If the isekai genre feels like it’s been running rampant in the anime industry for decades, that’s because it has. First rising to international popularity in the mid to late 1990s with classic series like Digimon Adventure and Fushigi Yugi, isekai anime has become very iconic to the anime industry.
In the current anime era, viewers have seen some pretty bizarre isekai entries, including Overlord. What earns Overlord a seat at the isekai table is how the protagonist fully adapts to his new surroundings, becoming a new person in the process. At times viewers are left wondering, just how evil is this guy becoming.
Who Is Ainz Ooal Gown, The Undead Sorcerer King?
The answer depends on when you’re asking this question. From the beginning of the series, viewers follow Ainz Ooal Gown as he pursues his goal of strengthening his former guild’s clan base and finding any former guild members who may have been brought to this new fantastical world as he has. When the story begins, the protagonist is a salaryman known as Momonga and he’s one of several guild masters of the guild Ainz Ooal Gown in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Yggdrasil.
After all of his clan members leave, he is the only player left playing the game at the very moment that all of the game’s servers shut down. To his surprise, he opens his eyes to find himself in a new world with his old guild’s clan home and all of the guild NPCs who have now come to life, so to speak. Since he is the only guild member left, they all see him as their all-powerful ruler. It doesn’t take long for Momonga to take on the name Ainz Ooal Gown for his own and get to work spreading his influence over this new world.
Your Average Isekai Protagonist
In Overlord’s first season, Ainz Ooal Gown is still very much a salaryman just becoming familiar with the new world and his new position as a ruler. He feels uncomfortable around his followers at times, and he looks to them to make decisions for him. While Ainz isn’t the most virtuous person, he still acts to protect others and only kills those who have done wrong except for his legitimate duel with Gazeff Stronoff. He’s like an undead isekai batman, not the hero the new world needs right now, but the hero that it deserves.
War: What Is It Good For?
Season 2 introduces a few new factions, including lizardmen clans and the Blue Roses adventurer group. Here’s where things start to get a little murky. Ainz Ooal Gown makes some selfish decisions and views some races as nothing more than playthings to be used however he would like. Viewers see him starting to lose his compassion for factions who aren’t already aligned with Nazarick and his motivations become less noble.
While the idea was originally Albedo’s and not Ainz’s, he decides to start a war with the lizardmen for no reason other than to build an undead army. He sends an undead announcer to inform all the lizardmen that they’re going to be attacked and decimated in eight days just because.
When the Tomb of Nazarick loses the first battle of the war, Ainz tells his commander, Cocytus, to kill them all without discrimination. He only accepts resurrecting them and allowing Cocytus to command them as their own army after Cocytus begs Ainz to show mercy for them.
The deaths that a few of the Blue Roses members faced at the hands of Demiurge is less directly Ainz’s responsibility since he was not fully aware of Demiurge’s plan. Still, Ainz allowed Demiurge full freedom to enact his plan regardless of who it could hurt or the trouble it could cause.
Well, That Escalated Quickly
If season 2 wasn’t, season 3 truly is the beginning of the end for Ainz’s remaining humanity to shrivel away. This season continues the previous season’s trend of Ainz using living creatures and whole nations as play things to get his way, but it goes zero to one hundred real quick. Slaughter is the word of the day for Ainz this season.
Ainz Ooal Gown’s tomb of Nazarick has been coasting by pretty peacefully without being attacked or investigated by any unprovoked nations or individuals, for the most part. That just wasn’t fun for Ainz, so he decides to meet secretly with the Baharuth Empire’s imperial court wizard, Fluder Paradyne, for some manipulation games. He convinces Fluder to persuade the emperor of the Baharuth empire, Jircniv Rune Farlord El-Nix, to hire adventurers to explore the tomb of Nazarick.
Ainz and his followers slaughter every adventurer who makes their way to the tomb. It turns out, Ainz did all of this just to play the victim as the ruler of Nazarick and strong-arm the Baharuth Empire into supporting them in their threat of war with the Re-Estize Kingdom. Ainz wants to establish a new kingdom called the Sorcerer Kingdom and expand his land.
The slaughter doesn’t end here. Ainz takes a step further when he aids the Baharuth Empire in their annual war with the Re-Estize Kingdom. Ainz unleashes a spell more powerful than anyone on that battlefield has ever known existed and wipes out almost 100,000 of the enemy’s soldiers.
From Sorcerer King to Dragon Lord
So far, Ainz has been relatively low-key in the fourth season. Mainly, he’s sabotaged Jircniv’s meeting with cardinals from a plotting nation nearby, the Slane Theocracy, and defeated the Baharuth Empire’s strongest warrior in a duel to showcase his might to potential adventurers. He also killed a couple of dragons by crushing their hearts, but he spared most of them just because one of his new allies asked him to. So he’s not too far off the deep end yet. After completely Ainz overwhelmed the dragons with yet another show of incredible power, they pledged their allegiance to him.
By Dungeons and Dragons rules, Ainz Ooal Gown’s current standing is essentially chaotic neutral, bordering on lawful evil with some of his more reckless actions. He still maintains the utmost loyalty to the tomb of Nazarick and all of its guardians, but he will not hesitate to kill any other creature, humanoid or otherwise if he deems it necessary to further his goals. Ainz has also become much more of a ruler than he was when the Overlord anime series began. He commands his followers with complete confidence. His current goal is to strengthen the Sorcerer Kingdom and the Tomb of Nazarick, which will no doubt develop into a loftier goal as he flexes more of his control over the new world.