Overlord S02E06 Review: Poking the Secret Society

Overlord, Season 2, Episode 6: Those Who Pick Up; Those Who Are Picked Up

It seems that Overlord's second season isn't actually going to feature a lot of Ainz Ooal Gown himself, focusing on a certain group of characters whose lifestyle is turned upside-down due to Ainz's presence and arrival in the New World. The first arc this season deals primarily with the Lizardmen and their attempts to resist and eventual subjugation. The second arc of this season, on the other hand, ends up focusing on Sebas, Ainz's butler and current infiltrator into the high society of the Re-Estize Kingdom.

Speaking of which, his full name is apparently Sebas Tian, which made me chuckle. A lot. Also, interestingly, despite looking like a human, we know that none of the denizens of Nazarick are actually human, so I'm genuinely curious (not going to look it up!) just what some of the more humanoid members like Sebas, Yuri and Narberal actually are.

Anyway, Sebas ends up investigating the Magician's Guild, inspecting the magical scrolls there and seemingly just investigating the city. In particular, he buys a scroll of floating board, as well as having a Shadow Demon under his employ that just moves around in his shadow. Sebas's troubles ends up happening when he sees a sack being thrown out in the middle of the streets, which contains an abused, broken woman. And as we have established in the first season, Sebas's creator is Touch Me, a player with a very rigid heroism streak,  which is heavily implemented in Sebas's moral code.

Which is why he immediately goes on to help the abused lady, and when confronting the owner of the brothel, he ends up giving some money to the brothel owner to escape the country before the huge mafia-slash-secret-society that the brothel operates under gets wind of his failure. Interestingly, Sebas also seems to have a unique code about just who he helps, helping only those who struggle for life?

Of course, Sebas's unique view on humans isn't shared by his current partner, the battle maid Solution, who's only humouring Sebas due to Sebas technically outranking her. Solution does her work in investigating the girl in a very clinical fashion, but makes no secret that she views the human with utter disdain -- a tone that we've seen in practically all of the other members of Nazarick other than Ainz himself (and maybe Cocytus, but that's only towards the warrior lizardmen). Solution describes in loving detail the full amount of diseases that the woman has, including multiple broken bones, multiple venereal diseases, multiple drug addiction, anal fissures and a whole lot of others...

And Solution is told to heal the girl by Sebas, but doesn't consult Lord Ainz, which sets off many warning signs in Solution's head. Hell, we even get a brief bit of a nightmare face as Solution wonders if she should "have fun" with the human before healing her, although all signs point to her just doing her job. It's very tense, honestly, and a lot more morally ambiguous when the humans the citizens of Nazarick are threatening to kill aren't crazy cultists, serial killers or rapey bandits, huh?

Sebas quickly befriends the girl when she wakes up, learning that her name is Tuare, and he's all kind and gentlemanly to the girl, who's clearly broken from her life as a forced prostitute and is utterly overwhelmed with kindness. Sebas, meanwhile, ends up being confronted by Solution about just what he's planning to do. It's shaping up to be a Sebas-heavy arc, and this setup is very, very interesting.

Meanwhile, the rest of the episode deals with a bunch of other characters around the kingdom. The first of the three scenes taking place in the latter half of the episode is Brain Unglaus, waking up after a nightmare of his curbstomp at the hands of Shalltear in the first season, and he has a conversation with Gazef about the heights that humans just simply can't reach. Gazef is a lot more optimistic about that, despite having met a similar being in the masked Ainz, while Brain is straight-up suicidal. It's... it's interesting, I guess, that a character that seemed pretty throwaway in season one ends up seemingly being built up this way? In any case, Gazef is a very, very nice guy.

Another scene shows a group of what I'm assuming are adventurers as they burn down a drug production plant that's run by the mafia-slash-secret-society group Eight Fingers. We've got a pair of orange ninjas with magic daggers, a masked girl that can turn invisible called "Evil Eye", a manly Brienne-style knight lady, and their leader Laykus. The final scene in this episode actually shows the meeting between the members of the Eight Fingers, with names and ranks being dropped left and right -- basically, the burning down of the drug plantation and the loss of a prostitute from the brothel ends up causing this secretive council to decide to take action. Particularly, a blonde Emma-Frost-esque woman seems to be the leader of the drug trade, a dude called Choco-Doll that looks like a cousin of One Piece's Mr. 2 is the leader of the brothel branch, and a bald, tattooed dude that's on the season's intro is the leader of the group's security and offers his services to both Emma Frost and Mr. 2 to help them 'deal' with those that fucked with the Eight Fingers' interests.

Overall, it seems we're having a neat little genre switch from adventurers and a general fantasy warfare into the 'seedy underworld' genre, and I'm... I'm tentatively interested? Again, these are the sort of scenes in anime or TV adaptations of a novel-based work that tended to work better after we actually see the characters do something in eventual episodes. The introduction of the Blue Rose adventuring team and the Eight Fingers leaders all sort of blur together in my head into "okay, these people exist",  sort of like any given episode in Game of Thrones that introduces a group of characters. Overall, the focus of the episode is clearly Sebas and his whole desire to be a good man that helps people in need... when he's working under a mighty organization whose membership couldn't care less for humanity. Neat stuff.