Main Character in Another World: Ainz Ooal Gown AKA Momonga

It’s weird to think that isekai used to be intertwined with video game anime. A few years back, every isekai show was just trying to be SAO. Honestly, I like the change. Truck-kun is far more charismatic than Headset-chan.

MMOs are home to some pretty lively communities. You’ve got casual players, friendly players, hardcore PVP players, and of course: the sadistic players. The kinda players who get their kicks out of making their characters as strong as possible and making themselves the villain of someone else’s gameplay.

Unfortunately for the world of Overlord, it was one of these players that landed in their midst.

Momonga – or Ainz Ooal Gown, as he prefers to be known – is an entirely different beast from most isekai protagonists. No generic dark-haired teenager here. This dude is a salaryman turned skeletal lord of all evil!

Let’s get one thing straight: Ainz is not the hero of this story. He’s just the protagonist. Sure, he does some good every now and then. But compared to the evil he and his minions are capable of, a few good deeds here and there really doesn’t mean much.

He’s basically experimenting with his god-like powers. Both as Ainz Ooal Gown, lord of Nazarick and would-be ruler of the world, and as his alter-ego Momonga, the all-powerful adventurer, he’s basically just pushing the world he finds himself in as far as it can go.

This is partly because his emotions are suppressed and regulated by the left over systems of the game he came from. Fear, anger, regret, guilt, he couldn’t feel them even if he tried. Thanks to that, he can commit all kinds of sinister deeds that would make any other protagonist vomit without so much as batting a skeletal eye.

Yet Ainz isn’t a cartoonishly evil megalomaniac. For one: he’s making it all up as he goes along. Despite what his minions might think, he’s not an all-powerful master planner, always fifteen steps ahead of everyone else. Dude is just doing whatever he can think of and hopes it works out. Man is the definition of “fake it ’till you make it.”

Which it usually does. Funny how being an invincible super wizard will do that.

It isn’t like Ainz is completely heartless. He loves all the denizens of Nazarick like family. Evil as he is, he treats them with a gentle and nurturing hand. As much as Albedo and the others may throw themselves at him sexually, he’ll never reciprocate their advances, as doing so would be disrespectful to them, as well as to his friends who originally made them.

All of this makes Ainz a very interesting and unpredictable protagonist. You never really know if he’s about to do something good or mind-bendingly horrible. He’s got all the hallmarks of an isekai hero, but with a darker, more compelling twist.

That being said, I don’t think he quite stacks up to the only other protagonist currently on this list. While Ainz is interesting, he doesn’t have all that much depth in terms of his backstory. Not to mention that him being so utterly overpowered gets pretty boring after a while.

Still, he’s a step up from the usual fare. Chances are, he’ll settle into the #2 spot for a good long while.

1. Natsuki Subaru (Re:ZERO)
2. Ainz Ooal Gown (Overlord)