I watched Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom after having seen exactly two episodes of the series, and only having a general idea of who the characters were from the overwhelming popularity of Albedo in the figure-collecting community.

I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment out of jumping into new series with little or no background information and seeing how things work out.  However, most of the anime movies I’ve seen this year were stand-alone stories and created to easily loop new viewers in while keeping existing fans engaged.   The Sacred Kingdom is not, so how accessible is it for a brand-new viewer?

Background

Overlord tells the story of a veteran player, Momonga, on the last day of his favorite DMMO-RPG, a type of game that lets players experience the game as if it were real.  As the last remaining member of his guild, he spends the final minutes alone with the NPCs, reflecting on what used to be.  When the clock hits midnight, the servers do not shut off; instead, the NPCs develop personalities, and Momonga’s game world becomes very real. At least, that’s what had happened so far; when I stopped watching, there were a lot of unanswered questions.

Other than a text crawl that recaps the premise of the series, The Sacred Kingdom doesn’t fill in much of the gaps; it’s a continuation of the ongoing storyline from the series and the Light Novels. The filmmakers adapted Volumes 12 and 13 to fit the two hour and fifteen-minute run time, which is a lot of ground to cover even considering the length of the movie. 

Recap and Spoilers Ahead!

The movie kicks off with demi-humans attacking the very human Holy City let by the Demon  Jaldabaoth.  This is where my general unfamiliarity with the series failed me for the first and probably most significant way. I probably should have recognized that the demon in the pinstriped suit was A., not what he appeared; and B., a main cast member in the regular series. But I had forgotten and so I just went along with the action, watching this very evil demon do very evil things to humans.

The very evil things continue for a while, so it’s probably a good thing that none of these humans are at all likeable. Especially Remedios, the Kingdom’s strongest paladin. She fails to protect the Holy Princess, like a lot, and then spends the rest of the movie being an insufferable dick about it and generally everything else. While I didn’t care enough about the Holy Princess to feel anything about her fate, the movie tries to tease out what was an obvious death.

 Jaldabaoth destroys the Holy City, takes their citizens hostage, and sends the few surviving paladins fleeing along with the squire Neia Baraja.  Even though her family was also wiped out in the attack, her mother is/was a paladin, and her father was a Ranger who got killed with a meteor in the opening scene, Remedios continues to abuse her like this whole mess is her fault. I’m sure this will in no way come back to bite her in the ass.

Our Hero? Appears

The group of paladins find themselves in the Sorcerous Kingdom ruled by Momonga, now going by the name Lord Ainz Ooal Gown.  They’re all deeply uncomfortable due to his undead nature but have no choice but to ask for his help against the demon.  Turns out he’s been expecting them, and after some more petty bickering, the group gets his help and Neia becomes his attendant to win him over and keep an eye on him.

Neja and Lord Ainz have deep conversations about her background and skills, his goals and kingdom while traveling. It’s obvious that he’s the first person to talk to her respectfully and after he gives her a fancy Runecraft bow she’s almost completely devoted to him.

The Battles Begin

During the liberation of one of the human cities held by Jaldabaoth’s forces, the demi-humans start using hostages as human shields. The paladins are unprepared to deal with this and are unable to balance the cost of lives. Lord Ainz, however, can do that kind of math easily; turns out he’s a “needs of the many” kind of guy. He also makes his argument so convincingly that he gets Neia on board with it, since in this world, strength is what matters.

After freeing the city, the Holy Prince and current ruler of the kingdom meets with the paladins to scheme more about how great it would be if  Jaldabaoth and Lord Ainz killed each other in battle since neither one of them is human. As they plot, an army of forty thousand demi-humans marches on the city, ready to wipe out most of the surviving humans.

Lord Ainz gives Neia more fancy armor and equipment, but tells her he cannot fight since he needs to save his magic for Jaldabaoth. He said this before, so I’m guessing he’s going to end up fighting this time too.

First Fight with Jaldabaoth

Neia has absorbed way too many of Lord Ainz’s lessons, and her ruthlessness in battle earns her the nickname “Mad-Eyed Archer”, as well as puts a target on her back. But she refuses to escape. Meanwhile, Remedios exhibits terrible strategy and gets her men killed, only for Lord Ainz to bail her out at the last minute. 

There is an interesting part to this fight that they don’t follow up on: Remedios uses one of her paladin attacks that should do massive damage to evil-aligned creatures, but it does nothing to the werewolf(?) she is fighting.  Why?  I have so many questions about the larger story here.

After they wipe out the demi-human troops, Jaldabaoth shows up and once again, Remedios charges in against a far-superior enemy with no strategy. Lord Ainz heads off for his big fight with a confident “nah, I’d win”, which we know means that he will indeed lose. Which he does.

But since this is all part of some master plan that his demon ally Demiurge put together, it’s cool. I’m not sure what the plan is, and since the instructions that Lord Ainz got were “go with the flow”, I don’t know that he does either.  But Demiurge has a plan, and now it involves hyping up the power of Runecraft as Jaldabaoth, before hiding to recover from his battle with Lord Ainz. Who only lost because he took the time to save the humans.

The Rescue

After the battle, Neia believes that Lord Ainz is still alive but instead of going to search for him, the Holy Prince sends her and one of the rescued Demon Maids, CZ, a series regular who I also failed to recognize when they were briefly on screen earlier, to save a demi-human ally.

This is a cool sequence, and CZ and Neia are fun to watch together, it just feels like a different movie interrupted the one I was watching.  This new heist movie is more comedic in tone and weirdly, the animation seems worse.  Why does no one mention that CZ has a machine gun?  The gang keeps hyping up Neia’s Runecraft bow and skills, despite her efforts to appear normal, to the point where they are basically lining up kills for her to take credit for. If the monster wasn’t using the severed head of its victims, this whole bit would have been much funnier.  As it was, I still laughed; H³ did not.

The Final Final Battle

With their target secure, a full-scale war breaks out and the paladins rush in. This is the same town the first battle took place in, and there are some nice flashbacks to Remedios’ trauma of that first massacre. The paladins are again outnumbered when Jaldabaoth shows up, fully healed and ready to fight. Remedios tells the others to escape, and she will stay behind to buy them time, once again forgetting that the enemy can do things like teleport. Man, she is the worst at her job.

That’s when Lord Ainz makes his triumphant return with a whole army of his own. He’s been busy liberating and conquering the area where he landed after his previous battle and now, they are ready to fight on his side.  Neia bursts into happy tears. She’s totally on Team Ainz now.

Lord Ainz rides off to finally defeat Jaldabaoth, in a battle we only see from Neia’s perspective at a distance. This disappointed me at first, but in retrospect, makes sense. We know he’s not going to lose; it’s not about him, it’s about the impact it has on her. He wins, as is arranged, the people are safe, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Aftermath

Except, Neia’s started a bit of a cult devoted to Lord Ainz and spends time preaching about how great he is in the human city. The undead king gathering followers is something the paladins were specifically afraid of happening, and now she’s actively recruiting for him. On top of that, Demiurge was scheming with the Holy Prince to pull this off the whole time. The Prince wants a civil war, and Demiurge wants to “give the world” to Lord Ainz?  The movie ends with the Prince hoping the people enjoy the peace while it lasts.

That was a lot for someone who doesn’t know the world, and I think the biggest issue I had is not fully understanding the politics, world–building, and the individual character’s motivations. They explain the tenuous connections between the different cities, but briefly. I know that with the princess dead, and in the aftermath of the events of the movie, there will be a power vacuum. For this movie, that’s enough context; it tells me why they can’t get outside help from anyone but Lord Ainz and lets me know how deadly this world is.

Evil and Villainy

Character motivation in Overlord, however, is a different story. I’m not sure why Lord Ainz and Demiurge were doing any of this. I fully accept that is on me for starting a story in the middle, but there were still some odd choices for a movie. Lord Ainz is an unreliable narrator; I don’t believe everything he tells the humans, so that makes it hard for me to know who he is as a character. I do believe that he’s doing everything for the safety of his people, but I don’t know how this plan fits into that, or why he would go along with it. This may not be a failing of the movie, but a reflection of the kind of movie it is; specifically, a continuation rather than stand-alone story.

Lord Ainz and his allies cause a lot of death here. They throw the word “justice” around a lot, but mostly define it as “doing a thing I can morally agree with”. He’s loved by his people but seen as a villain elsewhere, and almost universally he is a figure to be feared. As are the other attacking demi-humans, but we see, based on the failed paladin attack, they are not evil. Causing mass death does not equal evil; there are so many interesting concepts here that that all hinge on execution. This is something that I may go back to the series to see how it’s explored. It’s not given enough room in the movie, but it’s fascinating.

End Major Spoilers

I did enjoy Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom. It’s very much the story of how a human girl becomes disillusioned with humanity and finds a new object of adoration, then starts a possibly dangerous cult to him. It’s a bloody, bleak world, filled with people making tough decisions and balancing the cost of lives. Some of those scenes and conversations felt more natural and nuanced than others, but they were all interesting.

The animation was fine, rough in some parts, but on par with good anime seasons. I don’t think there were any sequences that blew me away, but other than the staircase fight and one other battle scene, I wasn’t disappointed either.

Final Thoughts

I wouldn’t recommend this without some background knowledge of Overlord and the main characters. As a newcomer, I did feel lost on some plot points and unsure of how everything wrapped up, but there was enough to enjoy.  We saw the subtitled version so I can’t speak to the English voice cast, but the Japanese voice actor for Lord Ainz is fantastic. Lord Ainz does not care much about human life, so if watching people die bothers you, skip this one. Rated R for animated violence and gore.

Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom is in theaters now. The series is available to stream on Crunchyroll

check out my other anime reviews:

• My Hero Academia: You’re Next
• Retro Review #2: Mahoromatic