Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Overlord IV
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andramus
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I really like this show. I've even just ordered hardcover copies of all the english translated light novels to read.
This is something I'd say about pretty much any heavily serialized series but this show really benefits from binge-watching. I've just finished re-watching seasons 1-3 over the last few days and the series is such a slow burn that watching one episode a week can often leave you(me) unsatisfied. However when you watch it all or at least sizable chunks in one sitting I find it proves to be quite fulfilling entertainment. Was the kiss in episode 3 not worth mentioning? I thought that was a pretty big step forward in Albedo and Ainz relationship. Though I'm still not sure if he actually has the correct anatomy to bone her so she can provide him with an heir. Last edited by andramus on Wed Jul 20, 2022 11:22 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18176 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, that would be totally consistent with both Ainz's character and the running joke of everyone completely over-interpreting Ainz's words and actions, so I'd be shocked if that doesn't prove to be the case. While the thorough exploration of the consequences of the end of season 3 did need to be done, I have generally found the pacing to be a little on the slow side so far this season. (But the slower, more deliberate approach is par for the course for this franchise, I guess.) |
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andramus
Posts: 162 |
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There's something about the article comment system that needs tweaking so that a comment thread is automatically generated when an article is posted rather than having to be manually added later. I clicked on the "Discuss on forum" link at the bottom of the review and ended up creating my own topic that wasn't linked to the review.
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Nordhmmer
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... 70,000 was only the initial sacrifice.
All told Aniz's spell killed over 180,000 of the Kingdom's troops ( and in a way over 6,000 of the Empire's)- I swear one volume mentions 240,000....
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Covnam
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Ainz just wanting to have fun and accidently ruining Jircniv's plans does track lol
I'm glad we got the heads up about the rod so early. Even if we don't know what it does, it doesn't really matter since we now know the real reason she has it. Couldn't help noticing Albedo called Ainz Momonga right at the end there. I wonder if that was just a slip up or reflective of her character sheet being that she is "deeply in love with Momonga". Maybe it's so ingrained that when she truly is expressing her love, she can only refer to him that way? I noticed Leinas missing as well, but yeah, I wouldn't expect her to stick around. If she did leave, I'd be curious to see if we ever see her again. So glad to have Overlord back, so far these episodes have been great =) |
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Random Name
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Thespacemaster
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That is ironic as ln readers still are complaing about scenes being rushed or skipped. That is the real difference between ln and anime watcher as the book really expands more on the people's inner monologues and background info but to anime only this can be slow and repititive. For the most part it aint a big deal it is mostly just shortened scenes, inner dialouge or scenes involving character interaction that is outside of the main cast involvement and has no real plot development so it is not needed. Overall the pace has been consistent so far and animation seems to have take a slight update at least for now. The big worry for ln readers without spoiling anything as based on what was shown in the intro they will do v10 11 and 14 as the 2 books in between will be adapted in the movie so they have no idea how it will work but i think as long they at least reference those events in the season you can just add it later in between when it gets released. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18176 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Yeah, I've heard that before, and based on having read the first two novels and compared them scene-by-scene with the anime version, I feel that the complaints are not entirely meritless but definitely overstated. (Unless this problem gets much worse after the first two novels?) Some people just can't accept that literal translations from novel to animated form aren't possible, especially when it comes to lengthy internal dialogue; So I'm a Spider, So What? was the rare exception in being able to get away with the latter. |
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Nordhmmer
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It's confirmed that Season 4 is adapting volume 14 ( LN adaptations MUST adapt 3 volumes per season or the World will end); The "Worry" would be the skipped character development Ainz goes through. Come volume 14 Ainz orders the NPCs into action,knowing.accepting and approving the results of that order. |
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danpmss
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This is PRECISELY the problem, it gets exponentially worse immediately after the first 2 books, infamously so during the third season. The Overlord book series has a particular meta-narrative that makes its storytelling work so well. The author jumps around chronologically in-between multiple perspectives in such a way that both keep the pacing in check by feeding you information in a particular order while creating a sense of mystery and suspense towards what may happen in the background of anyone not in the PoV being presented at that point in time (usually goes with the villains from Nazarick as the ones in the background, who always orchestrate -accidentally or not- a very amusingly intimidating entrance to anyone unfortunate enough to be on the other end of the narrative by the time the arc is coming to a close). Due to how it's structured, it's almost irresistible not to binge-read a volume, looking out for the answers likely awaiting you in the next PoV, even if just partially so while the story also builds up character traits, story progression, worldbuilding and overall developments. Now, what the anime did instead was to reduce the number of perspectives to a minimum and (tried) giving the viewers a way lighter, simpler and compacted version of the story, in chronologic fashion. Which, per chance, was not too big of a problem for the first two volumes, which had nothing exceptionally complex within their content, it was hurt rather minimally, as the things they skipped could be later expanded upon in other contexts anyway, when such informations came to be relevant again, such as spoiler[the story's dystopian futuristic real world, which is mostly not talked about in the anime/manga unlike in Book 1], as well as Nazarick's structure (unlike books 3 and above, in which several factions and important characters start to get introduced into the story with their very own important PoVs). Starting from volume 3, the way and order the books are presented and deepened through the different PoVs is basically essential for the story to even work as intended, and the anime basically ruined a huge part of several characterizations and plot threads by distilling them inapropriately. If one is to consider, it's from volume 3 that the story starts to fully go into the direction in which we see way less from Nazarick, and more from the world's perspective, which, in sharp contrast to the spoiler[generic characterization of isekai-ed characters' shenanigans from most of the human characters] from aforementioned So I'm a Spider, So What? (which is made so much worse in the anime for similar reason as Overlord's), is the real bread and butter of the character writing in Overlord instead. It succeeds were the other fell short, though they are kinda alike in many regards still. Anyway, for instance, the adaptation of the third book completely skipped a character that is rather important in the books and that will particularly pivotal in a certain upcoming volume likely being adapted in this season, in this case, Albedo's older sister Nigredo (who got mentioned off-handed only now, during the first episode of this season, no proper introduction whatsoever). They also butchered (and skipped) the entire aforementioned back-and-forth suspense and character building for many major characters, making them seem quite flat even long long after their proper introductions (namely Brain, who basically became a bad joke of a coward instead of a competent warrior slowly breaking himself as he faces Shalltear, who was just in a whole other level), and also created plot holes from it. Hell, even Ainz's and Aura's character progression got hurt by the lack of both proper monologuing regarding his relationship with the other Guild Member Peroroncino and Aura's own background in regards to Bukubukuchagama (which is the reason why she considers likewise Shalltear like a sister). Both of which were to become relevant as the character interactions progressed, but alas, we barely got anything more on this sort of exposition from S2 and S3, even when it was relevant again. One particular bad example on how this makes Overlord into a very rushed slowburner is how the storytelling of book 4 (a personal favorite of mine) was handled. Because of how they decided to present it. It was basically a look from the perspective of another civilization within that same world and a lot of minor elements that set up major character developments (such as Cocytus') and plot threads for much later own (though also mostly glossed over in the anime up to season 3). Without those, overall, what you got with Overlord S2 and S3 were BONES, the bare minimum (and even that isn't without it's plot holes because of the omittions), it became boring, unsubstantial and sluggish to watch, DESPITE rushing through 400+ exposition-heavy pages in 5 episodes, that's how bad it was lol Overlord as of Season 1 episode 10 up til the first episode of season IV became one of those One Piece compilation movies for each arc. you lose a lot of substance and they straight cut any sort of relevant information that could come up later, and instead gives you an extremely summed up experience instead, in an order that basically also ruins the surprises of each arc and even some entire books of set up for a prequel book (such as was the case for S3, particularly problematic for volume 8). To have an idea of just how much went wrong with book 8's presentation, I should probably just link this video, instead of writing another wall of text (and maybe this one as well. Unfortunately for what they were going for, most books after the first 2 are surprisingly character focused, which turned heart-wrenching moments of you seeing reasonably well built characters you get fond of, meet their unfortunate demise in the hands of Nazarick (especially volumes 7 and 9). In the anime, none of that emotion is there, you just get pissed for the seemingly heroes now doing atrocities (as they are more or less portrayed in the anime, contrast to how the books present the suspenseful menace that is Nazarick from the start). Watching the adaptation of volume 7 and 9 is nowhere near as emotionally upsetting as it was in the books because of the time properly spent building up for that moment (in the anime I nearly felt nothing much for Gazef, while in the books, his death was so unwanted even by Ainz, that the description of his unhappiness having to kill him is a harsh read on its own). Which is sad, as the content of S3 is some of the best in the entire story, and it ended up being what suffered the most from the production comittee's decisions for the script. Anyway! S4 has taken a lot of great notes from their shortcomings from previous seasons and is following MUCH CLOSER both characterizations and storytelling from the books, with also some clever use of gesticulations and body language to quickly convey the more lenghty inner monologuing describing it all (element absent for everyone in 90% of the adaptation so far), while trying to keep the most important parts of the key dialogues and exposition instead of trying to mesh up a stupid amount of information in a couple of phrases just to get the bones of the story through without much concern to the developments throughout the conversation on itself in each side. But alas. I doubt it will be enough to adapt well the whopping 1535 pages in one single season if they are REALLY going to cram an adaptation of volume 14 (the longest in the entire series, with nearly 600 pages of length) as well, specially considering that that's far more content than any season before, all of which very rushed. Last edited by danpmss on Sun Jul 24, 2022 8:32 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18176 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Speaking strictly from an (at that point in the story) anime-only perspective, I have to disagree with you here. I felt the anime version was effective at emotional impact in those parts and did establish the characters (or at least certain ones) well enough to have that impact. As for the rest of your comments (which I did read in full), a lot of those are common kinds of complaints I see about adaptations in general, not just this one. However, again, I have to ask: what would the anime version have looked like if it did animate everything you said got skipped or overly condensed, including all those inner monologues? As revealing as they can be about characters, extensive inner monologues typically don't work well in live-action or animated form. I've seen series (not just anime) which have tried this in the name of completeness and accuracy, and they bog down badly. I think that would have happened here. The best anime adaptations find work-arounds for this, such as by adding characters or adjusting conversations so that the inner monologues are bounced off of others; The Twelve Kingdoms is an example of a (coincidentally) isekai title which did this beautifully. In other cases, the monologues are just trimmed or conveyed in other ways; I've been listening to the Saga of Tanya the Evil novels on audio book during summer travels, and I kowtow to the anime staff for trimming them and condensing content, as the original author's writing is, frankly, tedious and repetitive. (Thankfully, "storytelling" and "effective characterization" are not synonymous with "writing quality.") Another series to track this season on this issue is DanMachi IV. The franchise has generally done a good job so far of adapting the inner monologues when they're critical and skipping them when they're not, but there are a couple of tricky cases on that coming up in this season's content involving characters who don't normally get POV treatment in the main story. The anime version actually might not skip them, since those monologues play into the story's overall dramatic effect at certain points, but we'll see. Overall, what matters most with anime adaptations is not how perfectly the anime represents the source material, but whether or not they represent the source material well enough that anime-only viewers aren't confused. Despite some quibbles over details the anime version has glossed over, DanMachi has done a strong job with this overall, while the recent 86 adaptation is an example of handling this to perfection. This one gets a "well enough so far" from me, but we'll see how the season plays out and whether or not bigger gaps start to show up. |
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danpmss
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Ah, I'm not sure if I made myself clear enough there, but what I meant is that I felt nothing much compared to the books' own take. Not that they were deprived of any emotional impact. It's there, but it's nowhere near as effective, in my opinion.
I mean, it's generally something adaptations of light novel/visual novel sources don't exactly excels in dealing with when adapting to a new medium, particularly problematic in the case of stories like Overlord, which are all about the things getting skimmed through (they would work better as long-running anime, the multiple PoV mystery surrounding a villain figure that pops up every once in a while unexpectedly to the suspenseful surprise of the audience just waiting for it is more of a structure reminiscing of something like Urasawa's Monster than your average isekai). See how that would turn out if they just did it all chronologically and just mixing up the more relevant info and condensing/omitting characters to a bare minimum for the story to at least still have sense, and you have yourself just as much of a unsubstantial, slow and rushed product altogether. This tactic you mention MAY work with certain series, but not with ones that rely as much in the things they skipped as Overlord, to build up effectively.
While I agree is something that works fine in Twelve Kingdoms, I definitely disagree to some extent about Tanya. For starters, the writing is great despite its infamous complexity (even for Japanese readers), so I assume you are referring to the localization in English (the repetitive nature of a "re-confirmation language" such as the Japanese sounds, no pun intended, naturally repetitive to anyone outside Japan to read, which is why it comes to translators to localize that part accurately in whichever language they are going for). Some authors such as Haruki Murakami write with foreign translations in mind, within his writing style, for a cool trivia. I'm a translator myself, and I haven't seen anything particularly repetitive/tedious in Carlo's writing, personally, so my guess it's that due to the complexity of the text and very possibly their schedule in Yen Press, the translator relied on being hyperliteral with the syntax, perhaps. I do agree about its approach making it work, as an alternative adaptation anyway (because that's what it is, a completely different animal from the novels, even if with a slightly different storyline at worst, from a plot standpoint). It's kinda like Higurashi and Steins;Gate from their visual novel counterparts, it shift genres while more or less maintaining the basics and working around other strong points instead. Higurashi was a metafictional mystery, the anime cuts that all down and fully focus on it as a Psychological Horror Thriller instead. Some things make no sense because of it, but it just works, with just enough essential information is in there to make it a Kudzu Plot (no need to completely address everything that happened, just the bigger mystery of the story at hand), with the addition of the extra arc. Steins;Gate was a hard sci-fi thriller, except the anime skipped almost all of the actual science in the plot (contributed to a few plot holes), also focusing more on it being a soft sci-fi psychological thriller. It nearly adapted almost everything essential really well, except for everything that made it make sense, as they skipped hours of infodumps (an entire chapter of Kurisu doing science in Okabe's university at the start). Back to Tanya, in here they turned a book essentially written with a lot of military tactics in mind for each move any faction makes, to just skimming through those and getting to the action as quick as possible (Political/War Thriller to an Action series that situates itself around those settings). As an alternative adaptation, it went from being focused on that to being focused on the combat and character conflicts on themselves (which luckily, in this case, heavily relies on Tanya's perspective, which is the main focus for almost the entire ride, which makes it doable in one way or another). They are not perfect adaptations by any means, but they work around well enough to be a good product all things considered, although very different from the original. I would call them regardless good "bad adaptations" at the very least. Bad adaptations don't really mean that they are bad products, just that they aren't adapting well what the source material is known for. See for example The Shining, one of the top tier horror movies of all time. Terrible adaptation of the book for the most part, as an alternative take on the source material it works great (and the plot goes very different in that one, even). Now, one could argue that per definition of the word, if an adaptation is a good product, it's therefore a good adaptation in one way or another, and that's a fine take too. I would personally prefer to consider them a good interpretation/reinterpretation in a separate medium, whether that may be a different story (the latter), or an alternative take on the same content altogether (which is the case of the first three). Now, why these equally exposition-heavy series worked, while Overlord didn't? Well, the things Overlord skips ARE what makes any of its stronger points work, to begin with. The non-Nazarick perspective and how it presents itself with its narrative back-and-forth with the Nazarick PoVs are literally what makes the series so focused and rich in characterization and world building as it is. I can't think of a better comparison than to One Piece's arc compilation specials, because it's just too accurate, especially in an overview of what would mean if we only got that for an adaptation of it. It just works differently, and taking that away is far more harmful than doing the same in most light novel adaptations I've seen around. And considering several of them try to be more of an eye-candy ad to buy the books and adapting as much as 5 books in 12 episodes (Madan no Ou to Vanadis), I wouldn't say many of those are too interested in being proper adaptations in the first place. In Overlord's case, at times the number of pages is not different from 5+ books in other light novel series. Well, they want to keep packing as much content per season in order to adapt the whole series too, so I guess the problem starts much earlier when it comes to light novel adaptations. Out of the few incredibly competent ones that comes to mind (many of which were also executed in a similar structure to Overlord's), some even adapted one single book in a cour (11-12 episodes) as of recently and as of old, such as 86, Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu (including the remake), Tatami Galaxy and Rokka no Yuusha. All of which with no particularly noticeable problems in their pacing, they were all engaging slow burners, even fast paced in many regards, due to how much significant monologuing some had to cram in (Tatami Galaxy). Other notable examples adapted multiple novels in a cour, but included in one way or another every single important detail, even if in the split of a second (Monogatari Series). What I'm really trying to say here is that (to quote you one last time), particularly in regard to this sort of exposition-heavy light novel series:
You should watch any of the examples I just mentioned in which this works just fine, if done right, and it's not at all impossible (even maintaining almost all of their wordy glory), and definitely not because they "can't do it in a way that works". It's more of a deliberate choice of the production comittee for the most part to adapt the way they usually do, mostly for source material advertising, from what I could tell in these past 2 decades. More like "they don't want to, unless it's a specific property", and that property happens not to be a vast majority of the light novel adaptations in recent memory including Overlord. This is a problem that I see that is slowly becoming less exclusive, as streaming services are basically helping to fund/finance projects on their own now (not limited to light novel adaptations, I mean, manga as well are getting less compressed seasonal adaptations as time goes on). Even series that long ended and had nearly zero chance of a comeback back when BD-DVD-Source sales were what decided things are getting new seasons (Maou-sama comes to mind), hooray!
Can't really opine on that one, haven't watched it nor read it, my bad.
This is something I both agree with my own grain of salt, as said above, but also draw a line on just how much it works in their anime-only standalone perspective. In the case of Overlord, the big picture was definitely damaged and nor nearly as well executed because of how the adaptation was handled, and it didn't quite stand well on its own, since plot holes and contrievances were created from it, too. I cannot see it as a competent adaptation that does it job well enough from books 3-9. To "adapt and represent well enough in other medium not to be confusing" is the bare minimum, and not something I would consider necessarily good. Average at worst, or usually just okay. If it can't manage to at least be consistent with that bare minimum, it's done poorly, and it's no longer average. Overlord S1 ep10 up to the end of S3 is here despite that, however (it still is a mediocre, poorly executed adaptation, but not a bad one, since it it's not as damaged in consistency as much as it's damaged in substance). For a good one you need to properly present the most important elements of the given work in the new medium (without losing substance, even if it's cut short) and use its strengths to represent elements that would otherwise not translate as well (Overly descriptive passages about how someone is feeling on the inside within the narrative? Can do it justice by properly visually representing that same description in one way or another, without necessarily repeating it word by word unless strictly necessary). Overlord IV is right here at the moment. To a lesser extent Overlord S1 ep1-9 are also here. For a great one, you need all that, but also sometimes improving upon the source material in several regards only the medium can handle the same way, you should use those advantages to further explore, with audio-visual elements, things that cannot be as well put into words, whatever them may be. This is probably the spot I will give to series like the Monogatari Series and 86 which definitely improved upon their source material in their adapted medium in many circumstances, while trimming the fat and getting everything important in. And all in all, yeah, I don't believe in perfect adaptations either, because by definition of the word you are losing and adding new elements converting the story you are dealing with when bringing it to a new medium. Last edited by danpmss on Mon Jul 25, 2022 8:37 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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I agree with Key on Tanya. I love the anime and the movie. Sadly the novels are a slog, but I am still reading them for more world building.
As for Overlord, I loved season 1 and somewhat season 2. But season 3 seemed to have something missing. I wonder if the cause is what danpmss is saying. Just a poor adaptation of the material. The Overlord novels are not short things like regular light novels. If you try to cram too much, you have to cut so much out. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18176 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Some of it is that, yes (and your description here explains why I've also seen this in some other light novels, especially DanMachi), but I'm more referring to Zen's irritating habit of restating things brought up a couple of pages earlier in slightly different ways. It gives the impression that he isn't bothering to check and see if he's already mentioned something before bringing it up again. Maybe this is just something more apparent in audio book form than read form?
Yeah, I think labeling is confusing some things here. So for future reference, let's use "good/bad interpretation" when talking about whether or not it works in another medium (regardless of how accurate it is to the source material) and "good/bad adaptation" for how close it sticks to the source material. I find Overlord to be a reasonable interpretation so far, while you're insisting that it's a bad adaptation. The two definitely aren't mutually exclusive. |
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danpmss
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Ah, in that case, I can agree that he does go back a number of times to previously stated information to reinforce what is to follow from there. It's a thing ever-present in any books with similar critical thinking at display, and I surely bet it slows down the experience considerably being heard from an audio book (Normally reading these, you can just assert those informations from before like "oh right, that thing from a while back" and it clicks to you as more of a reminder. In audio book format you probably must feel like "I knooooow, just get this phrase over with, I've got it already!") haha
Sounds like a plan!
Indeed, they are not. My problem with it is that it directly makes it a subpar interpretation in my eyes as well, since what is taken away and was is added to the new medium just loses way too much substance, while not really adding anything noteworthy to back up its other strengths (as alas, those do rely a lot on what I've detailed better above). Again, I wouldn't say it's necessarily a bad adaptation since it's for the most part consistent enough, at the very least, but it unfortunately becomes mediocre due to how unsubstantial it becomes, even in terms of storytelling. So in the end, subpar interpretation with a mediocre adaptation, makes for a sad cake of wasted potential in my personal overview. Well, it seems like they finally found a way to to this some more justice now in S4 (they are improving a lot on those shortcomings with a respectable pacing), so I'll keep myself hopeful for the best. |
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