Since I'm waiting for the third episodes of shows to hit this season before watching any (I did this when I wrote my preview last season, and my previews were far better for it), I've planned to spend my time in between work and P5 watching a bunch of one cour shows I've had sitting on my shelf that I've picked up via various sales and such over the past several months.
I picked Overlord up on a whim during a sale since I'd heard good things from some friends of mine (and I've been a bit of a Madhouse kick lately since watching ACCA this past season), so I wasn't really going in expecting much, but curious of why this was the second show Madhouse has worked on in the past that was getting a sequel season after One-Punch Man. It didn't take long for the answer to that question become blatantly obvious.
It's interesting in the slew of stories that have come out since the explosive popularity of SAO, very few have felt like such a direct refutation of those tropes that many MMO anime and manga seem to adhere to. From the get go, Momonga is alone, and that fact really drives home the difference here. He may have subordinates to command, and a place to call home, but all of these are attached to memories of a time long past, where he was surrounded by his guild family. There's an air of bittersweet sadness over every victory in Overlord, contrasted by setbacks that carry a similar level of grisly brutality that harshly remind the viewer that consequences in this game are different for the NPCs who populate this post-apocalyptic game-state.
That's not to say there isn't a lot of fighting in Overlord, as is typical of the genre, but here it's represented as far more brutal than I had initially anticipated: people are decapitated and/or sliced apart with an almost wild abandon, and darker deaths await those who cross the wrong members of Nazarick. But for all its gore, it never becomes cartoony; instead, the show manages to maintain a steady amount of gravitas throughout, only lightened occasionally by some light comedy (usually at the expense of MMO player stereotypes). But generally, the atmosphere can best be described as triumphantly bleak, befitting the tale of a lone lich sorcerer and his entourage.
I might be alone in this, but of the three arcs that make up the show, I'm glad they're all quite drastically different from one another. It was a little jarring at first, but I think it works to the show's benefit to find ways to morph so it can focus on different aspects of the genre rather than risk being too one-note in its approach to Momonga's subjugation of the world. It might make the overall pacing a little odd, but each of the three arcs work well as their own self-contained story, making the show feel a little more episodic in that regard than most shows of this kind.
Visually, the show is... pretty good. The 2D animation is quality Madhouse, no denying that, and I think the animators did a fine job translating the art style of the LNs into something more conventional while still lending it a distinctive edge. There were parts that made me wonder what exactly the budget of the show was, but the fight scenes were not a disappointment, so I can forgive it. The 3D was... not as consistent. There were parts that looked great and others that looked... well, good enough. There was a lot more 3D than I expected, but I didn't think anything here looked as bad as say, the recent Berserk, so I was happy.
In the end, I was pleased with Overlord, and I'm happy Madhouse is resurrecting the show for a second season. Praise be to the Supreme One!