(L+CR) Overlord Season 3

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

This is why you shouldn't get hyped up for Overlord anime. At least as long as this same team is responsible for it. I don't read the novels, but I can see that the anime always has this clunky execution, be it in storytelling or animation department or both, in all seasons. I gave Season 1 a pass because I thought they worked on a one-off season with very limited resources, but for S2 & S3 to not improve after S1 is just... disappointing. It's a shame for a story this interesting to be squandered like this.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the team who made SAO will probably do a better job adapting Overlord's story than what we have now.

[GreyZone]

The problem with the Dark Young and the SPLAT scene is that they are quite abstract. I only became a LN reader when vol. 10 and 11 were already available, so vol. 9 didn't have too much of a lasting impression on me. But thinking back the whole scene seemed so fantastic because it only showed the results and not the actions, other than the trampling on soldiers.

The process isn't really explained. You get SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT in the LN, but what does it mean exactly? Trampling the enemies? Doesn't seem so special, just gory. But in our heads all sorts of "additional ideas" popped up due to the fact that we are dealing with eldritch abominations here, so people imagine over-the-top additions into the scene to reconcile the description of the LN with what one personally expects from such sanity-destroying beings.

So... how do you translate that into anime? You cannot. You will always leave someone unsatisfied because you didn't chose THEIR interpretation. That's why I think that even without CGI, even if the gore was shown properly, these hallucinations of additions that only existed in one's own head, even if you threw all the money of the world into it, even if you had all the time of the world, unless you make multiple different versions of the same scene to please everyone, you would not be able to make the scene live up to the hype: Simply because it's impossible for the medium.

[Master_Yoma]

Well that was a one sided massacre and some 5 mouths goat thingy

[Yan3242]

Total kill would be over 300 thousand i think considering the initial death is 70 thousand despite its only shown as small group of soldier. Basically they just scale it down because budget, which iam not surprise since this is just another week to week anime series, not somekind of the big 3 anime.

Execution wise however yeah its really tame, compare to previous episode say 7-9, even previous season you can see their horror, sense of total despair and defeat, but this one?

It didnt feel like "a nightmare of total chaos has arrived" feeling which i read the novel where it seems like that. Here people just afraid thats it, the general didnt scared as much as i though, climb just act normally, even brain still crack a laugh or two, the king is not even afraid one bit. the people on empire even express their fear better than their opponent.

Climb and brain didnt even get surprised face when they see ainz? Like.... at least ask gazef his friend is undead or maybe some shock expression anything like that. Brain saw shaltear and was afraid like hell, but a menacing undead supreme with horror monster and he just... nothing?

The story progress as it should be but the presentation this episode is probably the worse i ever see in overlord series. Seems like anime company always have trouble when reenacting large scale war or something.

On the other hand, i know in the novel it say that the monster has goat like voice or something, but iam not expecting a genuine goat voice at least change the scream a little... monster like maybe?

[Sixth]

In my eyes, JC Staff is a bad anime studio so when they got One Punch Man S2, and not "Sasuga Madhouse", I was rather furious at that time.

But now, I am not so sure anymore after this Overlord episode.

So I guess the LN readers who keep hyping the SPLATpisode for anime watchers must be damn disappointed now.

[Anh_Minh]

Originally Posted by Yan3242

Total kill would be over 300 thousand i think considering the initial death is 70 thousand despite its only shown as small group of soldier. Basically they just scale it down because budget, which iam not surprise since this is just another week to week anime series, not somekind of the big 3 anime.

There were only 240000 Kingdom soldiers to kill. And some survived.

Plus a few thousand dead from the Empire who trampled each other when they fled.

Climb and brain didnt even get surprised face when they see ainz? Like.... at least ask gazef his friend is undead or maybe some shock expression anything like that. Brain saw shaltear and was afraid like hell, but a menacing undead supreme with horror monster and he just... nothing?

They're already resigned to death, I guess.

[DemonneoPT]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

So... how do you translate that into anime? You cannot. You will always leave someone unsatisfied because you didn't chose THEIR interpretation. That's why I think that even without CGI, even if the gore was shown properly, these hallucinations of additions that only existed in one's own head, even if you threw all the money of the world into it, even if you had all the time of the world, unless you make multiple different versions of the same scene to please everyone, you would not be able to make the scene live up to the hype: Simply because it's impossible for the medium.

Yes you can. By actually showing something. It's not even a case of bad CGI ruining the scene but the actual absence of the scene itself. Just like the previous episode with the goblins we didn't see the soldiers getting rekt. It was just implied. There's no need to show the killing of 300k people, but show us some moments where that is happening. Show me them getting squashed like bugs, show me all the horror reactions of the soldiers and the main guys like Brain when they are in the presence of a god, show me Dark Young going full Kraken with it's tentacles on the soldiers, show me an actual war massacre scene that actually looks like it. Sure, limited budget and crappy CGI will definitely not please everyone and not reflecting what the SPLAT could look like, but at least show something. Season 1 did this with the Deadknight and against the Slane Theocracy. The animation and overall direction was garbage tier there but we got the action animated at least with aceptable levels of censorship. Episode 11 and 12 from this season? One of the biggest embarrassments i ever saw in the anime industry only surpassed by the new Berserk anime. And we are not talking about some random obscure LN title wich only purpose is to provide ecchi to be soon forgotten. Both Overlord and Berserk sell like crazy and have longevity. Berserk is already a classic within the genre. And they can't even make a proper animation when both the content and the audience are there. Trully disappointing the current state of this industry.

This is like seeing a romantic anime without actually seeing any kiss. What's the point then?

[Yan3242]

All they need to do is just make the same horror and desperate feel from early episode of attack of titan, when budget is limited the best way to do so is expression, emotion, but there is barely anything like that in this week episode which is a shame

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by DemonneoPT

Yes you can. By actually showing something. It's not even a case of bad CGI ruining the scene but the actual absence of the scene itself. Just like the previous episode with the goblins we didn't see the soldiers getting rekt. It was just implied. There's no need to show the killing of 300k people, but show us some moments where that is happening. Show me them getting squashed like bugs, show me all the horror reactions of the soldiers and the main guys like Brain when they are in the presence of a god, show me Dark Young going full Kraken with it's tentacles on the soldiers, show me an actual war massacre scene that actually looks like it. Sure, limited budget and crappy CGI will definitely not please everyone and not reflecting what the SPLAT could look like, but at least show something. Season 1 did this with the Deadknight and against the Slane Theocracy. The animation and overall direction was garbage tier there but we got the action animated at least with aceptable levels of censorship. Episode 11 and 12 from this season? One of the biggest embarrassments i ever saw in the anime industry only surpassed by the new Berserk anime. And we are not talking about some random obscure LN title wich only purpose is to provide ecchi to be soon forgotten. Both Overlord and Berserk sell like crazy and have longevity. Berserk is already a classic within the genre. And they can't even make a proper animation when both the content and the audience are there. Trully disappointing the current state of this industry.

This is like seeing a romantic anime without actually seeing any kiss. What's the point then?

If I remember correctly, even AoT and Youjo Senki never showed a literal bloody battlefied. Anything bloody in AoT was always focused on individuals and in Youjo Senki as well. When a whole army dies? Viola, prettied up by a giant explosion.

It's probably a Japanese thing not to show bloodied masses of corpses, as I said previously.

So taking this into account, if you take the "flying body parts" aside, the anime properly followed the description of the LN for the scene. It's just that "SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT", isn't a description but an abstract way of encouraging the readers' imagination of what could cause this kind of brutality. Since everyone would imagine something different, it's not possible to adaptate to everyone's liking. As simple as that.

The CGI itself, is course another issue. I am ONLY talking about the question of "can the LN readers' (and those spoilt by them) expectations be met by this scene when animated". And the answer is no, no matter how good you make it look.


I don't know whether you watched it or not, but I remember how VN readers still complained when the fate/stay night: unlimited blade works final battle was animated, despite the animation looking really great. The VN readers were drunken by the atmosphere of the original work and thought of it as super epic, despite it essentially being nothing but a process of two people hitting each others' and their telepathically controlled weapons to clash into each other, which causes them to break. Yet in the readers' minds this scene was somehow beautified to an absurd extent, but for each reader in a different way. The anime tried to make the scene over-the-top to account for that, but it didn't seem to satisfy a lot of VN readers. I think that was similar to what we saw happen here in Overlord. Of course, the CGI issues come ON TOP OF THAT in the case of Overlord, making it difficult to split hairs.




I am starting to wonder if Crunchyroll delayed on purpose, to get RAW watchers to lower expectations so that some anime-onlys would have the reaction of "hey, they said it's the worst possible anime episode that was produced, ever, but it was actually quite good aside from the clunky soliders!"

And it happened exactly like that. The disappointment is still widespread, but some people got their expectations lowered "just in time" to make them not dislike the episode. If that was truly what Crunchyroll intended, then I cannot help but compliment their business sense. But I don't think the people of Crunchyroll would be capable of that, so it's probably a case of "Sasuga, Crunchyroll!"

[Mr. DJ]

Unless it's too damn obvious for the next episode...RIP Gazef ;-;

[DemonneoPT]

@GreyZone

But AoT and Youjo Senki actually portrayed all the despair and bloody gore that comes with the war. The censorship is used in a clever and acceptable way. But of course having no censorship at all would be ideal tho. Like i said, there's no need to animate 300k toons getting rekt. You can show some moments where some of them are getting squashed or thrown away by Dark Young. Sure, like you said, there will always be disappointed people regarding how certain moments are portrayed compared to the original source even when animation is on point. But the problem with the last two episodes of Overlord, is that they did not even actual show the moment everyone was waiting to see. SPLAT, means people are getting squashed like bugs and getting riped apart while tears and shock are stamped on everyone's face. A true massacre resulting from the most unbalanced match ever. If you can show the Deadknight cutting a soldier in half or Shaltear tearing limbs apart in season 1, then there's no excuse as to why we can't see something like that in season 3. Seeing black monsters with normal goat sounds doing nothing in the battlefied besides walking like retards due to terrible CGI is not fun, has no horror and desperate feel associated to it and therefore has no impact at all. It's like the most uninspired and boring close combat ever made in a kung fu movie. Then, what's the point of seeing such movies to begin with?
In the same way, having different goblin classes and not show what they can do against human soldiers by only displaying 3 seconds of their abilities and implying they won the battle just because is bad no matter how you look at it. Same with Dark Young.

The japanese are hypocrites. Everyone knows that. They are ok with pedo softporn being displayed on TV but bloody violence is a no no. Still, censorship is constantly used in funny ways allowing for certain moments to get a pass. AoT is the perfect example. Madhouse is just lazy. They can't even animate two lone soldiers clapping without CGI. The last two Overlord episodes portrays everything one should not do while working in the industry. And then they complain the Blue Rays do not sell I wonder why....

[Tormenk]

lol even Enri's suprise goblin army made more of an impact than some walking tentacled mouths.

Well I'm not disappointed given Overlord has a weird rule to make sure anything over a certain size becomes CG. Maybe some good fighting will come next episode ala Shalltear vs Ainz or Jaldaboth vs Momon?

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by DemonneoPT

@GreyZone

But AoT and Youjo Senki actually portrayed all the despair and bloody gore that comes with the war. The censorship is used in a clever and acceptable way. But of course having no censorship at all would be ideal tho. Like i said, there's no need to animate 300k toons getting rekt. You can show some moments where some of them are getting squashed or thrown away by Dark Young. Sure, like you said, there will always be disappointed people regarding how certain moments are portrayed compared to the original source even when animation is on point. But the problem with the last two episodes of Overlord, is that they did not even actual show the moment everyone was waiting to see. SPLAT, means people are getting squashed like bugs and getting riped apart while tears and shock are stamped on everyone's face. A true massacre resulting from the most unbalanced match ever. If you can show the Deadknight cutting a soldier in half or Shaltear tearing limbs apart in season 1, then there's no excuse as to why we can't see something like that in season 3. Seeing black monsters with normal goat sounds doing nothing in the battlefied besides walking like retards due to terrible CGI is not fun, has no horror and desperate feel associated to it and therefore has no impact at all. It's like the most uninspired and boring close combat ever made in a kung fu movie. Then, what's the point of seeing such movies to begin with?
In the same way, having different goblin classes and not show what they can do against human soldiers by only displaying 3 seconds of their abilities and implying they won the battle just because is bad no matter how you look at it. Same with Dark Young.

The japanese are hypocrites. Everyone knows that. They are ok with pedo softporn being displayed on TV but bloody violence is a no no. Still, censorship is constantly used in funny ways allowing for certain moments to get a pass. AoT is the perfect example. Madhouse is just lazy. They can't even animate two lone soldiers clapping without CGI. The last two Overlord episodes portrays everything one should not do while working in the industry. And then they complain the Blue Rays do not sell I wonder why....

That's the thing. The way you "interpreted" SPLAT was in your own imagination. That's the reason why it worked so well in the LN. You could imagine it the way that perfectly fits your preferences. That kind of vagueness, after getting hyped up with the build up of what Ainz is telling to the empire people, strongly enhances ones imagination and it makes the scene much better than a detailed description would. But that's also a big problem for far into the future - when a visual adaptation is made.

I remember a LOT of people complaining about the Lord of the Rings movies simply for the characters not looking as they imagined them... something that obviously would happen considering that everyone imagined them differently when reading the books. But even such a simple thing can rile people up.

Earlier I also mentioned the case of the f/sn:UBW adaptation, which was similar in that regard, because in the final fight of the original source material, the description by itself would make the fight actually be extremely simple and boring, but due to the hype music and the build-up beforehand, people just imagined stuff into the VN scene that didn't exist, a mental correction effect, so to say.

The scene was then beautifully animated and anime-onlys loved it, but for some reason many of the source material readers still complained how it's still totally beneath the VN edition, even though objectively speaking the VN scene wasn't actually that great, it was just executed in a way that tricked the audience's minds into beautifying it by themselves.

The same thing happened in the Overlord LN. I only realized now after re-reading the scene. It's not actually THAT great if you suppress the nostalgic feelings of reading it the first time.

I'd guess the reason why I as a LN reader am more favorable to this episode compared to other LN readers is a combination of multiple factors.
The first being that I am used to much worse CGI due to Kingdom's first season. I survived that, so this Overlord episode is nothing to me.
Secondly I read the LN when the volumes up to vol. 11 were already available, so I never had that experience of finishing vol. 9 and then having to wait for the next ones, so it probably left less of an impression on me than on others.
Thirdly I have seen too many instances of people unneccessarily overhyping stuff that it seems very obvious to me that the adaptation probably won't meet that "demand" and that people will hate it for it, so my expectations were lowered from the start compared to others whose overwhelming hype deflated.




That aside, I don't think Madhouse was lazy here. I remember that before season 2 even started that even just starting the season 2 project itself was appearently very, very difficult and that Madhouse is taking risks in attempting it. So I can imagine due to the high risk factor and probably not too great expectations for returns, that the budget was kept low. And seeing how the CGI use gradually increased, it seems to me like there were also time-constraints involved, like the staff not finishing the stuff in time and therefore more content being generated with CGI. Should have probably taken a two-cour break instead of a single one.
In other words, it seems more like Madhouse ran out of both money and time near the end, and this is the result of that. I think it's more on the business people rather than the animators.

[DemonneoPT]

Originally Posted by GreyZone

That's the thing. The way you "interpreted" SPLAT was in your own imagination. That's the reason why it worked so well in the LN. You could imagine it the way that perfectly fits your preferences. That kind of vagueness, after getting hyped up with the build up of what Ainz is telling to the empire people, strongly enhances ones imagination and it makes the scene much better than a detailed description would. But that's also a big problem for far into the future - when a visual adaptation is made.

But that's implied no? The point of summoning giant tentacle monsters is to slaughter people. It was implied the human army was defeated by Dark Young. My problem is with the fact you can't actually see it. There's no interpretation there. Everyone knows what happened. The only thing you could imagine different is some more creative shots regarding the slaughtering. That is more of a matter of taste and gore level. And of course, the quality of the animation but i'm not even go there. That's already nitpicking as done by your Fate fans example. How uncool, uninspiring and boring a director must be to actually think showing no action at all, poor horror displays by the surrounding people and having a black thing with a retard walking animation (the thing literally only walked...) is a nice interpretation of the SPLAT. I doubt any anime-only could find this interesting as an action moment mixed with overwhelming terror felt by the soldiers. Because it's bad even if i did not read the Youjo Senki x Overlord chapter. It's especially true when i'm not even good at imaging the stuff i read, so i practically went blind for this episode. And i definitely did not read anything related to the Goblin army and i was also overly disappointed by it, because it had an horrible execution and pace.

Thirdly I have seen too many instances of people unneccessarily overhyping stuff that it seems very obvious to me that the adaptation probably won't meet that "demand" and that people will hate it for it, so my expectations were lowered from the start compared to others whose overwhelming hype deflated.

I was not hyped at all. Especially after the goblin episode. I even predicted the animation would be horrendous. But i never expected that level of mediocrity. Literaly, we did not see the actual slaughtering. It's like the Deadknight being unleashed in season 1 and only showing the guy walking and puff, soldiers would appear dead in the next slide. How can one be happy about this?

That aside, I don't think Madhouse was lazy here. I remember that before season 2 even started that even just starting the season 2 project itself was appearently very, very difficult and that Madhouse is taking risks in attempting it. So I can imagine due to the high risk factor and probably not too great expectations for returns, that the budget was kept low. And seeing how the CGI use gradually increased, it seems to me like there were also time-constraints involved, like the staff not finishing the stuff in time and therefore more content being generated with CGI. Should have probably taken a two-cour break instead of a single one.
In other words, it seems more like Madhouse ran out of both money and time near the end, and this is the result of that. I think it's more on the business people rather than the animators.

And that's exactly my problem with the anime industry and why Japan is losing potential profit by not being updated to current times. How can such popular title that sells like crazy not be profitable in anime form? Overlord is far from being the only example in this stituation. Change the business model already

[frodonk]

I'm just happy that we got these 2 seasons after the first one, I'll never forget the very last frame of s2e01!

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by DemonneoPT

And that's exactly my problem with the anime industry and why Japan is losing potential profit by not being updated to current times. How can such popular title that sells like crazy not be profitable in anime form? Overlord is far from being the only example in this stituation. Change the business model already

You are asking the impossible and the fact you believe that "change the business model" really shows that you are mistaken in that regard.

The industry needs reforms on its fundamental level to change the work environment for the animators, but also every person involved in anime production on the practical level.
It is exactly because the industry is flourishing on a rapid pace that it is struggling on the production side because there are not enough animators (and the veterans are on decline for obvious reasons, which is why most mecha shows have to resort to CGI since mecha specialized animators are beyond rare now). And this is obviously a major deterrent for new talents to show up since that career is extremely precarious.

So long the production committees don't provide enough budget due to how profits are stable even if the product is half baked, then it won't go anywhere. And yeah, budget doesn't just mean money but also timeframe where the production of an anime can drastically change depending if they have 2 years or just half a year of (pre)production.

[BWTraveller]

Personally, I hate to view it as "they just wanted to make an ad". As I've said before, an animation company will rarely get any profit form an "ad". More like they're given only so much money to cover so much material in so many episodes, and if the resources they're provided aren't enough to do something brilliant, they try to do what they can to make as much as they can or at least minimize loss and hope the publishers' profits will encourage others to seek them out. If they believed they could make something brilliant with what they were given, they would have obviously, as that's what puts money in their own pockets: getting people to like their adaptation enough to buy it. It also does a better job of attracting publishers who're willing to fund proper shows as the really awesome shows will garner more attention for the whole franchise. The problem is convincing publishers that they'll get more overall profit if they give sufficient resources for the animation side to produce the best possible results. But this requires a larger investment and if they don't believe they'll get a sufficient boost in sales they won't invest that much. What needs to be done if one wants to change this is that either the fanbase needs to adjust their buying habits or someone needs to provide proper evidence to publishers that they will in many cases get a better return on investment from a well-done series that gets people excited about the story than from a mediocre piece of trash that only serves to let people know this story exists and hopefully questions you have will be answered if you buy the book. Just like we'd need people to buy differently if we wanted to convince publishers that their best sales boost will come with a guarantee of continuation and completion of the adaptation. As long as their charts say bits and pieces with insufficient resources is enough, they'll continue to fund short thirteen-episode summaries that leave everyone unsatisfied. It's all about the bottom line.

[DemonneoPT]

@Klashikari

I'm just asking for a change because it's obvious that anime has no future if they keep producing underpaid shit just to sell LNs in Japan. Anime is becoming very popular in the west but basing the continuity of it's popular series on outdated blue ray sells and other merchandising is frustrating to say at least. Even more frustrating is when a title is insanely popular and sell like hot cakes in every department and we still do not get any new seasons. What is the point in following a story and investing our money on it if we never see it's ending? They should start considering stream platforms for more stable incoming and higher anime quality. Or come up with something else because such high in-demand medium to have poorly paid animation teams and struglling for profit is beyond insanity.

[Klashikari]

You are NOT the intended audience. People still think oversea market is a "boon" for the anime industry, while it has barely any effect. We already got enough comments of the animators that new actors in the industry such as netflix don't change the business model AT ALL. The whole point stands there: anime are more often than not used as a fancy bait for potential new customers for the original material, and the domestic market is the primary demographic they are targeting for good reasons.

The fact they keep doing such practices prove it IS profitable, to the point they can just do that ad nauseam, even if there are other series exploring the same stuff (the obvious surge of isekai LN/WN adaptations speak volume of that).
So no, you got it completely backwards. Anime series like that are not meant for foreigners in mind at all. The fact you spend money on crunchy roll etc doesn't mean anything to them aside of "extra".

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by BWTraveller

Personally, I hate to view it as "they just wanted to make an ad". As I've said before, an animation company will rarely get any profit form an "ad". More like they're given only so much money to cover so much material in so many episodes, and if the resources they're provided aren't enough to do something brilliant, they try to do what they can to make as much as they can or at least minimize loss and hope the publishers' profits will encourage others to seek them out. If they believed they could make something brilliant with what they were given, they would have obviously, as that's what puts money in their own pockets: getting people to like their adaptation enough to buy it. It also does a better job of attracting publishers who're willing to fund proper shows as the really awesome shows will garner more attention for the whole franchise. The problem is convincing publishers that they'll get more overall profit if they give sufficient resources for the animation side to produce the best possible results. But this requires a larger investment and if they don't believe they'll get a sufficient boost in sales they won't invest that much. What needs to be done if one wants to change this is that either the fanbase needs to adjust their buying habits or someone needs to provide proper evidence to publishers that they will in many cases get a better return on investment from a well-done series that gets people excited about the story than from a mediocre piece of trash that only serves to let people know this story exists and hopefully questions you have will be answered if you buy the book. Just like we'd need people to buy differently if we wanted to convince publishers that their best sales boost will come with a guarantee of continuation and completion of the adaptation. As long as their charts say bits and pieces with insufficient resources is enough, they'll continue to fund short thirteen-episode summaries that leave everyone unsatisfied. It's all about the bottom line.

The anime "being just an ad" DOES work though. In the recent weeks the Overlord franchise sales for LNs (i.e. all volumes of the entire franchise) had been in the top 3 consistently, mostly at first place.