Overlord disappointed me. Slight spoilers and forgive my langauge

I have to say, during my pre-Overlord life, while I wasn’t really aware of what this show was about, I had the impression that it was a good anime. It has a decent fandom following it, from the character designs I expected some comedy, and I thought I was gonna have a fun experience.

That’s not what I got.

Let's start at the beginning.
We are in the year 2138 and the very popular DMMORPG, Yggdrasil, is shutting down. On the last day our main character Momonga does not log out, deciding to stay online till the server kicks him off. But instead of that, a number of things actually happened. One, Momonga “becomes'' his undead, skeleton avatar in the game. Two, the NPC’s residing in the guild hall become sentient and free moving. And three, their guild hall, Ains Owl Gown (I don’t even know if I spelled that right), and everyone in it are transported to a different world from Yggdrasil.

This brings me to my first point, and bare in mind, this is me mostly nit-picking. But, we are never told or shown what exactly happened to Momonga for him to be sucked into this game, it just happens. This bothers me because, well, I do consume a lot of Isekai, and often the events that lead to the world switch are very clear; A god might bring them over, they die and are sort of reincarnated, a device traps them, a secret passageway, etc. And often, how they come to this world serves as a personal conflict the character must face. In Overlord it just happens, and since this is an unanswered question (an unanswered question that is never answered or even hinted at that will be answered), it bothers me and I’m left to speculate in order to have some sort of peace. I can only assume either one, Yggrasil isn’t a game you actually dive into and Momonga can leave his computer anytime he wants, or two, a freak accident happened with his headset or something, causing him to die, and therefore be transported into the game. For all I know, the world outside of Yggdrasil never existed.

I’m also bothered by the changes that happen to Momonga. This man is transported into a different world, and he kinda just..... accepts it, like really quickly. He doesn’t panic, he doesn’t wonder if he can log out, he practically doesn’t care. And it just doesn’t make sense to me. Like sure I would love to live in a virtual world where I’m all powerful and all, but the sudden switch would definitely jar me. But Momonga hardly questions anything about his situation. In fact there even seems to be this weird mechanic that calms him when he gets too excited or feels too much. But that too is never explained and doesn’t really have a purpose? Why is he calmed when he gets excited? Why does he need to be calmed? Why doesn’t he feel anything when he kills people? There seems to be no reason for this but to help Momonga keep this “cool, collected, strong leader” image. But, honestly, it only serves to limit Momonga’s personality. We literally get nothing else from Momonga other than that he likes to be a sad boy™ about the good ol’ days and that he's kind of your average loser.

Now before I go on, I want to say. The fact that Overlord has an op main character is not the problem at all. Op main characters can be done right. Look at One Punch Man and Mob Psycho. Sword Art Online is still popular to this day. Reincarnated as a Slime is another good example. Overlord just doesn’t bring anything to the table but OP characters, which pretty much gives it no substance.

How do I explain this? Not only does Ovelord not give us time to get to know these characters beyond their 2-word personality traits, but they neither give us a reason to give a shit about these characters and cheer them on. From the first episode we are barely introduced to the NPCs of Ains Owl Goal and from then on they don’t really do much but receive orders and be happy about doing said orders. The only character I genuinely liked was Pandora’s Actor and that's simply because he had a more interesting personality then literally anyone else in the show. Nothing else is done to expand on these NPC’s. Sure, you can like their connection/dedication to Momongo and the other supreme beings, but it can get boring when ½ of their personality is just “I like to do shit for my master” while also having little to no problem or difficulty doing these tasks.

I also have a problem with their goal. Momonga’s goal is to spread the name of Ains Owl Goal around in hopes to find people who might have also come from Yggdrasil. But that’s pretty much it. He doesn’t explain why he wants to do this at all. I don’t assume he wants to figure out why he’s there and what happened because, like I said, he never questions it. You can say he might just want to connect with these people, but he literally states he doesn’t want to make close connections with people in episode 6. And he knows not everyone he’ll find will be friendly. It honestly just feels like they’re spreading the name simply because “we are powerful and deserve to have our name known” or something like that. And, like I said, I don’t feel the need to cheer them on because they’re op and I know they’re gonna succeed, so it’s boring.

Let’s compare this to “Reincarnated as a Slime.” Rimura for the most part, knows he’s super strong. But it’s not something that's constantly shoved in our face, it becomes like background knowledge. Rimura neither wished for his name to be known, it was just a bi-product of him trying to live his life in this new world. He’s powerful but doesn’t consider himself greater than anyone else and still approaches every situation with caution, but, also in a way that everyone can contribute. He uses every opportunity to cultivate relationships and we see him grow as a leader and a person from start to finish. What makes an OP protag/isekai story succeed is simply the relationships they have and what they do for the world. Just because they are OP does not mean they don’t grow as characters.

In Overlord, everyone’s the same literally from the beginning to the end. Nobody goes through any personal conflict or growth. The NPCs that hate humans at the start still hate them at the end. Momonga is still no more or less closer to the NPCs. Most conflicts are approached only by Momonga and one other NPC, but even then the NPC mostly stays on the back burner. While he does stuff for the world, it’s purely for selfish reasons, to spread his name, and he quite literally doesn’t give a shit about anyone outside of Ains Own Goul.

Some spoilers but further highlight why it was hard to connect with this show.

The antagonists/villains themselves are also very lacking. The Slane theoarchy, which I assume is the overarching villain, is barely touched on at all. They’re goals, other than just being a hostile nation, are kept a mystery for now. The villains for the middle arc also show up with literally no purpose. Their goals and motivations are unknown and they simply do evil just to do evil. They were not intimidating or interesting in any way and solely exist because they needed an antagonist.

I really struggled finding anything entertaining in this anime. Like I said, the characters and their relationships are untouched and unchanging. The action? Basic. Every fight scene except Momonga's last 2 fights and Nabe’s fight pretty much consists of “big magic kills everyone” or “bloody slaughter, no one stood a chance.” The last two fights with Momonga had some more choreography to it, but still pretty basic. The gore is bloody but nothing really gruesome? The most gory thing it's got going for it is beheading, but that's mid tier gore. As for the Fantasy elements, while we do spend a lot of time outside the tomb of Nazerick, the world building really sucks. They had one little talk about the surrounding nations in the second episode but that's pretty much all we get. I can mostly assume that all the events happen close to where Nazerick is.

The only thing I can say I genuinely enjoyed was the music. The opening theme is now on my playlist and I found the ending theme to be really interesting.

Also, so little seems to happen in one episode that I was surprised almost every time an episode ended. Which further highlights why I feel this anime lacks substance.

In conclusion, Overlord has the minimum requirements to be an Isekai with an OP protagonist but none of the elements that make this an interesting show. However, I don’t want to completely dissuade everyone reading this from watching it though. Like I said, Overlord has a decent following/fandom behind it, so there's definitely something there that people love about it. I am just not one of them.