Title: Overlord Vol. 7
Author: Kugane Maruyama (Story), Hugin Miyama (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160
Genre: Shounen, Battle
Publication Date: July 24, 2018
The Story
The last volume of Overlord didn’t really give us much of a cliffhanger to go off of so I wasn’t really sure where this volume was heading. Turns out that we all believed that the lizardman arc was over; however, it seems things have just begun.
Cocytus returns back to Nazarim to report to Ainz-sama about his failure. It is here that Ainz was about to forgive Shalltear for allowing herself to become mind-controlled when Albedo suggests that Shalltear’s wish for punishment be granted. Ainz also decides to punish Cocytus for his failure by sending him back to slaughter all of the lizardmen. Instead, Cocytus states that he doesn’t want to do such a thing and right when he’s put under fire for his remarks, Demiurge steps in and suggests that instead of killing the lizardmen that they force them into coming under Ainz and Nazarim’s rule.
Ainz thinks it over and changed Cocytus’ punishment to get the lizardmen on their side. To do this, they muster up and overwhelming force of undead and pay a visit to them en masse. The goal is to terrify them into submission; however, Ainz gives them four days to decide and by decide, he means four days to prepare to battle Cocytus, instilling fear that Cocytus alone is stronger than a force of 5,000+ undead. After the warning was delivered, they all return to Nazarim as Zaryusu and Crusch have a moment together where Crusch reluctantly allows Zaryusu to march off to his death (since they have no idea this is all a ruse to get them to surrender.)
Our volume ends on the day that Cocytus is scheduled to “attack” all of them by himself.
I’m happy that we got more than three chapters in this volume! In fact, we received five chapters! It was still rather straight-forward and I’m happy that we’re seeing more of Ainz and company as while the lizardmen arc was refreshing, it was starting to get a little bit stale. Obviously, with the lizardmen wanting to surrender right then and there, we can pretty much guess the outcome of this “battle” next volume. It seems that Ainz will gain control of the lizardmen, thus increasing his forces. They even talked about how to stage a ruse in order to get an entire country under Ainz’ control. It was some nice foreshadowing for the next volume which is slated to be the Kingdom arc (it even said so on the final page!)
Characters
Cocytus continued to be the center of the character development in this volume. He still remained timid but showed how much he learned from his failure. Ainz applauded him for his ability to recognize what he could have done differently to win that battle but it seemed all for naught when Cocytus wanted to take a more pacifist route when it came to the lizardmen… all because he admired their warrior spirit during the battle. Demiurge sensed that which is why he spoke up about trying to bring the lizardmen to their side by proposing that they could run experiments on them. In a way, Demiurge provided a solution for both Ainz and Cocytus and it made both sides happy.
We also got introduced to another one of the floor guardians: Victim. He’s… uh… a floating lump of something or other. That’s probably the best way I can describe him. He proves that he’s loyal to Ainz… especially when Ainz says that he will need to kill him in order for his plan to work but he promises to resurrect him afterward. Victim doesn’t even hesitate to accept his fate as he believes his life only exists in order to die in Ainz’ service. Yeesh… talk about loyalty!
After many volumes, we FINALLY got to see a bit of Ainz’ human side. After his meeting with the floor guardians, he retires to his chamber and wishes he could drink beer and get blitzed! He even wonders why his bed smells like flowers and suspects them of spraying perfume on it (to which an image of Albedo is plastered up on the page, hinting at who was responsible for the floral scents in his room.) Ainz even wonders if there is anyone within Nazarim that could teach him how to be a ruler as he finds it extremely hard. After a while, we tend to forget that Ainz is a human in the real world trapped inside of a video game. They’ve done a great job making you forget that so when you read this little scene, it’s a nice jolt to remind you of what’s really going on here. That’s just a great nod towards this series’ ability to immerse you in the world that it builds.
Final Thoughts
Just when I thought the lizardmen story arc was getting stale, Overlord finds a way to breathe new life into it and make it interesting. Even though the outcome of the confrontation could be seen from a mile and a half away, I still want to see how it will all play out. I want to see how Cocytus handles his punishment of going up against their forces all by himself.
I like at the end they announced that next volume will be the beginning of a brand-new story arc. Ainz is heavily playing the political game which makes complete and total sense since his goal is world domination. One would think that with all the power at his disposal that he would just take the world by overwhelming force but he’s doing this in the most cautious and strategic way possible. Ainz is even taking unknown enemies which may or may not even exist into consideration but this volume did reveal that a lot of the credit he’s taking is complete and total luck.
For example, the floor guardians all believed that Ainz knew that Cocytus would fail and that he was planning this entire event around that failure when Ainz even remarked to himself that he didn’t expect Cocytus to say the things that he did about not wanting to attack the lizardmen. Ainz really had no backup plan and just went with the flow. He even became fearful if the floor guardians grew too powerful and decided to turn against him, showing that he’s becoming a bit paranoid over the fact that he’s just some guy trapped in a game and not a true leader like he’s been pretending to be this entire time.
It’s little things like that which add so much depth to the characters and the overarching story as a whole. The attention to little details like that is something Overlord does really well and this volume is a great example of that. I really should watch the anime one of these days… especially with season three right around the corner.
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**This item was provided for review by Yen Press
