If there's one thing I'm familiar with as a German, it's 2 front wars... but even I pale at the ‘only front war’ from ‘The Executed Sage Who Was Reincarnated As A Lich And Started An All-Out War’! ‘DO YOU WANT TOTAL WAR?’, the author of this manga must have thought, and so here we have a demon king who goes to total war. At least he pretends to. After defeating the previous demon king, the sage Dwight and his lover and heroine are executed. Out of love for the heroine, Dwight does not fight back, because she cannot harm the people she saved. So aftertheir bodies are thrown into a ravine, Dwight realises that he is kind of REALLY angry and so he binds his soul to his skeleton. 10 years later, he climbs the ravine and declares war on the (human) world!

That's how I would summarise the purely good aspects of the manga. However, the new demon king Dwight has a secret: in reality, he is only inciting the human nations to stop fighting each other and unite against a great enemy - him. In this way, he is trying to carry out the will of his deceased lover, who wanted to lead the world into an era of peace.
A lot actually happens on this ‘character level’ and I would like to emphasise a lot of it positively. Dwight's character in particular is quite fascinating - he is split between his desire for revenge, his doubts as a former sage and hero and his feelings towards his lover. This doubt plays an important part in the story, as his new friends always have his back. For example, one of them manages to make the undead taste again, which makes him incredibly happy.

While such moments are absolutely positive, Dwight's character is also the manga's biggest weakness. The constant doubting, especially the self-pity that often accompanies the doubts, is a constant thorn in the side, which occurs again and again during the blatant ‘HAHAHAH I'M AGAINST THE WORLD COME HERE YOU LITTLE MISCREATIONS! scenes. It mostly seems out of place, unfounded and as I said, it's just annoying. Especially because many of his enemies are just human scum - for example, here we have a priestess who actively turns the desperate population of a town into red and pink fireworks and takes perverse pleasure in doing so... Dwight NATURALLY falls into his doubts, even though he actually wanted to get such people out of the way in order to achieve his peace.

To summarise, I can say that ‘The Executed Sage Who Was Reincarnated As A Lich And Started An All-Out War’ delivers an interesting story that really has its moments. The characters, especially the protagonist Dwight, are a double-edged sword that provide both welcome variety and annoying distraction. The manga is also quite short with around 50 chapters and it feels like it takes ages to get new chapters.