Overlord S02E09 Review: Made His Saving Throw

Overlord, Season 2, Episode 9: Soaring Sparks of Fire

The actual fight against the Eight Fingers actually plays out as pretty standard fantasy hero fare, and our heroes' victory is kind of assured considering Sebas is with them. So after breaking the door, Sebas sort of splits up from Brain and Climb so they can presumably grow on their own or something? Anyway, Sebas quickly finds Staffan, the fat nobleman dude that threatened him before, who is brutalizing the prostitute that he's fucking. Sebas slaps him in the face a bit, reveals that he's killed everyone in the place, and as he menacingly walks towards him, realizes that the dude is utter scum, and just kicks him so hard he explodes, noting that he's scum that doesn't deserve to be alive. Yeah, Sebas is a nice guy, but you don't fuck with him!

Meanwhile, the bulk of the episode focuses on Climb and Brain, and Climb shows off a bunch of magical items loaned to him from the ladies of Blue Rose, a bunch of bells that reveals secret doors and traps. Climb is left alone, only for one of the Eight Hand's bosses, the Mr. 2 lookalike, Cocodoll, to show up from a secret passageway accompanied by a member of the "Six Arms", Succulent the Illusion Demon. Hilariously (and very sensibly), Climb's first action is to just shout very loudly for help, hopping either Brain or Sebas would come. Climb then fights Succulent, and after a couple of blows Climb figures out that Succulent is actually an illusionist-swordsman hybrid, casting a partial invisibility spell on his right arm and sword, while simultaneously making an illusion an arm-and-sword to fool the enemy. The fight continues with Succulent summoning mirror images, with the interesting twist that none of the Succulents are real, and the real person is actually invisible.

Cocodoll had wanted to kidnap Climb to hold Princess Renner ransom, but Succulent is far more pragmatic, knowing that backup is about to arrive. Climb, meanwhile, has a badass moment of resisting the poisoned blade, buying enough time for Brain Unglaus to arrive.

And it's actually pretty neat that Brain Unglaus, an otherwise unremarkable filler character and fodder antagonist, ends up actually getting a pretty badass moment. He gives a brief monologue about how all of their strength is pretty crappy (even if Succulent's pretty terrified of Brain), and gives a generic strength to protect others speech... and then activates his God Slash skill and accurately predicts that the real Succulent would attack the wounded Climb, slashing and taking out Succulent with one slash...

And then Sebas shows up, totally "just arriving", knocking out Cocodoll, and, of course, he's so overpowering that Brain can't even detect him with his 'Field' Martial Arts technique. Long story short, we get the Eight Fingers captains arrested and the brothel shut down, with Climb and Brain, at Sebas's request, noting that all the badassery that happened was due to the master swordsman Brain, who gets a pretty heartwarming scene with Gazef, sharing a drink over Brain's newfound purpose in life.

Also an unexpectedly tense scene is Climb reporting back to Princess Renner. The scene goes off as about you'd expect, a generic cutesy "aww, Climb gets his reward" and how Renner is happy that a part of the bad guys is being destroyed, and as Climb leaves the room... we get a very creepy scene of Renner, in all her cutesy voice, looking into a mirror and squishing her face, wondering which sort of "innocent smile" she has to display to the maid on duty. And as she talks up an innocent "kyaaa Climb-kun is so cool" with the maid, in her mind we hear her internal monologue of "I'm going to kill you I'm going to kill you you made fun of Climb I'm going to kill you!"

So, uh... yeah, that was definitely unexpected! Kinda-sorta did, thanks to the ending, but I dunno, her being a closet sociopath that just pretends to be a cheerful golden princess is apparently an act, and she's harbouring some psychotic bits beneath. At least she seems to genuinely care about Climb, so maybe Climb doesn't have it that bad?

And then the episode gets to a pretty tense scene of Sebas returning to the mansion, only to be greeted by Solution in her full Nazarick battle maid gear, with the bombshell that "Ainz-sama is waiting for you." Sebas beat the bad guys, but the upcoming confrontation is certainly a pretty tense one.

The other cliffhanger other than the Ainz/Sebas conversation is the revelation that Succulent's boss, the bald tattooed man from the intro and leader of the Eight Fingers's security division, Zero, gets ready to make his move to wipe out Sebas and his allies. It's interesting because, again, anime opening spoilers, we do know that he apparently fights with Sebas, so is this an arc that's going to show that some citizens of the New World can actually reach the strength of Ainz's servants? Interesting, anyway. The whole Sebas/Tuare arc has been a lot more... chill and slow-paced, introduction-heavy and fairly more predictable due to the sorts of characters that Sebas and Climb are, but the twist with Renner certainly is a well-delivered one, and if nothing else, the Ainz/Sebas conversation is going to be pretty tense due to the fact that technically no one involved -- not Sebas, not Solution and not Ainz -- really did anything wrong with what they had done to reach this point.