Overlord

Overlord currently has three seasons totalling thirty-nine episodes(thirteen per season), covering nine volumes of light novels; it also has a manga that gets updated infrequently (I won't be mentioning it much; just for reference). The chapters in every volume correspond to an episode with the same name. I shall be covering as much as possible in a series of blogs systematically split into chapters and their corresponding episodes. In this blog, I will be discussing Overlord in general.

The anime adaptation is quite faithful to the light novel in terms of fidelity. Although they miss out on some main aspects that I deem necessary, the anime adaptation did very well in the picturisation of the light novel that would set the viewer to visualise the world, making it better for reading the light novels(especially for the volumes beyond the anime). For example, the title is not explained or even talked about in the anime. Many anime-only watchers may only associate the title to only one element, such as a lord who rules over other lords(in this case, the Floor Guardians) or a dominating entity. But Overlord here refers to the race of the protagonist, an elite species of undead. But the anime gets to keep its hundred points for retaining the theme and other aspects such as fear, the protagonist's personas and picturisation of the locations.

The light novels are narrated through an omniscient third-person point of view and internal focalisation, shifting characters from part to part(parts in a chapter), which changes in the anime; a change in focalisation is observed in the later parts of the anime. Keeping aside the plot, Overlord is a compendium of intertextual references- for example, the game Yggdrasil is adopted from Norse Mythology, consisting of nine worlds, which is the same as in the series.

That's all for now. I will be starting off with season one of Overlord from the next blog.

-Sai Pranav Reddy Rakasi

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