Overlord S03E11 Review: Deus Ex Goblina

Overlord, Season 3, Episode 11: Another Battle

It's an... interesting direction to take this episode, where the potential two points of war -- the big Re-Estize/Baharuth battle on Katze Plains, as well as Prince Barbro besieging poor, little Carne Village -- ended up being entirely separated into two episodes. Would it be better to not have such a huge mood whiplash to go from the huge buildup of "oh the Kingdom is preparing so heavily!" to a pretty self-contained episode of Carne Village vs. Prince Barbro? Or maybe it would've been too distracting if both plot threads went along concurrently?

Well, whatever the case, it is a completely possible plot progression for Lupusregina to straight-up just allow the entire village to be destroyed as long as she protected the four people Ainz charged her with -- especially with the scene of Ainz telling her to not interfere unless if it's to protect Nfirea, Lizzie, Enri and Nemu. Thus, just like Enri-and-Nfirea-versus-random-troll earlier in the season, there's still a fair bit of tension thrown in here, especially considering how cartoonishly boorish and triggerhappy Barbro is shown to be.

We start off the episode with some genuinely fun scenes of an increasingly pissed-off Enri as she ends up getting more and more responsibilities, with Jugem and the other goblins hyping Enri up in front of the villagers and the newcomer tribes, including a fun bit of Enri "beating" Jugem in an arm-wrestling contest. There's definitely a fun bit of building irritation on Enri's face, which I take as a fun little parallel to Ainz's situation as the Supreme Overlord of Nazarick that everyone thinks is seventeen steps of everyone else. There's also a fun bit of shipping for the two, although, of course, it's quickly interrupted by Barbro surrounding the village. Despite Enri's attempt to delay the prince's entry (to hide the goblins and ogres) with claims of cow dung on the road (which is funny) Barbro ends up blowing up a watchtower with fire arrows for no real reason.

Meanwhile, as this is going on, Ainz and Mare are just watching through live television from a magic mirror, which I thought was equally horrifying and funny at the same time.

Interestingly, despite Ainz not giving two shits about anyone in the village other than Nfirea, the villagers of Carne are very, very angry at Barbro's insults at Lord Gown and that they'll not bow to the Kingdom that abandoned them. They end up picking a 'last stand' style bit where Jugem, the other goblins, and the adults hold back the army on the front gates, whereas Enri and Nfirea are to lead the children and women to hide with Agu's tribe in the forest.

And while we get some fun ogre action scenes, I felt like the tension definitely could've been ramped up after that build-up, because it genuinely seems like "okay, we're going to run out of the back door" leading immediately into "oh no, we are ambushed on the back door!" At this point, Enri blows the Chekov's Gun that is the second Horn of the Goblin General... leading to a series of "EHHHHHHH" reactions, with the loudest coming from the observing Ainz.

And apparently, as explained by Ainz, the Horn of Goblin General has some built-in stipulations (implied to be befriending the goblins that it summons, although it's  not stated outright) that causes Enri to summon, instead of 20 goblin warriors, but instead a gigantic, gigantic army that ends up routing Barbro's army. As badass as it is, though, and as much as I am happy that Jugem and the other members of Enri's goblin troupe ended up being saved... it's kind of an ass-pull, isn't it? Perhaps it flowed better in the novels since I know these sort of "subtle innocuous detail becomes a huge game-turner" is often something that gets left out of TV/movie adaptations, but as it is, this particular plot development just feels kind of out of nowhere.

Throw in some... very, very questionable CGI from the goblin army, and I'm just not that enamoured with the whole scene. I've been very accepting of the CGI, because it worked reasonably well when it's undead skeletal dragons or death knights or even the brutish, expressionless ogres that ended up being rendered by the CGI. They're supposed to look bizarre and unnatural. But the goblins here honestly feel utterly out of place compared to the far more fluid and expressionable goblins we've seen elsewhere in the show and even in the episode. The whole rattling off of "we are general Enri's army of Goblin Paladins! We are the Goblin Beast Riders!" non-stop for like nine or ten divisions feels pretty redundant, too.

Absolutely love the random Goblin Strategist leader of this army, though, who is modeled after Zhuge Liang and that's just utterly random and also pretty hilarious.

(Also a nice nod to Overlord's heavy D&D inspiration is the inclusion of Redcaps -- granted, Redcaps tended to be evil gnomes or halflings in D&D, but I always enjoy it when D&D monsters show up here)

Barbro ends up escaping from the goblin army as per Zhuge Goblin's instructions, noting that if they had killed the prince, then Carne Village would make itself an enemy of Re-Estize without the excuse of self-defense or whatever... but the final scene of the episode ends up with Lupusregina showing up at Barbro's camp, with an army of redcap goblins that she borrowed from Nazarick just out of spite, and then proceeded to kill everyone present. Yeah, the sadistic Lupusregina that switch from an utter monster to cheerful genki girl at the drop of a hat is definitely far more unsettling than just a straight-up psychopath.

Overall, it's definitely interesting -- probably one of the weaker episodes of the season, though I'm not sure if it's a holdover from the adaptation, or the anime studio deciding to sacrifice this episode out of necessity or practicality. I definitely like the unexpected larger role of Carne Village in this season, first with the slower-paced arc earlier in the season, and now with their sudden involvement in the Kingdom/Empire war and unexpectedly and quite randomly becoming a huge military powerhouse. Genuinely not quite sure what this would mean for its future -- maybe it'll become part of Nazarick's proposed kingdom? I mean, Ainz pretty much already have the lizardmen and Carne Village under his thumb. Plus, an unexpected result of all of this ends up causing the succession of Re-Estize to definitely go to Zanac/Renner, something that benefits Nazarick the most since Renner is all but said to be in cahoots with Demiurge.

Next episode's going to be the actual battle between Ainz and the Kingdom, and apparently the Empire had asked Ainz to "begin the battle by casting a spell", which... yeah, that's definitely not going to end well for anyone.