a portion of Albedo's personality so she loves him. Whoops, she's a lot more real now than she used to be.

Momonga convenes many of the remaining floor guardians and has them begin to explore their immediate surroundings. Eventually he takes the name of his guild, Ains Ooal Gown, as his own and sets out to figure out what happened to him, the tomb, and whether or not any other player characters exist in this new realm.

I actually like the beginning of Overlord.

The Nazarick NPCs have interesting character designs and memories of their creators, who they refer to as 'supreme beings,' discussing the nonsensical sorts of things I've heard real people natter on about in chats in a real MMO (though with less swearing and vulgarity, honestly). Some of them are programmed to give other NPCs a hard time, and their perceptions of the world and how to interact with it are colored by their bizarre creation process and the eccentricities of a bunch of people who never considered that the things they were making could ever possibly be real.

And that...is a major problem.

I've watched all the way through seasons one and two of Overlord and I've caught up on all the season three episodes that are available. Unfortunately, I have soured considerably on the series. Though I'm still willing to continue watching season three, it's hard to explain exactly why. Perhaps because the ship has set sail and I want to see where its final destination lies, or something like that.

First, I'll continue with the other positive things I've noticed.

It's fairly bright and colorful, and the animation and artwork are decent. The action scenes are fun to watch and as I mentioned previously, I like the design for a lot of the characters. It's kind of fun having a main character that is as overpowered as Ains and his NPCs are, and at first I was all on board with Ains contemplating taking over the world.

That of course, was before I understood that he is a pretty terrible overlord.

I should mention that we know almost nothing about Momonga other than that he's a game addict...and that's it. He is completely okay with leaving his previous world behind and isn't even interested in finding a way back. Being a skeleton doesn't seem to bother him either, even when he has his own personal succubus climbing all over him.

One of the major things that bothers me about Momonga is that he's just roleplaying. He wants to be the Overlord his character is...and that's it. There's no meaning or reasoning behind this, and no greater goal or aspiration for it. The NPCs are programmed to follow his every command, so pretty much whatever he wants to do, they would go along with. There's no turning point from average human playing a game to actually being an evil Overlord.

There's just nothing there.

Oh, he reminisces sometimes about his guildmates and why they created this or that NPC, and he does stuff sometimes because his friends would have done things that way, but that's really not very good motivation for most of the things he does in the series.

The starting point for character motivation should not be, why shouldn't I do evil things, it should be why would I do something evil in the first place? Assuming your character is not a sociopath, as most people aren't, you need to establish proper motivation for doing things, and that motivation is wholly absent from Ains and nearly every single NPC at the Tomb of Nazarick.

And that makes watching them do the things they do pretty painful, honestly.

The Nazarick NPCs are at their best when left to their own devices and interacting with each other. Their silly reasonings, contrived 'rivalries' with one another, and odd ideas of what their master Ains want them to do and why, are definitely their most endearing qualities.

But make no mistake, the NPCs are absolutely horrifying.

They are a complete mess of character contradictions, motivations, and irritating contrivance.

All of them are supposedly slavishly devoted to Ains, yet many of them question almost everything he does and they definitely don't care about anything that isn't Ains, Nazarick, or one of them. Heck, they don't even seem to care much about each other, sometimes.

Though I liked them at first, thinking they were interesting and unique, I have to agree with Ains assessment of them at one point during the series. The Nazarick NPCs are children. Horrible, sadistic children who enjoy pulling the wings off of flies, burning insects with magnifying glasses, and torturing small animals. Only the thing is, all of the other people in the new world they find themselves in, are the helpless insects being torn apart by the NPCs.

And honestly? It's just awful to watch.

Moreso because Ains not only does very little to prevent their depravity, he actually orders the massacre of a bunch of men, women, and children at the end of season two.

For no real reason.

Ains himself is an amoral monster.

Though initially presented as a sort of bumbling goofball thrust into a situation he doesn't understand with all these grand expectations on him by his devoted servants, he shortly discovers that killing people doesn't really bother him much. As he's mostly incapable of critical or rational thinking or any sort of decent planning, he just goes along with what a lot of his NPCs suggest.

To give you an idea of how messed up a lot of these characters are, I'll start with the human eaters first.

There is Shalltear Bloodfallen, a 'true vampire' who can transform from her gothic loli look into an awful lamprey blood rampaging thing. She is of course, also in love with Ains and has a competition with Albedo for his affections. She kills people to drink their blood, because she's hungry. She even acknowledges that she is cold, cruel, and terrible to one of her potential victims.

I kind of like her. She has style and makes more sense than the others. Oh and she has a pretty cool armored form for high level combat that make her look like a Dragoon.

Solution is a slime in the form of one of Nazarick's Pleiades Combat Maids. She eats people, not because she really needs to, but because she likes the screams they make when they slowly dissolve inside her.

Entoma is a bug creature that is apparently trying to pretend to be human. She has a mask, some kind of bug thing that helps produce her voice, and is dressed like the other combat maids. I don't think she has a particular sadistic side, but she just eats people because she thinks they're tasty.

Aura and her twin brother Mare, are 'dark' elves (I put this is parenthesis because these are quite clearly fair skinned normal elves that the author simply calls 'dark' for some damn reason) and they are guardians of the sixth floor of Nazarick. Because their creator thought it would be amusing, Aura wears men's clothing and Mare wears a short skirt and women's clothing. Mare makes a great deal about how kind and merciful Ains is...but at a later point murders people with his staff and tortures a woman by having a monster 'eat her from the inside out' and then healing her with magic. Aura, for her part, seems a bit taken aback by this when she discovers it.

Albedo, the leader of the Nazarick NPCs, loves (read: lusts after) Ains because she's programmed to. There is absolutely no sexual tension between them, except for the first scene where he fondles her, (during the first part right after the transition from 'game' to 'real' and he can't quite believe what's happening). "Oooh, fondle me lord Ains! Ooooohhhh!" Which isn't her actual dialogue, but it might as well be, because she's just embarrassing. Her whole shtick is to be eye candy and rub herself all over Ains, and nothing can come of it, because he's a freaking skeleton. Yet she's a fan favorite because...uh...boobs, I guess?

There's Sebas, (full name: Sebas Tian, ha ha) who is Nazarick's head butler. He is apparently equal to many of the floor guardian's in combat strength, and was created by the only player in this whole guild who seemed to want to actually help people. Having absorbed some of his creator's ideas, he's the only Nazarick NPC who seems to regard the people in the new world as well, people, instead of insects to be squashed or lesser life forms. There's a story arc where he rescues a sex slave for no reason (Overlord varies wildly in tone, btw) other than it's probably what his creator would have done. He has her healed and promises to protect her, yet when ordered to kill her as a test of loyalty, he doesn't hesitate to attempt to do so (he is fortunately stopped by someone else).

Though I like Sebas probably more than almost any of the other Nazarick NPCs, simply for helping other, weaker beings when he doesn't have to and when it would be disadvantageous to himself to do so, if he were ordered to by Ains, he would personally punch everyone in a city to death. Why? Because he's been programmed to always follow orders. He might be unhappy about doing it and regret it afterwards, but he would still do it. Oh, and it's quite likely that no one could stop him.

Finally, I'll bring up Demiurge. He's a demon and supposedly Nazarick's 'chief strategist.' Though his plans are clunky things at best, and he seldom goes over the exact details of how to do things with Ains...you know, his overlord.  Sometimes those details are critical. Here's the thing about Demiurge. He's an idiot who thinks he's really smart. Now, don't get me wrong, he's probably smarter than the other children NPCs and he's definitely smarter than Ains, but that's not saying much. Good job, you outwitted an oaf. A stupidly powerful, bumbling oaf, but an oaf nonetheless. Given the instruction by Ains to create parchment for single use magic scrolls, and surrounded by a giant forest on all sides, what does he come up with? Kidnapping humans and skinning them, to make parchment out of their hides.

My first reaction on learning this wasn't revulsion or horror or anything. So far it's happening off screen, after all. No, my first and immediate reaction was, "But that's stupid." I feel like I shouldn't need to explain, but human skin parchment doesn't hold ink all that well. It's not a good writing material, and did I mention that his operation is surrounded by trees?? Do none of these stupidly overpowered magic users know a spell they can use or repurpose to mulch wood? Oh, but they handwave this by claiming that higher level magic scrolls can't be written on paper, because they burst into flame for no reason if they are. So obviously, from that we need human skin, right? I mean, it's not like we couldn't use some other creature first and attempt that. It's evil, but it's okay cause they have to do it if they want scrolls! Which is a conundrum that is so utterly contrived it almost hurts to read. Oh, but don't worry about Demiurge running out of people before they run out of a need for message scrolls or anything like that, you see, he skins them alive and heals them with magic.

Which is utterly depraved and evil, of course.

But it's also quite stupid. In fact, it goes straight into Snidely Whiplash territory. Nya ha ha, see. Watch me twirl my mustaches at you while I do the eeeevil.

It's...it's just bad and you should feel bad.

I mean, if there is some reason for this other than Demiurge is pretty terrible at making plans and carrying them out, I have no idea what it is. Perhaps Demiurge, being a demon, gains power from the slaughter and torture of innocents, which would make sense, but his scheme hasn't been revealed officially in the anime yet, and Ains doesn't bother to ask for the details!

I'm sorry, but this shit is just stupid.

The characters run all over the place, don't communicate what they're doing very well or why with each other, often get in each other's way, sometimes are forced to fight one another, sometimes don't bother to protect places they should be protecting, are both slavishly devoted to Ains while at the same time questioning everything he does, and are lead by an idiot.

And they like torturing, killing, eating, and raping people.

Oh, that last bit? Demiurge also has breeding pits where he's trying to cross breed humans and other species. One of the NPCs just casually tosses it off in conversation at the beginning of season three.

I...I think I hate the main characters of Overlord.

And yet the series is quite popular. There are lively discussions in the comments board on the download sites I go to and I'm sure it's the same elsewhere. From what I've read, the anime has thankfully cut out most of the torture scenes.

Which is another point, actually.

I have no idea why anyone at Nazarick needs to or is even programmed for torture. They can overwrite people's memories and control their minds if they want. You can find out any information that anyone could possibly be withholding from you with magic, so there's no reason or need to torture anyone for it.

Other than that they're eeeeevil, nya ha ha!

But they came from an MMO.

Even if, as a friend of mine said, all of the NPCs at Nazarick have 'negative karma' who would they have possibly been allowed to torture? The players playing a VR game? Not on your life! If you custom made an NPC and programmed it to do something it wasn't capable of doing, it just wouldn't do that thing. There should be no torture rooms at Nazarick, unless they were recently made.
And how, exactly, does an NPC, even a custom made one, gain negative karma? Karma systems are for players, not NPCs. I presume they gained negative karma by defending Nazarick from other players raiding the base, but that doesn't explain the sadism and torture.

It's just...none of this makes sense from a character development point of view. None of these people, with the exception of the people eaters who are hungry, have any sort of reason or motivation behind their deeds. They are just one note, one dimensional killing machines in several bright, charming looking packages.

So don't be fooled by the packaging.

I keep seeing people commenting about how Ains is supposed to be some kind of antihero. This is a gross misunderstanding of the definition of the word. An antihero is someone who uses nontraditional and sometimes even villainous methods towards a heroic end. Usually they are portrayed as a gritty, realistic alternative to their more idealistic counterparts. A traditional hero might have some kind of code against killing for instance, while an antihero might just shoot a bunch of people in the head to get the job done.

Ains is not a hero in any way, shape or form. He is in fact, an antivillain. Though this term isn't used very much, it means someone pursuing a villainous objective, using nontraditional methods. An antivillain, for instance, might actually save people or do things that aren't exactly villainous, much like Ains does on occasion. He pretends to be an adventurer who helps people, he saves this village of humans in the first season, he kills some very bad people doing bad things, etc. etc. etc.

None of these things make his central goal any less villainous, it's just that his means aren't necessary villainous. And what is Ains central goal? It is divided into three parts.

Primarily he believes that if he spreads the name Ains Ooal Gown throughout the world, he can hopefully call attention from his old guildmates, if any of them have managed to come to this new world. That means either fame or infamy, and he seems to have chosen a mixture of both.

The secondary goal is to maintain and acquire new resources for Nazarick. This is essentially a selfish goal, but what makes it particularly evil is that in order for Nazarick to survive, it needs a steady supply of humans for the multiple monsters inside it that eat them, coin that has to be minted the same as the coin from the game world they came from in order to pay for guild functions like traps, summons, and NPC resurrections, and other sundry resources it can put into an exchange box that gets it more game currency.

The Tomb of Nazarick is a pretty awful place for anyone who isn't an NPC, Ains, or a sanctioned guest, and maintaining it at full functionality costs a terrible price for the indigenous people that inhabit the world it currently finds itself in, therefore Ain's central goal is villainous, and he himself is an evil monster.

But it didn't seem that way in season one and parts of season two, which is why it was so jarring when I realized that these people were actually evil.

His third and final goal is to take over the world. In the beginning of season one, Ains makes a one off remark that it might be fun to take over the world within Demiurge's hearing. Of course for Demiurge, his words are doctrine, so at the beginning of season three, when Ains does another of his 'I don't know what I'm doing, so I'll have someone else announce a strategy and pretend like it was my idea and I knew what was going on all along' sort of things, Demiurge proudly announces that Nazarick is going to take over the world, much to Ains surprise. It turns out he doesn't even remember making that joke. And of course he's too embarrassed to contradict Demiurge, so....

Imagine that. Ains just oopsied himself into attempting to take over the world.

I can't be alone in thinking that that is one of the most singularly lame motivations I've ever heard of.

Ains doesn't care enough about the rest of the world to want to take it over. He only cares about Nazarick, the NPCs, his reputation, and his old guildmates. The NPCs are precious to Ains, but they sure as hell aren't precious to me. I kind of hate these people, and watching a total bastard get upset for one of his friends getting hurt, while his friends are actively slaughtering or torturing people, which he condones and/or orders, awakens a fierce, burning desire within me to want them all to die horrible, painful, agonizing deaths while he watches, unable to help them.

I want Ains to scream while every single thing he cares about is systematically stripped from him and then I want him to be helpless before an all powerful force that will slowly crush him until there's nothing left.

But this isn't that kind of story.

It's a power fantasy.

So Ains and company will likely take control of the world by the end of it, as other players from the game world have done in the past. And maybe some things and places will be alright under that system, but there will be areas where people are herded as cattle for the monsters to feed on, where Demiurge tortures them endlessly for sport, not allowing them to die, and where all resistance is crushed underneath the bootheels of Ains's undead armies.

At the end, civilization might still exist, but hopefully you won't hear the screams.

I'm of the opinion that villain stories like this are basically unappealing to the majority of readers and viewers. You could tell a story about a person compromising their morals, and falling deeper and deeper into darkness, until they are almost unrecognizable from their starting point. We can empathize with them, because we start out with a sympathetic or normal figure, and then end with something horrible and savage.

But this isn't that kind of story either.

It's just a story about a dude who doesn't seem particularly evil at first, but he totes is, cause reasons. We, the viewers and readers just don't know it starting out. And the anime cuts so much content from the light novel that it does a downright terrible job of conveying the reasoning and motivations of most of the characters, not that there's a lot of super compelling stuff there, but there's a boatload of details left out that I discovered. Some of which I've spoiled here.

What's left is action, which is fun. Dramatic tension, which is pretty nonexistent (as no one is as powerful as Ains and crew, when his team is doing stuff they squish everyone else, and when the POV characters are people going up against them they get squished, so you already know the outcome of nearly every confrontation). Character arcs, which are surprisingly good for anyone who isn't a Nazarick NPC (with the exception of Sebas).

And horrible things happening that I don't want to watch anymore.

This stuff would be fine if Ains and Nazarick were the antagonists and the main characters were fighting against them. Well, not fine exactly, but it would be a hell of a story, discovering the various atrocities and overcoming Nazarick's minions in a more traditional hero story arc. Ains would be the overpowered final boss for the heroes to overcome.

But again, this isn't that kind of story either.

Honestly, everything here just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

They could've done so many other things with this. Maybe a deconstruction story about how even though they are monsters and undead they aren't necessarily evil. Maybe a story where Ains tries to rein in the depravity of his more bloodthirsty servants (instead of weakass token gestures like he currently does). Maybe a story where Nazarick is bad but not evil, and the surrounding powers are evil so the conflict between them would have interesting shades of grey and black.

Watching villains fight each other can be very interesting, whereas watching villains commit atrocities is enraging.

Instead, of any of that though, we have a Villain Sue main character who can't be stopped, isn't particularly good at being an overlord, a bunch of sadistic evil NPCs who all adore him cause they are programmed to, and effectively almost no one for me to care about. An adolescent yet crude power fantasy about the bestest most crushingest magnificent skeleboss man ever with his deep booming voice and glowing eyes and inward performance anxiety and his booby succubus moaning after him he can't do anything with and isn't even really interested in cause he's just too cool! Watch as he bumbles his way into taking over the world, pretends his minions plans are his own, and orders the slaughter of tens of thousands of people, painlessly, cause that somehow makes it better. Marvel at how much more powerful he is than any of the poor fools who dare to attempt to oppose his marvelousnessness.

It's like watching a trainwreck.

Maybe that's why I'm having trouble looking away, but it just makes me sad, looking at all the cars piling up.

I kind of get why so many people seem to like this series, but honestly, if you liked Ains in season one before it was revealed what kind of horrible monster he was, then you're better off skipping everything else and watching the spinoff series with the cute chibi versions of all the characters. It's called Ple Ple Pleiades and is noncanon silly fun with Ains and the NPCs. As I mentioned before, the NPCs are best when they are interacting with each other. PPP is fun. Go watch that instead.

[Arakawa]

Zero desire to read the story, greatly enjoyed the review :)

It's honestly fascinating how plainly people tend to exhibit their "moral deficiencies" in wish-fulfillment-type fiction. Sometimes these are benign "I just want my low-effort harem" and sometimes these are "I want to be a skeleton lord with plot license to kill people for the thinly-excused lulz". Now, I'm putting "deficiencies" in scare-quotes because these are mostly likely not, I repeat *not* reflective of how the people writing or reading these fics would actually behave in a morally charged situation, but there's kind of a metaphysical interest to this.

As a human being, you tend to want impossible things. Sometimes they are impossible according to the laws of physics, but would be pretty neat and unobjectionable if you could kick physics to the curb, e.g. flying. On the other hand, sometimes the things you want are morally impossible, as in the mathematics of human morality are not shaped that way. There might be a universe where you get to play skeleton lord and unleash your demon armies on the land as in this story, but there is no computationally consistent universe where you get to do that and honestly pretend you are the good guy. Supposing Haruhi omnipotence gets dropped in your lap some day, understanding things like this and thinking about what you should actually want makes the difference between you being Azathoth and not-Azathoth. With the limited powers of real human beings, that makes a smaller difference, but it still makes a difference. Mostly when you realize you desire something morally realistic that doesn't require implied mind enslavement or mass murder, you then realize there is an actual possibility for you to work towards it. And that gives you ideas to do things that you might never have thought to do.

[Kaldrak]

Thank you for your reply.

Honestly, I think I would've been happier if the writer had done a decent job of designing realistically complex characters with their own pasts, motivations, histories, likes/dislikes and all of that. As a storyteller myself, I can tell you there are lots of ways to make a story like this work, but the way they did it here is horribly shallow. None of the main cast have depth of any kind, and while the minor background characters which are sometimes the star of different storylines do have a bit more depth, the fact that their fates are always predetermined beforehand sucks all the tension out of everything.

In other words, the only people I actually 'like' and root for in Overlord who are decent people are destined to be killed, probably horribly, or enslaved by Nazarick, Ains, and the NPC's.

So, why should I watch this?

The name of the day is contrivance. Why does anything happen in Overlord? Because the author who wrote it forces everything. Nothing makes a whole lot of sense, and people are unbelievable cardboard cutouts with shallow, base motivations and are one-dimensional stereotypes. While the audience is ooh'ing and ahh'ing at all the flash and dazzle and distracting sparkly stuff the anime throws at us, we're not supposed to pay attention to everything else. After all, Ains is just sooo powerful and has this awesome baddass cape. Lookit him go!

As far as wish fulfillment and these sorts of isekai stories, man oh man have I read a whole lot of isekai manga. The genre has exploded in popularity over the last few years. They range from stupid and silly, to lighthearted and fluffy, to horrible revenge fantasies, to just terribly fucked up stories. The problem with Overlord is that the author fundamentally does not understand character motivation and morality. It's not enough to simply make someone emotionless and then sit back and expect them to dispassionately slaughter people.

Morality ISN'T an emotion. Guilt is, but our moral compass isn't. Morality is a combination of internal and external factors that we are exposed to throughout our entire lives. Our culture and society, religion or lack thereof, the positive and negative examples in our lives, our family members, even the media we consume...all of these things.

Ains and the NPC's just don't have any of that. Honestly, though, a lot of anime/manga don't have these sorts of foundations for their characters to draw on, or if they do, we don't see much of it. It's why there are millions of spiky haired hero boys who are pretty much all the same character with very few variations as the main characters of a loooooooot of anime/manga.

Overlord is particularly egregious though, because when you ask the question, 'why are these people evil?' The only answer is, 'racial alignment.'

And hearing that, somewhere, that makes Drizz't sad.

[Anastasia]

Ains and the NPC's just don't have any of that. Honestly, though, a lot of anime/manga don't have these sorts of foundations for their characters to draw on, or if they do, we don't see much of it. It's why there are millions of spiky haired hero boys who are pretty much all the same character with very few variations as the main characters of a loooooooot of anime/manga.

Overlord is particularly egregious though, because when you ask the question, 'why are these people evil?' The only answer is, 'racial alignment.'

And hearing that, somewhere, that makes Drizz't sad.

I saw a smidge of Overlord and I really agree with this point. While I did enjoy a few parts of it, and I'm not sure it isn't intentionally like that as a parody, you're spot on here.