Written by: Ansel Dhungana - 22018, Grade XI
Posted on: 27 December, 2020
Suzuki Satoru is the protagonist of the novel series Overlord. Overlord is a dark fantasy novel. Here, he is an undead that is similar to a skeleton with no flesh or skin. He has dull white bones and his eye sockets have red dots. He has a variety of clothes that he wears on a daily basis but his default battle gear remains the same. He has a red orb that floats in the stomach region. He wears a black robe over his body and head. He also has large shoulder pads that look like horns. Each of his ten fingers has a ring.
Suzuki was formerly from a dystopian future in a world set in 2138. It was a world where mega-corporations controlled everything. Education was made expensive so that only rich people could educate their children hence only their children could get high-paying jobs. His dad had died when Suzuki was very young and his mother had worked herself to death when he was in elementary school. Ever since then he had worked. Seeing dead children on his way to and from work was normal. He had no friends and family. The only thing he looked forward to after work was to play a virtual MMO game, using a chip implanted in his brain which everybody had, called Yggdrasil. He had made many friends in the game. They had gone on many adventures together as a guild and during their peak, they were ranked 9th among the world leaderboards. Their guild was named Ainz Ooal Gown and Suzuki was the guild master. There were conditions to be a member of the guild. They were:-
The in-game characters had to be of a heteromorphic race, which humanoid players got no penalties for killing.
The players had to be a functioning member of society.
Because of that most of his friends left the game due to work. He was alone yet he treasured the guild base and the NPCs that his friends made.
On the last day of the game, he had invited all the members for one last raid but only one player Herohero came. Since they couldn’t raid with just two players, they just chatted. Suzuki learned that Herohero had been overworking and wanted to rest. Although Suzuki wanted Herohero to remain with him till the server shut down, he reluctantly bade him farewell and waited for the server shutdown. Even after the server shutdown time had passed, he wasn’t forced to log out.
He then discovered that he and the guild base( Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick) both had been transported to a new fantasy world where magic exists. The NPCs made by his friends had come to life with their own souls and revered Ainz as a supreme being and the Overlord of Nazarick, a being who could do nothing wrong and his word was law. Their personalities and interactions with other NPCs matched that of the owners. This reminded Suzuki of his friends and not wanting to disappoint his friends’ children he adopts the role of a supreme overlord.
What is interesting and special about this character is not how he progresses as a character but how he affects the new world and the people in it. As soon as he came to the new world, he found out that the people of this world were way weaker than him and his NPCs yet he was very paranoid. Due to a series of misunderstandings, he acted as the overlord of Nazarick. The NPCs also assumed a speech given by him as a hint towards world domination. The NPCs worked hard for him to establish a country from which they could proceed to world domination. This causes humans and other beings in the new world to hate Suzuki. What Suzuki does is also not good. He lets most of the tasks be handled by NPCs and the NPCs are evil so they find the most sadistic ways to complete the missions assigned to them.
Suzuki Satoru is an interesting character and special to me because he is the villain of the story in a genre populated by Good Samaritan protagonists that do good to everybody. This is a break from other protagonists of the same genre.
