If you want a more standard grimdark about bad guy main character pillaging and conquering with his army of Demons, I guess Overlord is for you.
I found OddTaxi to be far more emotionally mature than Overlord though. But Overlord hits at the more immediately obvious bad guy wins tropes.
I don’t consider Overlord to be of masterpiece quality. But it does scratch the itch
I still say OddTaxi is worth it. It’s probably darker than you think it is. I’d argue that most of the characters in OddTaxi were smarter and better written than Death Note even (the intelligence level of Death Note was basically ‘I know something you don’t know’. Meanwhile in OddTaxi, the flaws of each perspective makes far more sense and nuance)
Overlord purposely flips the script. Every new arch a new set of heroes is introduced and then BRUTALLY MURDERED by the demons / in the glory of Ains Opal Gown. You watch the steady progress as this group of villains takes over the new world under the name of the God of Death, Overlord of Undeath.
The joy of Overlord for me is how hard the author reverse engineers villainous monologues or other stereotypical effects. Ains places gold at the top of his base to test the greed of the heroes. They took the money yet continue to explore, clearly they’re greedy pigs and liars who must be destroyed. If they were only invading his home dungeon for the money, they should have been satisfied with the riches on the first floor yet they explore deeper. They must be punished.
I don’t live there.
But my opinion of the place is that it’s wildly diverse. Each of the 7000+ islands has its own history, culture and “dialect” which is really its own damn language.
With political winds today making the choice between Duterte and Marcos, I’m not entirely sure if picking the fascist is necessarily the worse choice either. As an outsider looking in, there’s two deeply troubling candidates full of corruption, contempt and horrifying ideologies.
But most Filipinos I know are non-political. Mostly worn out by the corruption and in a state of learned helplessness. I don’t think that’s necessarily NeoNazi or whatever.
There is also the issue that the Filipino identity is under attack by these cultural islands. Being incredibly pro-Filipino identity isnt necessarily a bad thing. It really depends on how specific they get. Someone can be ultra-nationalist but pro-unity.
I don’t think a Western term like NeoNazi could ever truly apply to the Filipinos. The politics over there just really doesn’t line up on that axis. I wouldn’t be surprised if it existed on one of the specific islands though.
Like seriously: who is the NeoNazi? Marcos or Duterte? Both have their elements that can sorta apply.
My mom and dad literally don’t understand each other’s native dialect. And they are just a few islands apart (and still on the Catholic islands on the Northern half of the country). How can anyone generalize on a nation like that?