Overlord S03E02 Review: The "Let's Go With It" Rule of GM-ing

Overlord, Season 3, Episode 2: Carne Village, Once More

This episode is divided into two distinct parts -- one half takes place in the Tomb of Nazarick in a sort of mission statement. After the little japery episode to open the season, this episode ends up taking a bit of a more on-track, although it's clear that the tone of these next couple of episodes are going to be more light-hearted.

We start off with Ainz telling Demiurge to "yes, tell the class of all the plans that I have done" -- while Ainz himself clearly doesn't know all that much about Demiurge's super-intricate plan that happened during the Re-Estize stuff until that little mid-battle conversation. It's interesting that Ainz kinda sort of has to deal with the pressure of actually being a leader while not actually being good at managing anything but video games. (Albeit that particular skill is pretty useful in a straight-up brawl as season one's Shalltear fight shows) Also a big fan of the "ah, that." "yes, that" exchanges between Demiurge and Ainz, with Ainz trying to urge Demiurge to spill the master plan he's concocting, while Demiurge thinks they're both in the know.

It's actually interesting that Ainz isn't actually a buffoon -- he's competent enough to understand things when explained to him, clearly, and his paranoia and knack for making connections and obtain information have managed to be advantageous to Nazarick. And he's clearly a superb gamer, judging by how he managed to utterly crush the min-maxed Shalltear. But as a ruler? Poor Ainz just can't actually do it.

Hilariously, Demiurge's speech to the assembled officers of Nazarick includes the line "I pray there no one stupid enough to not know of our lord's true ambitions"... leading to a hilarious "ehhh?" by Ainz. And, of course, said ambitions, as interpreted by Demiurge, is world domination, seemingly interpreted from the moment way back in the first episode when Demiurge and Ainz took to the skies and gazed upon the New World with Ainz off-handedly noting that it would be nice to rule over a world like this.

Ainz's emotion-suppression quickly calms the panic within him down, and that ends up causing him to rationally think that, eh, that isn't such a bad idea after all, showing that, yeah, while Ainz might still be a video game player at heart, he's still got a few screws knocked loose with being put into an undead body.

Demiurge and Albedo notes that sooner or later, they're going to have to announce Nazarick's existence to the world, and working from the shadows so far isn't really doing them any favours -- if nothing else, there won't be any added advantages in dealing with the potential Yggdrassil players that attacked Shalltear, which was Ainz's justifications for keeping most of his activities on the down low.

And Demiurge makes it out that Ainz is this master chess-master by noting how one of his first actions in the New World is to establish good relations with Carne Village, no doubt one facet of his master plan to conquer the world... which is a nice segue to the second part of the village, which involves Carne Village.

And I do like this part of the episode a lot better. It clearly switches to the POV of Enri, Nfirea and the goblin minions (who's gotten unique, expressive models between season 1 and 3), but since this is a location that has been established before, and characters that we do care about previously, it's a lot less jarring compared to the point in the second season when we cut to the Lizardmen. While I did end up really caring for the lizardmen as characters and as a part of the world after the arc was done and over with, I kinda wished that we were introduced to Zaryusu and company in some way or form before the arc took place.

Anyway, Carne Village's fun, and this episode is mostly just table-setting. The goblins and humans have all sort of acclimatized to peaceful coexistence, although they are all ultimately bound to Enri as their 'master' (or, well, their ane-san). We get fun scenes like them arguing over breakfast, and one of them, Kaijali, telling Nfirea to stop being such a dork in front of Enri and that he'll flex his muscles whenever there's a chance for Nfirea to score points with Enri. That's funny. Equally funny is Nfirea trying to implement these flirting mechanics and flashing -glint- smiles and completely failing to impress Enri.

The final sequence of this episode is Enri, Nfirea and a trio of goblins going deep into the forest to pick rare herbs, only to see a sickly goblin child being chased by a Barghest -- a staple D&D monster (ironically, Barghests are goblins that can shapeshift into wolves in D&D), here reimagined as a giant demon wolf with a floating chain around it.

We get some genuinely badass moment from Nfirea, who is apparently now able to cast acid spells, and some badass battle sequences from the trio of goblins as they slay the Barghest. The goblins actually manage to slay the Barghest without any casualties, although part of it is thanks to Nfirea being a support-type caster that buffs them, throws alchemical glue and stuff. The little goblin kid is apparently Agu, son of a chief from the Gigu tribe... and his tribe has been attacked by the "Giant of the East" and the "Serpent of the West"... and apparently Ainz taming Hamsuke, the monster of the South, ended up throwing the balance of power in the jungle out of whack, so I'm interested -- is this going to be the culmination of Carne Village's attempt to train and be more independent? Overall, though, it's a fun little return to a couple of characters that I've unexpectedly grown attached to, and I'm always a sucker for fantasy-based settings that make traditional monsters like goblins likable, so this is definitely an arc I do like.