Overlord S01E12 Review: PvE

Overlord, Season 1, Episode 12: The Bloody Valkyrie

Definitely a bit of an interesting episode, and that Ainz doesn't just come into the battle raining fire and death, but he arrives and sends the elf twins with a couple of world items to scout out the perimeter and make sure they're not disturbed by whoever is controlling Shalltear. Meanwhile, instead of being decked out in his normal Overlord garb with the huge shoulder bone-horn things, Ainz shows up in nothing but a simple robe, and begins to probe just what Shalltear's mind control responds to. He also notes to himself that he has another reason than all the badass ones he told Albedo in the previous episode -- he doesn't want to see the Guardians fight each other.

We also get to see the other Floor Guardians witnessing the battle. Demiurge is nothing but livid that Ainz went into battle personally, and without support, whereas Albedo is completely confident in Ainz after the badass speech last episode. Demiurge is having none of this, but he is stopped by Cocytus, who is fanatical to a fault. Cocytus also notes that Ainz only has a 3:7 chance of winning, It's definitely an interesting dynamic, for sure, and while it's clear that this season's reducing Demiurge, Albedo and Cocytus into mostly just observing from the background, they're still being developed and fleshed out.

Ainz then casts a buff spell on himself to attempt to see if it triggers Shalltear's attack, and when it doesn't...  he spends nearly a full minute just buffing himself and reciting a full list of buff spells. Yep, just like a video game or a D&D campaign, but exaggerated. Glorious. And then Ainz activates what seems to be a watch with Bukubuku's voice, puts some sticks with words on his belt, and then casts a mighty magic spell, "Fallen Down", to attack Shalltear.

And as the opening has spoiled me, Shalltear transforms into a fully-armoured 'bloody valkyrie', and while she is sentient and able to talk,  the mind control fills her with the compulsion to attack whoever attacks her, so it's an interesting bit of Shalltear bring in full mind control without someone actually puppeteer-ing her every move. She charges in towards Ainz, and gets knocked back by a set of exploding mines. Ainz taunts her,  and notes that he has littered the location with many such mines, causing Shalltear to focus on ranged attacks -- it's a bluff, though,  because for a caster like Ainz, MP is pretty important, and Ainz doesn't actually want to waste it on traps. We also get the info-dump that Shalltear was created to be a pretty min-maxed character in a dungeon, and is equipped with a 'spuit lance' which heals her every time she hits someone with it.

And then we get a whole lot of pretty damn cool magic spells, which is honestly worth the price of admission for me. We've got huge gravity malestroms, gigantic swarms of rib bones bursting out of the ground, reality slashes, bone lances, and lots of fancy spells with fancy names being thrown around. One of the more hilarious spells is "SHARK CYCLONE", which is a cyclone. With sharks in it. Ha!

Interestingly, Shalltear is apparently able to use holy spells, unleashing holy magic upon Ainz,  which, while he appears to resist with resistance-granting magic items... but fire hurts him? Eh. Shalltear also shows off a bunch of special skills that Peroroncino apparently hid within her, and I genuinely don't buy that Momonga/Ainz doesn't know about it. We then have Shalltear using a skill called Einherjar,  some sort of light copy, while the real Shalltear summons a bunch of shadow rats and begins healing herself by stabbing them with her own life-draining lance.

After all of these huge spells, Shalltear seems to be on the offensive until Ainz unleashes a bunch of spells at once, including something called "The Goal Of All Life Is Death", which is... a clock that materializes behind him? Sounds epic, but I'm not sure what it does beyond a huge explosion. Apparently this straight-up kills Shalltear and causes her to get instantly-resurrected with another one of Peroroncino's hidden skills.


And then as Shalltear gloats that she now has the upper hand, with her being returned to full health while Ainz is at low MP, Ainz notes smugly that apparently everything is going according to his plan, and that includes Shalltear's first death. Yeah, I definitely don't buy that Ainz came in just for a simple western-style showdown, and he clearly has a trick or two up his sleeve. Either a couple of hidden world items, or Aura and Mare being told to do something, or finding a loophole in whatever skills Peroroncino designed for Shalltear. It's also a pretty interesting way to have a end-of-season big fight, too, without sullying the whole concept of "a group of invincible, super-powerful god-like beings arrive from a different setting", while also making it clear that Ainz, as powerful as he is, isn't actually invincible, nor is he that much stronger compared to any individual Guardian should they fight. And I guess it makes sense, if the Guardians were created as equivalents of WoW's raid bosses, that they'd definitely should be able to stand their own against powerful player characters. The Guardians are all super-loyal now, but what happens if they develop more independent thoughts? What if it's less of a case of obvious mind-control like Shalltear here, and maybe one of the Guardians actually decides that he/she doesn't like serving under Ainz? Good stuff, making the invincible hero vulnerable.

Still, it's a pretty fun fight regardless, all colourful with loads of fun skills and even if the rules  of this world's battle mechanics isn't fully explained, I can definitely appreciate the clear attempts to allude to traditional D&D battle mechanics and all the many other RPG video games that D&D had since inspired. Overall, while I still think the mind control storyline is a bit trite and not quite utilized as well as it could've, the action scenes and stuff definitely make up for it.