Overlord S02E10 Review: Roll For Evil

Overlord, Season 2, Episode 10: Disturbance Begins In The Royal Capital

Bit of a fun, tense episode that I think is a bit better than it is at a first glance. While the simple conclusion of "Ainz decides to spare Sebas and Tuare after a bit of a tense moment" is the best possible outcome for all involved, I'm actually kind of interested in the genuinely tense scene that led up to it. I'm genuinely going into Overlord blind (if I'm going to read the light novels, I'm going to have to wait until I've finished all the way to season three), so I don't know if Ainz was going to spare Sebas, or Tuare, or neither, or both. And the meeting with Ainz flanked by Demiurge, Cocytus and Victim was pretty tense, especially with how it begins with Ainz throwing a hankerchief to Sebas in apparent mockery of Sebas' whole gentlemanly-hero line of using an expensive hankerchief on Tuare.

Tuare, for her credit, walks into the room summoned by Solution to see Ainz and Cocytus, but doesn't really react any more than an "eh!' Also, while I really wished the anime did more with Solution beyond having her be a tattletale, especially due to her presence at the beginning of this arc... she doesn't exchange much in lieu of words with Sebas beyond glares of understanding. Kinda wished there was more of a verbal confrontation between Sebas and Solution, either before or after the Ainz talk.

Ainz goes and tells Sebas that his orders were for him to not draw attention, and then goes into the same "everyone makes mistakes" speech he gave Cocytus and Shalltear earlier in the series, and Ainz notes that he'll forgive Sebas's blunder and accept it as a honest mistake... and Sebas's punishment is to "kill her."

That definitely shocked me, and it's an actually brutal course of action. I get that Ainz wants to confirm Sebas's true loyalty and maybe he's trying to see just how far Sebas' independence has gone? What I kinda saw throughout this scene is that maybe Ainz is pressured into having Sebas kill one measly human due to Demiurge, Albedo, Shalltear and the other high-ranking Guardians. After all, Ainz has been shown to be ruthless enough to order lizardmen genocide, and the opening at least implies that a conflict between Ainz and one of the Guardians will happen, so maybe in trying to secure Sebas's loyalty, he comes into conflict with some others?

To both Sebas and Tuare's credit, though, Tuare just calmly accepts her fate and closes her eyes with a smile, while after a brief bit of pause, Sebas straight-up gets ready to punch Tuare's head off. The anime does a great job of timing the time when Cocytus's giant bug arm swoops in to take and block the punch -- Sebas was straight-up willing to murder Tuare, because his loyalty to Nazarick still comes first.

Apparently, Ainz had ordered Cocytus to protect Tuare from any killing blow Sebas might do, and the whole deal was just a test to see what Sebas would do when forced to choose between Tuare and the Nazarick mission... and then Ainz, interestingly, takes Victim and teleports away back to Nazarick to deliberate about Tuare's further fate.

It's very interesting why he did this, because so much about Victim's abilities is honestly kind of unknown beyond a vague ability that activates upon death, but I guess Ainz just wants some time to cool off and allow a potential goodbye between Sebas and Tuare?

EDIT: Something that I utterly missed, and something that the anime barely drops any hints about, is that Ainz during the first encounter is actually heavily implied to be Pandora's Actor, with the unnecessarily cruel-spirited hankerchief scene, as well as the hammier "Greater TELEPORTATION" whish as he leaves. Ainz also only recognizes Tuare in his second appearance, commenting about how "oh, now that I see you..." While I was initially mad that the anime didn't make it clear, it's actually a great way to showcase just how a shapeshifter that can mimic the mannerisms of another person is actually pretty effective. I guess the real Ainz just didn't want to go with the ugly job of getting Sebas to maybe kill his human friend, and handwaved it with the whole "let a body double go until we prove Sebas's loyalty?"

The talk between Sebas and Tuare afterwards is very farewell-esque, with Tuare calmly accepting death at the hands of someone she loves far more than the suffering she's endured, and she doesn't want Sebas to get into trouble because of her. Sebas, meanwhile, theorizes that they'll have both their memories purged and Tuare dropped off somewhere.

And then Ainz returns back to the room, and notes that it was Demiurge who was worried that Sebas would betray him, while Ainz himself noted that he didn't think that Sebas would betray him. We get a genuinely tense argument between Sebas and Demiurge, with Demiurge wanting to first kill Tuare either way, and then wanting to make Tuare work in his chimera plantation. Sebas (who clearly sees through the hints about Demiurge's plantation faster than I did) insists that Tuare be allowed to serve in Nazarick as an assistant cook or maid, and the two argue.

Ainz/Momonga gets nostalgic and remembers their creators, Touch Me and Ulbert arguing about whether they should raid the strongest monster, or to raid something that'll help out the weaker members of their guild, and gets all nostalgic until Cocytus interrupts Demiurge and Sebas.

Meanwhile, in a nice nod to a random background detail Tuare says, Ainz demands her full name, "Tuareninya"... and apparently she's the older sister of Ninya, the lady adventurer disguised as a boy that Ainz in his Momon guise adventured with. Ainz thus allows Tuare to serve as a maid in Nazarick, while also demoting Sebas as the leader of the maids as a punishment, putting Yuri Alpha and a yet-unseen maid called Aureole Omega as leader. Ainz also grants Tuare protection under his name, and as the other Guardians return to their stations, Demiurge actually requests that Sebas buy some grain for his chimera sheep plantation. Yeah, I'm curious when the shoe will drop for Ainz on this part.

Also, still being gloriously pragmatic in his evil, Demiurge asks Ainz why he spared Tuare and gave her so much concessions, to which Ainz reveals that he learned a lot about the New World by reading Ninya's journal, and he's just paying back a favour. Not sure if Demiurge buys that, but he doesn't contest Ainz.

Meanwhile, we get a meeting between Prince Zanac and his supporter, Marquis Raeven, with Princess Renner. And then Renner quickly notes, with the same cute, happy princess voice, how he knows Raeven is a talented individual that's actually fighting to guide both the Royal and Noble factions, revealing that she knows all about Raeven's plan to at least keep the Kingdom stable by manipulating both factions. Renner's complete grasp of the situation between the Eight Fingers, Royals and Noble factions completely unnerves Raeven and Zanac, the latter noting that his nickname for Renner, "monster", didn't come out of nowhere. Raeven then requests to talk to the "real" Renner, and Renner drops his cute act and it's pretty amazing how the art team just gave her slightly more unsettling eyebrows and mouth and suddenly Renner went from Cinderella straight into Cersei Lannister territory.

And Renner proves to be far, far more unhinged. Sure, she's going after the Eight Fingers and trying to abolish slavery, but that's not because she's doing it for the good of people or anything. Like a complete sociopath, she's just doing it to impress Climb, who has a pure heart and she loves. And when Zanac prods his half-sister a bit more about Climb, Renner notes how she wants to "chain him up like a cute little puppy she loves". When Zanac floats the proposition that they work to make him king instead of Renner or first prince Barbro, Renner immediately agrees with the condition that Zanac wed him and Climb. It's interesting just how Renner is technically still a good guy, though, noting that she's assembled Blue Rose, Gazef and a group of soldiers and adventurers to assault all of the Eight Fingers' assets.

The cliffhanger for this episode happens right at the eve of the Eight Fingers operation by the Kingdom's forces, as Sebas and Solution return home from their grain-buying mission to find that Tuare is kidnapped by the Eight Fingers. Sebas was ready to one-man-show this again until Solution reminds him that he really should report this to Lord Ainz instead.

We then cut away, interestingly, to a character that hasn't really been in the spotlight despite having a constant presence -- Albedo. She shows up clutching an adorable Ainz plushie, and as Ainz yells at her to "save my good name of Ainz Ooal Gown" and assist Sebas in rescuing Tuare, when the connection breaks off, we get to see an uncharacteristically unhappy Albedo, who's not happy about this, looking at the flag in the room. It took me a second viewing to get the implication, but she has pulled down the Ainz Ooal Gown flag and replaced it with Momonga's original flag. It appears that while Sebas is still loyal to Ainz, and Demiurge at least is maintaining an aura of loyalty (hard to tell with the man), it's the unexpected one, Albedo, who seems to be having second thoughts.

Overall, I was ready to dismiss this episode as being just a couple of tense conversations between a couple of characters, but god damn -- as you can see by the length of this review... there's a lot to unpack here. We're heading to the last three episodes of the season, dealing with what seems to be the Eight Fingers fighting against the Re-Estize Kingdom's forces... right at the same eve when the forces of Nazarick embark on a rescue mission and one that Ainz seems to frame as a crush-them-all mission. It's a three-way fight, and if the opening is anything to go by... there are a couple of plot twists in store.