Overlord III is the third season based on the light novel series. The season is comprised of thirteen episodes. It follows Ainz Ooal Gown, who is the ruler of Nazarick. The world that he finds himself in was originally a game. However, when the online game was scheduled to shut down, Ainz stayed until the very last minute and then somehow managed to get transported into the world. That said, it doesn’t follow the typical rules of a game and is its own thing. One of the benefits is that Ainz is absurdly powerful and has a legion of loyal followers who were NPCs in his in-game castle but is now sentient.
Ainz continues on his quest to dominate the world. The main reason is to put his name out there in the hopes of finding some of his companions. This is just in case they were transported and stuck in this world too. We were given some small teases in the previous seasons of other players so you’re hopeful that this season further solidifies that. The opening episode to the season was a relaxing one, showing a typical day at Nazarick. There is some spillover from the previous season but is minor. One of the funnier aspects is how everyone assumes Ainz is thinking five steps ahead but he is in reality, clueless and oblivious. He’s always in shock, even with his emotion suppression in effect, and his reactions are highly exaggerated.
The second episode then does what Overlord always do, by following a different set of characters. While this was always how the series went, never exclusively focusing on Ainz for stretches of time, it still wrecks the pacing. While this isn’t an inherent problem, the anime ends up failing to highlight what significant these scenes have and so they feel like a waste of time.
As Ainz is building up his army and fortress, he also contends with the tone of his leadership. He has to bluff his way through a lot of things but one thing’s for sure, he is too powerful. He is so overpowered that he can kill his enemies in one hit with ease. The fact that he only wants to research and experiment is what holds him back from immediately destroying the entire world. It feels like Ainz is testing the people that he had saved, as well as experimenting with them and forming alliances. However, since Ainz can use brute force over everything, the roundabout way he ends up going to achieve things is annoying. This is because all the issues would not have arose if he had just gone ahead and did it himself.
Despite it being great to see Ainz finally get his hands dirty and participate in a battle himself, you can’t help but feel sorry for the humans that had dared attack him. They were completely out of their league with no hope of winning at all. While they were wrong, their fates are worse than death and each has a backstory that makes their death a shame. The anime always used copious amounts of CG and it’s really not different in this third season. It’s done poorly and very distracting in all the scenes.
As the season goes on, it highlights how Ainz becomes even more and more uncaring. He kills masses of people and only cares about the inhabitants of Nazarick. Although for each country or group he conquers, he adds them to Nazarick so… The anime ends up wondering aimlessly for the first half because it suddenly gets much better at around the halfway point. No coincidentally, it follows Ainzs instead of just other supporting characters. The storytelling is still not the best as it leaves a lot of gaps and makes it hard to know what the characters want to do. This peak is only for a few episodes as it returns to become bland and unmotivated as it approaches the season finale.
Overall, Overlord III is messy and has uneven storytelling that lacks impact. It jumps around all over the place way too much. Everything that Ainz does feels unplanned and thus there is never that moment where you’re just amazed and excited when everything comes together.
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