However, the story thus far under-delivers on the Overlord aspect.
That's because he is not an 'Overlord'. He is still the same Erdrick put into some unfortunate circumstances, like being turned into a non-human and seeing what his righteous crusade looks like from the other side.
Even from our interactions with Rin and get father, we can see that demons are way more than 'lol evulz.'
Exactly. Being an Overlord is something more than being some dude born with horns growing out of his helmet. They have a motive and a reason for becoming what they have become, not because one day they woke up and decided that they want to crank EVULZ up to 11. If we ever get to a place where we casually torture people because we like it, I'd rather it have more justification than 'but all the cool kids are doing it'!
Certainly he may be viewed by whoever crosses his path as an avatar or death, destruction, and fair maiden seduction sent by Hell itself to plague the Universe, but in fact he is just another dude who got where he is by his own choices. There may be no 'Overlords' in a sense that you attribute to the word, some inherintly malign beings who simply have to have a certain code of villainy in order to be considered one (going by your words of 'under-delivery').
Can we agree that Erdrick participates directly in the torture in some capacity to explore his new feelings of bloodlust?
I am not very interested in it, just as I would not be interested in exploring our Shinji-sexual nature if we ever come to discover it.
The character is libidinous and lazy, so the argument that he's good at suppressing his new desires is a non-starter.
But this has nothing to do with his established set of desires and his libido. This is developing a new vice, and the one I find distasteful and unnecessary. A hedonist might have indulged in it more willingly, but I don't see Erdrick doing it just to try out a new sensation.
If we are forced into doing bloody acts over and over again I can see him gradually coming to enjoy it, but plunging into a bloody chaos of his own volition? Nah. The slaughter of
formerly fellow humans still bothers us.
I do not want to hurry and get rid of what is left of our humanity, because for me that is what makes the character compelling.
He does not do self-restraint by definition, as that would be spiritual and effortful.
Self-restraint is the act of
not doing something. I think you are twisting a few definitions here.
so can we agree that he makes a beeline to the nearest human village soon with his gobbo minions and enslaves some human girls to pleasure him?
I don't know. Why did he never do that when he was a hero, or an academy student? What has changed?
Surely, he is not being imagined as the world's greatest womanizer who just happens to be monogamously chaste for the next 100 pages
I don't see why not. Being a womanizer is his self-image, after all.
Oh, and 100 pages is way too optimistic. The most pimp protagonist we played, Man Tiger Pig, went for longer than that. Young people just have no stamina nowadays.
Me, I find the idea of your average pervert student suddenly finding himself on Sauron throne and having to manage Mordor with his old sensibilities much more hilarious and engaging than a hero turning into your stock mongolian warlord the moment all inhibitors were removed. If that was what he secretly wanted all along, why did he choose a career of a scholar and not of a bandit or mercenary?