The Fall 2019 Manga Guide

Overlord The Undead King OH!

What's It About? 

What happens when Ainz Ooal Goan isn't out taking over the world? Sports day at Nazarick. Acting lessons to improve their infiltration methods (but why “Snow White”?). Attempts to make Ainz relax by getting him to laugh…you know – ordinary stuff.

Except that nothing is truly ordinary when done by the cast of characters who populate the Tomb of Nazarick, and as always, Ainz isn't quite sure what he's gotten himself into.

Overlord: The Undead King Oh! Is based on Kugane Maruyama's light novel series Overlord. This spin-off is written and illustrated by Jūami and will be released by Yen Press in November in both paperback ($13) and digital ($6.99) editions.

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Is It Worth Reading?

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

It perhaps goes without saying that some knowledge of the first three novels and season of anime in the Overlord franchise this book will make very little sense. But even when it does make sense, it isn't especially funny – primarily it relies on the gag that the man who has become Ainz Ooal Goan is trying to figure out not just how to be an evil Overlord (part of the series premise, arguably), but just how to exist day-to-day in the world of what was once the MMORPG Yggdrasil. It's not a bad premise for a gag manga, but the direction it chose to take doesn't really make the most of it. Rather than dealing with things like suddenly having a massive skeleton for a body or trying to explain to Albedo that he can't use what he doesn't have to make babies with her, the stories all revolve around basic manga staples like “sports day” and “performing a play.”

Given that in his previous life Ainz was a working adult, these tropes of the high school genre really don't cut it. Added to that, only two of the denizens of Nazarick are children, so while most of the characters aren't hugely mature, having them engage in this style of shenanigan doesn't make a ton of sense, especially when there are other avenues that could have been explored. To this end, the best chapters are the ones that try to do something at least a little different. The whole “make Ainz laugh” bit works a bit more because it relies on the way the other characters see him versus the way he sees himself (plus Sebas in a dress), and the fourth-wall-breaking chapter about how to name the gag series pokes fun at not only the original story, the editor of this one, and the artist, but also at the readers themselves, which is fun. Likewise the artwork is amusing, particularly pared-down Ainz and Albedo's vision of him as a chibi, but the editor's comments along the sides of the pages are just obnoxious, at least in terms of trying to read smoothly. I suppose that a completist might want this book, but really it's more a miss than a hit and didn't really do much to make a case for itself as a comedy.

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Faye Hopper

Rating:

One of the weirder parts of the manga guide gig is reading spin-off ephemera for popular series I have nil experience with. Such is the case with Overlord: The Undead King Oh!?, a 4koma, gag manga riff on one of the premiere light novel isekai. I am only familiar with Overlord via vague assimilation of its reputation and a few aesthetic markers (such as the grim visage of its evil Overlord skeleton), so having to try and absorb and analyze a manga that's all comic riffs on previous characterization and goofy recontextualization of key worldbuilding details was interesting, to say the least.

By interesting I mean difficult. This might be the hardest book I've ever had to get through for the guide, simply because I barely had any idea what was going on or who these people were. I know, for instance, that the eponymous Overlord is the isekai part of it, brought into a game world with a lot of power and ability. So I got the jokes about learning katakana and such from his perspective. But I don't know so, so much. Why is one of Ainz's key staff an SS Officer coded ghost face? Why is there a giant hamster? Who are the various members of Ainz's empire, where do they come from? What are their personalities, their motivations? Not understanding this means I don't get half of the jokes, and as such was left barely processing the book's events.

But if I try to judge the book on its own, singular merits, how does it stand up? Well, I mean…the comedy's perfectly inoffensive? The last chapter was maybe the most amusing part, where they break the fourth wall in trying the name the comedy spin-off they inhabit. Some of the names they came up with were amusing. But the jokes themselves are so slight, barely noticeable half the time. My experience might have been different if the absurdity were heightened, but the humor was so in-joke based that I was left simply going 'huh?' half the time.

I feel like you'll know if you want to read Overlord: The Undead King Oh! if you have experienced Overlord. Do you like Overlord? Do you like its cast, its world? Do you want to see them in new situations, and have one of your favorite worlds lampooned? Then you'll probably like it. It's a book for fans of the series and almost no one else, much less someone with only the most passing, less-than-cursory knowledge of the franchise writ large. It was an odd experience getting my first peak into the Overlord universe in this way, to be sure, but it's not one I'm eager to repeat. Maybe this will inspire me to give the main series a shot, but for the moment I am simply confused.