Overlord: The Sacred Kingdom

I am a huge Overlord fan, and The Sacred Kingdom is a movie that I very much enjoyed watching. The movie's pacing of the story is quick and leaves out much of the Light Novels original source material, but is still effective in telling the story involving the Sacred Kingdom. The new characters introduced, Neia and Remedios, are both well written characters directly adapted from the Light Novel, and each have their own unique charm and characterization. Ainz himself is also great in the movie, as he always is, and continues to dominate as being the strongest. The visuals and animation used in the movie are also incredible while being accompanied by an amazing soundtrack, effectively capturing the grandeur and spectacle of the fights and setting. One critique I have for the movie is that the fights are way too short, and that I would've loved to have seen more action up close instead of the panned-out camera shots used during the fight scenes. Overall, the movie was very good and was well worth watching twice.

When a demon and his army of demihumans attack the Sacred Kingdom, the humans have no choice but to turn to the Sorcerer King for help. As they battle their way back in hopes of securing the Sacred Kingdom, the humans must come to terms with the morality and ethics of war. The Sorcerer King seems benevolent, but more is happening than meets the eye.

This is another anime movie in place of a season for the series. Prior knowledge of the series is required to understand and appreciate it, but it can be watched without it. With the previous knowledge, the two-hour and fifteen-minute runtime may feel shorter; without it, the movie drags a bit. Fans of the series will enjoy it; others might be inspired to watch it to appreciate it truly.

Movie just released a few hours ago, just got home from the theatre having watched this in IMAX and- wow, if you could see the smile on my face.

Yes, being a long-term fan and reader of the novels and a huge fan of the word-building and lore of this series, I had a blast seeing Neia, Shizu and all my favorite characters from these particular volumes brought to life. The sound design and voice-acting was even better than I had hoped for. Each spell cast feelt extremely impactful, and Shizu's lines consistently got a laugh out of me and the rest of the theatre I was in, for example.

However, I REALLY don't think this movie will bring in any new overlord fans. It gives a BRIEF super-condensed run-down of the general concept of the story at the beginning, so someone unfamiliar with the series COULD watch it without consuming anything beforehand, but I imagine that it'd leave them... confused and concerned. Honestly, I don't think they should've even put that in there- this really is a movie only for the people already into the series.

To explain, the movie plays off and delivers a lot of it's fun to viewers through circumstance and character relations in ways new watchers simply wouldn't have the background knowledge and previously-established intrigues in order to recieve said enjoyment, or even be fully-aware of the fun to be had. That all being said, I still have a few criticisms keeping it from a 10/10 even as a avid fan:

A negative aspect of the anime that unfortunately carried over was their habbit of leaving too much on the chopping room floor. Of particular irk was the exclusion of the fight between Ains and Buser, talks between Remedios' help party and Blue Rose, and the throne room scene. These scenes would've helped the pacing and would've likely helped those that didn't read it prior to follow along, plus they are very fun scenes in the novels.

Also, since this movie is the product of two volumes smashed together, it feels really long due to there being a good 'ending point' feeling halfway through, and then it just keeps going. It's for this and the previous reason that I really think they should've just done two movies and made it a two-parter with a cliffhanger. That being said, if it HAD to be both volumes across a 2-hour runtime, they did much better than I imagine most studios would've done with the assignment.

Overall, I had a lot of fun and thought that it was great. There's a lot of enjoyment to be had here, just, I do NOT expect a bunch of positivity for this movie as new-comes wouldn't enjoy it as much, there isn't as much fighting as one would expect, and I can easily see some of those cuts not going over well with the more fervent and hardcore side of the fanbase, but again, if you're a long-term fan like I who's read all the novels but are not so into it you own an Ains body-pillow of your own you'll definitely have lots of fun.

I love the overlord series. It is fun and the plot is intriguing. The DND references and the overall characters in the series are just quite amazing for a fan of RPG games like myself. I watched the anime series and did some revisit from time to time. That might be the reason because for me, compared to the anime series, the movies have to leave out a lot of scenes just to make it to the runtime and it kind of ruins the overall vibe you would get from it and the sequences of the plot. I know it would be quite demanding for the editors to put all of the scenes and even though they did have to leave out a lot, the movie is still fun to watch with a lot of action going on. It is just that for me, I did not get the vibe I usually get whenever I watched the series and I kind of hoped that they could have done it somehow. Overall, it is an appetizer before the main dish of season 5 comes out.

What is quite clear from this fantasy adventure is that being behind thick stone walls is scant protection from the menacing "Jaldaboath" who is bent on destroying the Sacred Kingdom. Fairly easily, it has to be said, he manages to capture it's Sacred Princess and it falls to the young page "Neia Baraja" to work with what's left of their army to elicit the help of the undead Sorcerer King - the only creature who might be able to counter the powerful magic they face. Luckily, he agrees to help out and with the enthusiastic young "Neia" as his attendant, he must strive to rally the kingdom and face their nemesis and his maids. Yep, it's all a bit procedural, this, but it's still pretty much end-to-end action with loads going on and with the possible exception of the annoying "Remedios Custodio" - the Grand Master of the army, the characters are well suited for a slowly bubbling tale of good versus evil. The animation is very linear, the backgrounds have no movement at all and the characterisations rely very heavily on the facial features, but the episodic nature of their escapades marries the mysticism of ancient culture with the action scenarios quite entertainingly. It does dip a little towards the end - and some of the editing isn't the best, but I found it flew by for two hours and quite enjoyed the stand-alone nature of a narrative that has it's basis in a game but that doesn't impact at all on the plot.