Overlord

Overlord is a dark fantasy anime from the studio Madhouse, directed by Naoyuki Ito. It aired for 13 episodes from July to September 2015. It is based on a light novel series by Kugane Maruyama, with art by so-bin. A light novel is a short Japanese novel for young adults, often with anime-style pictures. Overlord began as a story posted online in 2010 and was later printed as books starting in 2012. It became the best-selling light novel series in Japan in 2015.

The show belongs to the isekai genre. Isekai means "another world" in Japanese, and these stories send a person from our world into a fantasy world. Most isekai heroes are kind young people who want to help others. Overlord turns that idea around. Its hero is a huge, scary skeleton wizard, and he is not really a good guy.

The story starts in the future, inside a very popular virtual reality game called YGGDRASIL. In this kind of game, players feel as if their whole body is inside the game world. After many years, the game is closing for good. One player, who uses the name Momonga, stays online until the very last second. He leads a guild, which is a team of players, called Ainz Ooal Gown. All his old friends have stopped playing, and he is the last one left in their great home base, an underground fortress called the Great Tomb of Nazarick.

But when the clock hits zero, nothing ends. Momonga cannot log out. He is still in the body of his game character, an undead magic user who looks like a skeleton in a dark robe. Even stranger, the whole Tomb has moved to a new world that he does not know. The NPCs, which are game characters once controlled by the computer, are now alive. They think, speak, and feel. And they all treat Momonga as their god-like master and will do anything he says.

The NPCs are the heart of the cast. The guardians of the Tomb are very powerful and very loyal, but most of them look down on humans. Albedo, the guardian overseer, is a beautiful woman who is deeply in love with her master. Inside, Momonga is still just an ordinary office worker, so he must act like a great dark lord so that his servants do not lose faith in him. Much of the humor comes from the gap between his calm, scary words and his nervous thoughts.

Momonga wants to learn how this world works and whether other players from YGGDRASIL came here too. He also takes the name of his guild as his own. To learn more about the world, he dresses up as a human warrior and joins the local adventurers. Early in the season, his forces also step in at a small farming place called Carne Village. Step by step, the people of this world start to feel his power.

The show is a power fantasy, meaning the hero is so strong that the fun is in watching him win, not wondering if he will. Kotaku called the anime a "magnificent power fantasy." Its mix of dark humor, a villain-like hero, and a loyal but frightening cast made it one of the most famous isekai of its time, and it led to several more seasons.