Discovered that the third series of this is out, and having heard decent things about it, thought I'd go back and watch the first.
It's 2126, and Momonga is sitting around his guild house in Yggdrasil, a fully immersive MMORPG (you know, VR, suit, the whole shebang). He's spent years climbing the ladder to reach the level cap, build an immense castle, collect an NPC army and equip an arsenal with the most powerful weapons and items. He's a Lich, a powerful undead skellington, with incredible magic powers and mastery of the mystic arts.
He ran the Ainz Ooal Gown guild as its leader, but is now the only person left, as over time his guildmates abandoned the game as it wound down. It's the final day, with the server planned for a midnight switch off, and he's mostly mucking about with the old place reliving past glories and doing all the silly things he couldn't do when it was still busy.
Like re-programming Albedo, the guild's most powerful, beautiful but bitchy fallen angel NPC to be in love with him.
All fun and games you might think. And it is, until midnight rolls around and the castle doesn't disappear around him. And he can't log out. And the game menus are gone. Yep, he's been transported to another world. Not just him, though, and for once, it's not into the game world. Instead, him, his castle and army of NPCs find themselves dropped into a second fantasy world. A real one. Where magic is real, and monsters are alive and hunting for people. And there's a world to conquer.
Hell, just because he's (un)dead, doesn't mean he hasn't got any get up and go.
Luckily, he's not going to get lonely in this new world. The NPCs of Nazarick (his guild), have developed sentience during the transition, and have great loyalty to him, as the only player who was prepared to stay with them to the end.
So he and the rest of the team start taking over the world. They've got no local currency - always a problem - but they have got an impressive number of weapons, a relaxed attitude to collateral damage, and the ability to outfight more or less anybody in the new world. They'll probably be okay.
Definitely a comedy, this one. The NPCs tend to be ridiculous, but have the strong justification of having been made by players who have slightly weird ideas about what's funny. Albedo is a lustmonster, but she's matched by Shalltear, a vampire with a crush on Momonga and no small level of perviness.
There is a lovable butler, Sebas Tian (yeah, I know), a demon lord, Demiurge, a violent fighter, Cocytus and the cross-dressing twins (one of each). Despite being set up as an "evil" guild, the players were still human, so each of the monsters they built turned out as comedy evil, with exaggerated gestures and malevolent laughter, but with his best interests at heart. Quite important when you find yourself up against an actually evil cult.
Weirdly, Momonga, the only original human, is probably the most evil person around, mainly because he takes a very pragmatic approach to his situation. He's in another world, is reasonably sure he can't log off and will end up dead if he's not careful, so he's going to use every advantage he's got and overwhelm any enemy to the point of utter destruction. He's also not averse to a little PVP with the local humans if they look like they're getting too close.
That does give the show a central failing in that he can basically keep pulling magic tricks out of his bag to win every fight. (There are a lot of fights. Hope you like them. I suspect the most obvious comparison to make is a fantasy My Hero Academia - or vice versa.) That "oh, one more weapon" trick does tend to remove most of the tension.
In spite of that though, I'm going to keep watching because it's fun. Momonga is entertainingly evil, as are his army, and their interactions in the quieter moments are joyful. (For example when they consider him generating an heir and run around imagining being called "uncle".) It's the sort of silliness that makes it a light watch, especially when it includes spells like "wall of skeletons" and "shark tornado".
Tagged: Anime Comedy Isekai Fighting Antagonism Crunchyroll Subbed