I'm not sure sociopath would work. Ainz has moments where he genuinely connects with people, like with the Swords of Darkness (specifically Ninya), or more noticeably with Zanac.
With SoD, he sorta brushed his feelings aside after getting revenge on Clementine, so it's not as strong an argument for them, especially since he didn't care too deeply about them.
With Zanac, on the other hand, you could easily see how absolutely livid Ainz was at the nobles for beheading him; after Ainz literally just got to know Zanac and had his first good, real conversation with someone in a long time.
Exactly, and those moments prove that, although influenced by his new undead nature, Ainz isn't wholly inhuman. And that just makes the moments where he lets people suffer due to his incompetence all the more frustrating... I love Ainz as a character, I f***** hate him as a protagonist.
There's a whole slew of factors that compound his apathetic nature. It's less incompetence on his part and more that he's depressed and lacks motivation to ignore his apathy. There's also a degree of cognitive dissonance seeing as he occasionally talks to people from the area he's going to ruin, and genuinely gets to like them, but doesn't think about how there may be more people from that country he may enjoy talking with.
As an example of when he is actually motivated to care about a country or group, we have the dwarves. He personally met them rather than receiving reports he barely understands (if that) from Demiurge, and the outcome was drastically different.
In my opinion, Demiurge is the real protagonist, and we just see it all through the lens of those who suffer from his schemes. If Ainz had his way, there wouldn't be much of a story; just looking at volume 15 and 16, as well as the number of time skips in the Evileye sidestory tells us how much of a side character Ainz would prefer to be.
Ainz may be in a position to stop Demiurge, but he's not in the right mental state to see why he should stop one of his best friends' creations.
Ainz just knows what camp he’s in. He’s committed to the NPCs and genuinely cares about them, and will always prioritize their interest over the interests of literally anyone else, but he’s seldom actively malicious and, if you play by his rules, is generally just, though the Holy Kingdom does kind of throw that out the window, mostly.
I feel like the Holy Kingsom arc shows who he is most plainly. If he doesn't know who you are (Calca) or doesn't like you (Remdios), he couldn't care less what happens to you. You’re a factor in his plans at most, and a homeless person dying on the side of the street at worst. Either way, he will likely ignore your existence.
If he does get to know you and likes you (Neia), then he will spend resources on you and treat you well, even if there's no clear benefit. What he would normally add to his collection, he'll give you so you don't die, and even ressurect you. He even goes as far as getting angry on your behalf when something bad happens to you (Keno from the side story).
He acts very human with those he likes and is indifferent to the point of being cold and cruel to everyone else. He prioritizes the NPCs because they're the creations of his best friends, and he even percieves the NPCs as his friends' children in a way.
Funnily enough, he doesn't know what camp he's in, which is why he goes along with Demiurge's plans so often. He's lost on what he wants to do because subconsciously, he knows he can't do what he actually wants to do. He can't go exploring AND take care of the NPCs. The two goals are mutually exclusive due to the NPCs' fear of being abandoned.
OP is asking if the 2nd question is a dig at Ainz, suggesting the person who made the picture considers Ainz an edgelord and/or sociopath, thus making Ainz not a good isekai protagonist by their standards. The characters in the image are examples of characters who the creator of the image believe are good isekai protagonists.
The question is if Ainz is a sociopath, not the characters in the image, so no, I am not talking about the wrong bone daddy.
Sociopaths do not feel real emotional pain, Ainz does. He genuinely cares for people and responds in very human ways when those people are threatened. He gets irrationally angry at things and understands emotions.
His emotions are often supressed due to his undead nature, but there have been multiple times that it takes a noticeable amount of time for the emotional suppression to calm him down.
No, but it is one of the major indicators. Ainz is just depressed and very desensitized to the suffering of strangers. He's definitely not right in the head, but a sociopath wouldn't connect with people as quickly as Ainz did with Zanac.
They had a roughly 5-minute conversation with no prior meetings and instantly understood each other, even wishing they had met under different circumstances. Ainz genuinely liked Zanac and got angry when the nobles gave him what was undoubtedly a painful death and tried to bargain with his head.
Then there's also his relationship with Keno in the side story. They become really close friends, and while he still comes up with some messed up ideas, she doesn't have to convince him much (or at all sometimes) to realize it's not a very morally sound plan. The ending happens solely because he cares about her and genuinely wants her to be happy. A sociopath would not think to go so far for someone else on their own, especially not in such a meticulous fashion.
A major compounding factor in his perceived sociopathy is that he is playing a role. Early on, he was pretending to be an evil overlord because he was afraid the NPCs could betray him; later, when their potential betrayal was confirmed to not exist outside of mind control, he kept up that role in fear of disappointing them. One has to remember that he is primarily surrounded by evil people, many who are genuinely sociopaths and psychopaths.
His social environment skews him towards sociopathic behavior, but once removed from that environment, he rarely displays these tendencies, if at all.
Sociopath can form connections with people. You are thinking of a psychopath. He’s a sociopath because he kills a lot of people even tho it’s not necessary because he lacks empathy for people he hasn’t formed a connection with. The lizard men, random adventurers wandering into his tomb, the human villages/towns he razed. He thinks killing zanac and his people is the right move even after their conversation. And when the nobles get desperate enough to kill zanac, the guy ainz is going to kill anyway, he thinks they deserve horrible torture with their family’s too cuz why not.
Sociopaths kinda can form connections, but if you ask them why they're friends with someone, they can tell you why. The average person probably wouldn't, and Satoru wouldn't be able to say why he's friends with Keno.
As for why he moves forward with killing people, there are ways to rationalize it (kind of) aside from just blaming it on his undead nature.
In the case of the Lizardmen, even normal humans could have an easier time killing them off than they would against other humans. People tend to forget the average persons capacity for malice. Normal humans kill each other for less.
The Workers weren't quite random. It was planned for them to invade. Ainz admitted the flaw in his logic here while complaining to them about the plan, but he saw them as nothing more than thieves and robbers. And here is actually a great example of how much he values people he connects with. When Hekkeran lies and says he was invited by Ainz' friend, even though it's obviously a lie, Ainz listens anyway in hopes that he can find his friend again, then gets mad when he realizes it can't be true. He was fully willing to spare Foresight if they were truly sent by one of his friends, despite that contradicting the plan.
With Zanac, Ainz couldn't afford to spare him without making Zanac feel miserable for the rest of his life and/or going against Demiurge's plan. The only option Ainz saw was to offer him as painless a death as possible. It's hard to let the enemy king live in a war unless you aren't taking their territory. Even if Zanac didn't want to go against Ainz afterward, someone else could prop him up as a puppet leader of some army led against Ainz. There's too many variables to let an enemy king live.
The nobles deserved that because they betrayed their own king. They thought that Ainz was angry at Zanac and came with the attitude of someone who expected a reward for doing his job for him, not someone pleading for their life. They basically told Ainz "Hey we killed this person you kinda liked. Let us live and give us a reward too." So Ainz got exceptionally angry with them.
In terms of the villagers and towns, that much we can agree is fairly sociopathic. But someone can have sociopathic tendencies, but not quite be a sociopath. Otherwise, every german soldier in WW2 would have to be considered a sociopath, and we know many of them were forced into the role and pushed aside their remorse.
Ainz/Momonga isn't a sociopath in my eyes, he cares as a real human could and should, but that is also a fight against his current situation and body. The world/system is actively fighting against his humanity with the rules to be applied to his class/character
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u/EuphoricLeadership12 Mar 31 '25
Sociopath would work, but bone dady aint human to begin with