Overlord (novel series)

• 1. Introduction

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  Overlord opens in the year 2126, in the final minutes of a virtual world called YGGDRASIL. The game is a full-dive online role-playing game, the kind where players feel they are inside it. After a run of twelve years, its servers are about to be switched off. In a vast fortress, a skeletal Lich named Momonga is still logged in, alone, waiting for friends who may not come. Then the clock reaches zero, and the game does not end. What does a man do when the world he loved refuses to disappear? And how did a story that began on a website grow into a franchise of novels, manga, films and games?

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• 2. The Last Guild

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  Thirty-seven players had walked away from the guild Ainz Ooal Gown by the time YGGDRASIL entered its last night. The guild once counted 41 members and was credited as one of the strongest in the whole game. Momonga, its leader, was the one who stayed, a character of the "Overlord" class. He kept up the guild's headquarters, the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

  In the final minutes before the shutdown, Momonga sent out invitations to the guild members still on the roster. Only one answered, and that person stayed for a short while before leaving again. He was saddened, but he accepted that his friends had other lives to look after. He decided to remain logged in and watch the servers close down.

  He meant to see the game out to its very last second, and that last second is where the trouble began.

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• 3. Nazarick Awakens

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  At the moment of shutdown, the game simply refused to vanish. Nazarick appeared to have been carried into another world entirely, and its non-player characters had become living beings. Where there should have been a log-off screen, there was only a world that kept going.

  Momonga found himself locked inside the body of his game avatar. The ordinary player functions were gone, including the General Message tool, and he could not log out. With no other choice, he set out to learn whether any other players had landed in this new world as he had.

  He took the name of his guild, Ainz Ooal Gown, as his own, hoping any other player would read it as a signal. From there he began to explore, trying to work out what had happened while keeping Nazarick safe. Anything or anyone who might explain the mystery was worth finding.

  One detail sets the character apart from the man who played him. Ainz Ooal Gown shows no moral qualms about killing or about other acts that would be taboo in the real world. The story points to in-game mechanics that seem to have altered his behavior. That the explanation is mechanical rather than moral leaves open who he has actually become.

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• 4. From Website to Bookshelf

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  In 2010, a novel publishing website called Arcadia hosted the first online installments of Overlord. The author was Kugane Maruyama, and the illustrator was so-bin. In 2012 the story was also uploaded to another site, Shōsetsuka ni Narō, shortly before the publisher Enterbrain acquired it.

  The first printed volume appeared on the 30th of July 2012. By the 29th of July 2022, the series had reached sixteen volumes. An afterword in the second part of the sixteenth volume announced that the series was set to end with its eighteenth.

  Yen Press announced in October 2015 that it had licensed the novels for North America. Its first English volume was released on the 24th of May 2016. The manga adaptation is licensed by the same publisher, also since 2016.

  On the 26th of November 2014, Kadokawa Shoten's manga magazine Comp Ace began serializing a manga version. Satoshi Ōshio wrote the adaptation and Hugin Miyama drew it. Its run lasted until the 25th of May 2023.

  The limited edition of the eleventh novel, released on the 30th of September 2016, came with a bonus. Packed in with it was an original video animation lasting 30 minutes.

  The story did not stop when that manga finished. A sequel series, Overlord New World, started in the same magazine on the 26th of April 2024, illustrated by Matsuki.

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• 5. On the Screen

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  Between the 7th of July and the 29th of September 2015, the studio Madhouse aired 13 television episodes of Overlord. The opening theme was "Clattanoia" by OxT, and the ending theme was "L.L.L." by Myth & Roid. Both bands are associated with the musician Tom-H@ck.

  Two recap films followed in 2017. Overlord: The Undead King was released on the 25th of February, and Overlord: The Dark Warrior on the 11th of March. Myth & Roid performed their theme song, "Crazy Scary Holy Fantasy."

  Audiences learned of a second season at screenings of that second compilation film. It premiered on the 9th of January 2018 and ran for 13 episodes. Its songs were "Go Cry Go" by OxT and "Hydra" by Myth & Roid. Outside Asia, Funimation licensed it for a simuldub, and the series later moved to Crunchyroll after Sony acquired that service. In South and Southeast Asia, Medialink holds the rights.

  The third season premiered on the 10th of July 2018. Its opening theme was "Voracity" by Myth & Roid, and its ending theme was "Silent Solitude" by OxT.

  On the 8th of May 2021, a fourth season was announced together with a film covering the Holy Kingdom Arc. The staff and cast came back for the new season, which aired from the 5th of July to the 27th of September 2022. OxT performed the opening, "Hollow Hunger," and Mayu Maeshima sang the ending, "No Man's Dawn." Crunchyroll announced an English dub on the 18th of July 2022, and it began streaming the next day.

  That film, Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom, opened in regular Japanese screenings on the 20th of September 2024. IMAX showings had started a week before, on the 13th of September.

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• 6. Spin-offs and Games

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  On the 9th of April 2019, a comedy called Isekai Quartet began airing, drawing Overlord characters into a chibi art style. They shared the screen with characters from KonoSuba, Re:Zero - Starting Life in Another World, and The Saga of Tanya the Evil. All four light novel series are published by Kadokawa Corporation.

  A mobile game, Mass for the Dead, launched in Japan in late 2019, with an English global version following in early 2020. Reviews were poor. Critics found it rather simple and said it offered nothing new compared with many similar gacha games. The global version was shut down as of the 31st of March 2021.

  A second game took a very different shape. Overlord: Escape from Nazarick is a Metroidvania, announced on the 17th of December 2021 for Nintendo Switch and for PC through Steam. It was released on the 16th of June 2022.

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• 7. Counting Copies

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  In June 2015, with eight volumes out and neither anime nor manga yet released, the novels already had about 600,000 copies in print in Japan. Numbers then climbed within weeks. By the 1st of August 2015, novels and manga together had reached 1 million copies in circulation. On the 4th of August, a reprint of 600,000 copies of the novels was announced.

  By the 20th of August 2015, the nine novels and two manga volumes together passed 1.5 million. Less than a month later, on the 18th of September, the total had gone beyond 2 million. By May 2016, the novels alone stood at 2.5 million copies in print. Overlord was the top-selling light novel series of 2015.

  Growth continued over the following years. By April 2018, novels and manga combined had passed 7 million copies in print. By December 2021, the combined figure stood above 11 million.

  The annual guidebook Kono Light Novel ga Sugoi!, published by Takarajimasha, ranked the novels first in 2017 in its tankōbon category. In 2018, the series placed fourth.

  Critics, meanwhile, were reacting to the screen versions in very different terms.

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• 8. Critics Weigh In

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  Kotaku called the Overlord anime a "magnificent power fantasy." The reviewer added that it "brings up a very relatable theme for anyone who has played an MMORPG before."

  In November 2024, Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom took in $1.16 million over its opening weekend in the United States. That placed it twelfth at the box office.

  Randy Myers of The Mercury News gave the film 3 out of 4 stars. He wrote that director Naoyuki Itô "obviously relishes classic world-building elements and oversees some rather astonishing visual set pieces." He added that "All the staples are there, too: bloody battles, surprising revelations and dormant powers within unlikely sources."

  Mike Mamon of IGN was harsher, scoring the film 4 out of 10. He called it "more of a footnote to a long-running anime series than it is an entertaining movie experience." He wrote that "The arc that inspired the movie receives only a passing mention on the TV show." In his view, "The Sacred Kingdom lackluster execution makes that short shrift feel justified."

  Phil Hoad of The Guardian gave the film 3 out of 5 stars. He noted that the audience never sees the real-world frame story outside the game, yet "there's a fatalistic sense that all this is being decided elsewhere." Hoad also credited the film's "expansive, heroic visual character-work." With a bit more focus, he wrote, a future instalment could put the series in Princess Mononoke territory.

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