Summary
Kadokawa surprised fans with an animated short that combined Overlord and The Eminence in Shadow, following an April Fool’s joke. Both shows have manga adaptations in Kadokawa’s Comp Ace magazine, allowing for a crossover to take place. The crossover opens up the possibility for future crossover comedies and further uses of The Eminence in Shadow characters.
October 31 brought a surprise gift to fans of the isekai genre, as Kadokawa released an anime short in which the cast of hegemony And Excellence in the dark meet. The two shows, which already have super-deformed spin-offs, are a natural combination. Perhaps what’s more surprising is that the anime follows up on what was believed to be an April Fool’s joke made earlier this year.
Both stories had manga adaptations that appeared in Kadokawa’s Comp Ace magazine, which is how both actors were allowed to appear in this 10-minute short. Of course, Ainz Ooal Gown and Cid Kagenou both have more in common, which may be why the April Fool’s Prank that introduced the crossover ended up becoming an actual anime.
Crossing that line could also mean more opportunities for Eminence characters to appear in further crossover comedies. Both Overlord and The Eminence in Shadow are among the best isekai anime streaming today, so this combination is a great treat for fans of the genre.
The April Fool’s joke comes to life in this exciting meeting of the Edgelords
The video, which is free to watch on the Kadoakawa Anime Channel on YouTube, shows Cide and Ainz switching their minds, and thus facing their partners’ group of dangerous women, the Pleiades or Seven Shades. Although the video has no subtitles, the jokes write themselves: both series involve main characters with mundane inner thoughts, playing dark, mysterious masterminds, a role eagerly accepted by an inner circle, who took their name from the Greek Alphabet. It’s perhaps fitting that both series have attracted a fan base, entertaining audiences with the humor of misunderstandings involving overpowered villains.
Officially, these super deformed designs come from the anime spin-offs, Overlord: Pleasure Pleiades and Kage-jitsu!, which are character-focused comedy shorts and are mostly an excuse to watch the cast joked. The crossover was initially teased in an April Fools’ joke, which featured a “fake” poster for the crossover. At the time, the crossover, while delightfully niche, was seen as little more than a pipe dream – the poster even had a supposed release date of “April 2138” to say It is clear that the project did not take place. However, Kadokawa apparently thought the joke was too good to pass up, leading to its official creation.
The crossover could lead to some interesting consequences in the future. Overlord’s characters have been used frequently in several previous crossover comedies, notably Isekai Quartet in 2019, which ran for two seasons. Eminence in Shadow checks all the same boxes that the previous crossover did, and with this April Fool’s joke no longer a joke, there’s nothing really stopping the characters from being used further. With any luck, this could mean more crossover gag games in the works, only the sky (and Kadokawa’s portfolio) is the limit in terms of locations hegemony And Excellence in the dark may appear next
Source: YouTube (Kadoakawa Anime Channel)