Style with a good bit of substance will bring readers into Momonga’s Yggdrasil
Creative Staff:
Story: Kugane Maruyama
Art: so-bin
What They Say:
For twelve years, the virtual world of Yggdrasil has served as the playground and battlefield for the skeletal lord Momonga and his guild of fellow monsters, Ainz Ooal Gown. But the guild’s glory days are over, and the game is shutting down permanently. When Momonga logs in one last time just to be there when the servers go dark, something happens–and suddenly, fantasy is reality. A rogues’ gallery of fanatically devoted NPCs is ready to obey his every order, but the world Momonga now inhabits is not the one he remembers. The game may be over, but the epic tale of Ainz Ooal Gown is only beginning…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
We’ve heard this story archetype before: gaming becoming reality. It’s either players trapped within reality as akin to Sword Art Online, or reality becoming gamified as with Accel World. This aspect of the light novel genre should get tiring, riddled with cliches and stagnant ideas. Yet, Kugane Maruyama’s Overlord sets out, and mostly accomplishes to stay out of the area with its intriguing take into the virtual world. With its handling of the genre, it makes you understand why people would gravitate towards the series.
Unlike with other series that try to slip readers into virtual worlds, Overlord actually has questions that one may find interesting. For instance what are the different skill sets how are things operated. These things aren’t going to get answered in the first book, but Maruyama strives, to give a readers and Momonga a sense of bearing in the world together. We then see a character rationalizing his actions through different avenues such as retrieval of information, and bartering. Whether it is through the way the world works or through the RPG mechanism, we see that Mononga has the mechanisms to survive coping with his experience living in the virtual world. Though at times,
Maruyama takes a more immature route with Albedo and her love, it still at least gives context to the readers (I still roll my eyes though while giggling like a little boy). This methodt helps that the pacing, for the most part, helps to draw people in.
Overlord’s pacing is actually well done. A lot of the action scenes feel fluid and articulated. Many of the important scenes land with a sense of intended importance. Even the more nuanced parts and dialog feel like they What is interesting about Overlord is how it breaks apart its content. Unlike with other light novels, it takes a chapter and section approach. This style of pacing mechanism actually helps to flesh out the story while still focus you within the area of the chapter. It makes for nice reading and more importantly nice tracking of where you’re at.The only thing that detract from the pacing is the author’s liberal use of words.
One of the Maruyama’s weaknesses in Overlord is wordiness. Many times he tries to explain himself only for it to be over explain. Describing the power of the beasts that Momonga fights, only to concisely place it as a sentence defeats the purpose of the previous sentence and weakens the current sentence and concept together. One could contend that its Momonga, trying to reason and by writing it we get a better sense of the main character. However, this type of word bombing tends to stop only at dialogue, extending to character’s thoughts and general exposition. It makes conversations not flow as smoothly because of how much words he tries to package through random thoughts or side explanations and disrupts the flow of reading for the audience.
Unlike with other light novels, Yen Press should be hailed for their handling of Overlord. The book hardcover feels like a novel you would want to read. The cover looks great and handled with care needed to attract those normally not interested in light novels to pick it up while at the same time gives a justification for those who purchased it in the story. It makes one wonder, if given this flexibility with say other titles maybe such as Spice and Wolf would more people gain interest in giving the series a chance. so-bin’s presentation with the artwork definitely helps in this area.
so-bin’s art in Overlord help to immerse the readers in the world. Detailed backgrounds, pleasingly character and scenery aesthetics harken to a post Enlightenment era. The only hint of anime or manga design come from there is the characters faces and even at that . With that being said collars everything is beautiful to look at and most of all enlightenment era. The only hints of anime come from there is the characters faces and even at that, it feels well integrated. The watercolor style chose makes everything beautiful to look at and most of all artistry that actually invests in a style and conveys information, leaving distracting fan-servicing shots out for more articulate art.
In Summary:
Overlord from the moment you touch the book to reading it sets itself to stand out compared to other novels. Maruyama looks to be building a world where we will have readers learn as we go to understand Yggdrasil and what Momonga will go through. The wordiness and somewhat other literary choices may not make it the best, but the presentation from Yen Press and so-bin will suggest and proves otherwise. If this format is the start for Overlord, readers will be anxious for more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date:May 24th, 2016
MSRP: $20.00
