Overlord S02E08 Review: Thieves' Guild

Overlord, Season 2, Episode 8: A Boy's Feelings

Definitely a bit slower than the previous episode, although it's clear that they're trying to make Blue Rose and especially Climb prominent characters. Since Climb is technically kind of the 'big good' naive adventurer similar to Zaryusu during the Lizardman arc, it's interesting to see just how he's going to come into conflict with Ainz and his people. The first scene of this episode is just Climb talking with the other two members of Blue Rose, the manly-woman that likes to make sex jokes Garagan, and the enigmatic, masked spellcaster Evil Eye. Both of them try to show their own sort of tough love to Climb, with Evil Eye basically telling Climb that, nope, he's got no talent for being a spellcaster and he should give up any ambitions to do so -- although she also notes that there's no harm in learning about magic.

Oh, and the legends of Momon the Dark Knight is being spread all the way to the kingdom, with Climb, Gagaran and Evileye discussing the many exploits of Momon that's genuinely impressive to them.

We also have the enigmatic note from Evileye that tells Climb to "don't lose your humanity for power", implying that Evileye herself isn't entirely human? Or someone she knows isn't entirely human, anyway. We also get a brief little talk about the ancient 13 heroes, some of which aren't human. And apparently Lakyus has one of the swords wielded by the 13 heroes, the Dark Killineiram. I totally didn't have to look up the spelling of that sword, and I certainly didn't have to do it like three times. We get the seemingly-comedic scene of Lakyus trying to 'channel' the super-powerful power of the magic sword? And apparently it may be taking her soul over? I'm genuinely not sure if the scenes are meant to be serious foreshadowing, or if it's just a gag scene to show that,  haha, a serious woman like Lakyus pretends to be a cool edgy antihero. Not the best-portrayed scene, I think.

The Swords of Darkness or whatever that belonged to the ancient thirteen heroes has been mentioned earlier in season one, and it's neat to see if these super-powerful thirteen heroes aren't, in fact, Yggdrassil players, maybe? The second season doesn't seem to be particularly interested in exploring the Yggdrassil player question, other than a couple of token lip-service moments from Ainz.

The second half of the episode has a pretty neat little "the main characters meet each other" moment, with Sebas beating up some local thug that's bullying and stomping on an innocent kid, and Sebas's inhuman movement through the crowd and act of heroism is witnessed not only by Climb, but by also Brain Unglauss, who's... who's just wandering nearby.

Sebas walks through the alleyways, and Climb runs up to him, asking for help in training. It does work with Climb's own past scenes, attempting to find training with Gazef and later Garagan and Evileye, and while they're all nice people that try to be supportive, it's clear that they all think that Climb can't really grow all that much beyond his current level. And then after a brief talk, Sebas gauges Climb to be a nice, well-meaning kid, and attempt to train him in something... and then unleashes his 'aura' of sorts, giving this chilling dread of utterly and insanely outclassing mere humans. It's actually pretty damn badass, and I'm not 100% sure what this means for Sebas's real race. Is he a form of undead as well? The anime does a pretty great job at showing the killing intent from Sebas, as well as the glowing red eyes, and Sebas unleashes a punch that Climb manages to dodge by clinging onto his memory and desire to serve Princess Renner. Sebas notes that warriors need to have a goal, something to protect. This ends up impressing Brain as well, who is genuinely surprised that Climb manages to survive the 'aura of death' that he had previously failed to work past.

So Brain and Climb ends up befriending Sebas, and the three work together to fight a group of assassins... with Sebas one-shotting three of them like it ain't nothing, Brain taking out one easily, and Climb managing to use the Martial Art skill that Gazef taught him to take down the third. Sebas uses a mind-control skill to inform them of the Eight Finger's base, and the three end up walking there -- Climb as a peacekeeper, Sebas to exact his own vengeance upon them, and Brain... um... to follow his newfound 'master', I guess?

This arc seems to be shaping up to exploring a similar theme with Cocytus respecting the lesser Lizardmen while simultaneously failing Ainz, with Sebas respecting these humans that do want to train under him and become stronger, and potentially upsetting Ainz with breaking his rules and rescuing a human. It's an interesting arc, although I'm actually curious to note how the lizardmen arc spends a couple of episodes almost exclusively exploring lizardmen politics and leaving Ainz and Cocytus mostly in the background until the final episodes of their arc, whereas the Re-Estize Kingdom arc splits its screentime between Sebas and Climb relatively equally, and as such some of the introdumps in Climb's scenes feel a bit rushed. It's interesting to note how similarly rushed the lizardman arc would've perhaps been, and how much less we'd think of the lizardmen characters if their story had been similarly rushed.