Discussion Ainz is really heartless this season

EXCEPT, the Workers wouldn't have come to his tomb in the first place if it weren't for

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his "plan". That's right, Ainz was the one who plotted with another mastermind to send the Workers to the tomb. He's actually their ultimate paymaster and the architect of the tomb invasion plan. He offered to teach the secrets of magic to the court magician and the court magician then ask another noble to plan the invasion of the tomb AS PER AINZ'S INSTRUCTIONS.

So he actually had no right to complain. Ainz was the one who revealed the tomb to the public via his co-mastermind. Ainz was the one who wanted the Workers to invade in the first place. So how was it the Workers' fault?

He needed an excuse to attack the kingdom where the Workers came from so he planned this "invasion". If he hadn't conspired with this co-mastermind, then the Workers wouldn't have come to the Tomb in the first place because none of them would have heard of such a place in the first place.

And heishiken, just a while back, during Season 1, Ainz himself was going around working for the Adventurers' Guild for MONEY. He knew that's what the Adventurers' Guild amounted to. An organization that provided work and the workers of that organization all work for MONEY! Ainz himself was happily exterminating orcs and monsters in exchange for MONEY from the Adventurers' Guild, so how was his ideals any more noble than the Workers'? So it's only okay for Ainz himself to get motivated by money but not others?

Look. That scene wasn't Ainz giving the Workers a "chance". There was never going to be a correct answer. If the Workers had answered "Justice" instead of "Money", Ainz would have coldly thought to himself that if the Workers' justice was about ganging up on the weak, then he would do the same too. They would still have died no matter what answer they gave Ainz.

And what's this about the Workers lying? At first, they were willing to negotiate and pay compensation once they realized the tomb wasn't occupied by mindless undead, but Ainz refused flatly. He gave them no options except to die. So they tried to escape their fate by lying. I would say that's noble behavior in the face of certain death.

I mean, come on. We are all members of NU and we have read countless novels where characters would shamelessly push their companions in harm's way or sacrifice their subordinates' lives just to buy extra time. Instead, the Workers chose to tell a harmless white lie.

Can't blame them for trying. The one person to blame was Ainz because

Spoiler

he's the ultimate mastermind who ordered the Workers into the tomb in the first place.

And someone mentioned that the planned invasion of the tomb was necessary because it was the "best plan"?

No it wasn't. Because that plan happened due to a misunderstanding back during Season 1. Ainz was admiring the scenery but the dumbass demon NPC who was with him though that Ainz wanted to take over the world instead. In fact, Ainz's original plan was to exist as a hero among the humans. And just make money.

But because he's actually not an intelligent person* and pretty weak-willed, he adopted his NPC's plan instead because he's afraid that his own NPC might get fed up and leave him. I really can't admire him for that. He wasn't really being ruthless for the sake of his guild. He was just afraid of offending an NPC and therefore went along with a dumb plan.

* According to the wikia, the original player of Ainz only had elementary level education. Iirc.

 

Actually, he can afford to do things half-assed. Because he and his NPCs are too overpowered. Like I explained in an earlier post, the Workers' deaths were unnecessary. He could have just chose to exist peacefully because nobody could hurt him.

 

Ainz himself never liked the Plan of inviting Workers he went along with it since he wanted a cause, knowing full well it may lead to the death of People, however Workers are not Adventurers, while the Guild has rules on what can and can't be done workers are free to do whatever they want, also Ainz was not going on Adventures for money, he did it to raise his Fame.

In the Novel there was a scene at the Campfire where Ainz as Momon fought the old spear dude and made one last "warning" against going. Never said Ainz was good but its not a evil thing to do, they were in his way, invaded the Tomb, did not turn away from the Gold in the Outskirts that was left unguarded and then tried to insinuate that they were friends of his Guild Member.
You phrase it like everything is his fault, sorry but in the End it still was the greed the gave way to the Situation, if you want to blame someone blame Demiurge, who made the Plan up and convinced AInz it was the best way.

He is already quiete neutral enough considering how Evil his Alignment was in Game, this was just a result of having no Empathy for Humans and wanting to make Nazerick stand tall.

 

3 points I would like to make here.

#1. Ainz was trying to make money.

Yeah, he was going on adventures to raise his fame AND make money. Remember, it was decided that he couldn't spend gold that was from the original game as the purity was too high or something. He needed money of this world. And there's this scene of him counting money at the inn, when he's working as an adventurer.

Also, remember when he tried to save money by refusing to have a magical portrait taken at the guild? During registration or something? Yeah, money was definitely important to him at that time. He was trying to gain fame too, of course, but don't make out like he was so noble that he didn't care for money.

And are you implying that if the Workers had answered "Fame", Ainz would have thought better of them?

#2. Did the Workers really have a choice?

As for rules... Look, if you look at the story with a critical eye, you would realize that the Workers have their own circumstances and rules too. Can the big names in the game really turn down a high profile assignment from a noble? Can individual groups afford NOT to go when all the others are going? Remember, unlike the adventurers who are like employees of a legit corporation, the Workers are more like freelancers doing ad hoc assignments, and they are heavily dependent on the kindness of a limited number of employers.

I get the impression that Workers don't really get many opportunities to make good money for decent causes. After all, large profitable extermination quests sponsored by kingdoms and such would usually go to the adventurers, right? So when a noble suddenly announced a decent quest, namely the exploration of a tomb where there might be undeads lurking around, what reason did they have to turn that down? They weren't asked to exterminate a village or rob merchants, right?

The circumstances of the workers reminded me of an unsolved crime in Singapore. Back during the 60s or 70s, several nightclub hostesses were hired to work at a ship party and after boarding the ship, they were never seen again. There were many who said that the hostesses had a choice, and if they had any suspicions about the party, they should not have boarded that ship.

But did they really have a choice? Nightclub hostesses didn't have any sort of union to protect their rights. And like the Workers, they depended heavily on the kindness of despicable strangers. If they had refused an assignment given out by a big shot, that could kill them. Slowly. They would have been banned from working at many nightclubs. They would have starved to death unless they chose to risk their lives by working the streets, instead of nightclubs.

So what Ainz did was this. He picked on a group of undocumented workers, made them an offer they couldn't refuse and sent them to their deaths. While pretending he's really reluctant about the whole thing.

#3. Ainz's warnings.

He gave ample warnings to the Workers? So the Workers had it coming, huh?

Yeah, warnings. Really half-hearted ones. Kinda like a comically weak mom you see on TV sometimes.

"Uh... erm... Greg, stop strangling the cat. Okay, I warned you. Bye Greg. Bye cat."

Come on, huh? If he truly wanted to warn the Workers against coming to the Tomb, truly really wanted to avoid the planned invasion, then why didn't he just summon a Dark Young and make it prance around in front of the vastly inferior Workers? That would have scared them shitless. Would have worked far better than some vague warning.

Or, he could have summoned one of his guardians, have it blast away a mountain or something. That too would have worked better than some vague warning.

That reminds me of a scene from some forgotten Chinese novel. School setting. One of the cowardly characters wanted to see his rival get beaten up by the main character. But he's also a school prefect or something like that. So the cowardly prefect compromised by telling the MC that he would be "disappointed" if MC hit the rival guy, knowing full well that the MC didn't give a damn about his feelings.

But saying that "I would be disappointed" speech made the Cowardly Prefect looked somewhat responsible while achieving zero result at the same time.

And in conclusion?

Look. Many fans of the series are mesmerized by Ainz's powers but, really, that's the only thing going for him. He has a bland character, that's easily influenced by his subordinates. He lacks brains because if he did have 2 brain cells to rub together, he would have known that overly complicated plans are unnecessary when you have the power to stroll into a kingdom after breakfast and declare yourself king right before lunch.

I mean, figures don't lie, right? 70,000 dead in that battle. Just from one spell. So why go through all the "plotting" for the pretend Tomb Invasion? To sex up his resume as a Dark Lord? To make himself look smart?

Now, if the author really wanted a regular salaryman to play the role of Ainz, then Dwight from The Office would have made a better choice. The current player behind Ainz would have been relegated to the role of "faceless dock worker" in that TV series. Without his powers, he's just that bland.

 

The main reason that Ainz didn't like the Workers plan was because he hated the idea of letting people break into his home with the intention of stealing his things and killing his children. He doesn't feel anything when he kills people. He just doesn't want to do it unless it advances his plans. Oh, and Ainz's primary reason for the Momon personality is to gather information. He needed to know how the world worked and what threats were out there above and beyond any other objective.

I think that you have the wrong idea of what Overlord is about. It's not a story about Aniz and Nazarick taking over the world or overcoming enemies. It's actually a story about a man who is in over his head trying to take care of his kids. Ainz's main goals are: first, to ensure the security of Nazarick and it's inhabitants; second, to contact any of his guildmates that may be in this world; third, to find any other players that may be in the world; fourth, to discover any threats that are dangerous enough to pose a threat; and fifth, to not disappoint the kids.

And there are threats out there - the fact that Shalltear was mind-controlled proved that they existed, and that Yggdrasil's World-class items exist. With this knowledge, Aniz has acted cautiously at every turn; being careful to never reveal too much information about themselves and to protect themselves from any other World-class items or players out there.

The primary draw for the story is that we have a salaryman who has no real idea what he's doing and getting his plans dictated by what the denizens of Nazarick want to do and what they aspire to. The whole conquering the world thing was originally Demiurge's idea, and Ainz is only half-hearted about it.

 

Well duh, he's an undead so how can he have a heart

Spoiler: Sasuga Ainz-sama

Both physically and mentally. And the anime sucks. The 13 volumes of light novel was probably the best story I've ever read.