Review of Overlord II

Well. Bad news. They had a good thing going, but they blew it and flushed it down the toilet. As a result we have a very flawed anime - with VERY well done moments, overshadowed by VERY badly done moments. Now, good news first. The anime has multiple arcs, and the FIRST one is amazingly well done. I was sitting at the edge of my seat, and I was surprised by it. The arc is 8/10 material, easily, and if ONLY the rest of the anime was as good as this arc.... Unfortunatley, past the first arc (which goes for 5 or 6 episodes), the qulity goesto hell, and they start prolonging. Episode after episode characters do as little as possible, are animated as little as possible, and every episode ends with a cliffhanger. Heck, they even start fighting as if it was a shounen anime - with speeches and all. The "faulty arc", unfortunately takes bigger portion of the anime, and its quality is so low compared to beginning so I've been wondering if the studio blew too much money at one of those huge battle scenes.

The good and noticeable thing about the anime is that it excels in a few moments where it displays ainz's companions as what they are - meaning monsters and demons. There are few scenes, where they managed to portray them in truly chilling way, where you couldn't help but feel respect the power of those creatures and their inhuman behavior. But. There aren't a lot of those scenes - the number is tiny, and they appear very rarely, with total combined time of all those scenes under 10 minutes at best. IT is really unfortunate.

Details.

Story: 3/10.

To be fair, the story for the first arc is 8/10, but the rest of the anime brings the score down due to being prolonged, relying on cliffhangers, etc.

They did the right thing by dropping the "game-like world" aspect and concentrating on the world itself, also the show feels significantly darker on occasions, now.

Art: 5/10.

IT is okay. I think it is a slight improvement compared to the first season of the Overlord, but it is not very high. The notable thing is taht they have MASSIVE battle scenes on a few occasions, but those scenes utilize CG, and it is quite obvious that it is CG.

In the second arc, they seem to be cutting animation cost, because there are battles that happen off-screen. Meaning yo uwait several episode till the central figure of the arc gets to show what they're capable of and.... you don't see the scene. Instead of showing an awesome fight, the anime shows something else.

Sound: 6/10:
Opening scene is catchy, and menacing tune that plays in a few of the "monster scenes" is quite chilling.Music is good, but it doesn't take the spotlight.

Characters: 3/10:

Well... same deal as before. There are incredibly (7/10 material) believable, well written /side/ characters in the first arc, which are so well done, that you can't help but feel sympathetic to them. However, once the arc is over, those characters are gone, and they're replaced by some sort of awkward automations with confusing motivations. Most of the characters in the second part aren't convincing at all, with exceptions of a very few. Heck, it is bad to the point where one of the most convincing characters (Nabe) has something like 5 lines total in the whole anime.

Sigh.

Enjoyment: 4/10:

I loved the first arc, but endless cliffhangers and poor pacing of the second arc seriously ticked me off, and killed the fun for me. So for the most part I wasn't enjoying it.

Overall: 4/10.

The good parts of the anime are episodes 1-6 and second half of the episode 11. If you skip the rest you'll lose very little, next to nothing.

I can recommend watching the first arc, but I should warn you that if you expect the same quality for the rest of the anime, you'll be incredibly disappointing. Further arcs fail to deliver.

So, proceed with caution, at your own risk.