Anime: Goblin Slayer 6j3517

The controversial one this season, though most might have just expected something different.

It's a dark fantasy series focussing on traumatised people and how they deal and function in a world beset by monsters. Telling a story of that sort well is quite a feat, let alone in a genre so in love with tropes, but it pulls it off surprisingly smoothly. Just like real trauma, there are no easy ways out and what really helps are time and a solid network of good people, which is exactly what the protagonist gets as he slowly regains his humanity.

Of course, to regain humanity, it has to be lost first. The series throws it out quite promptly in the first episode, involving lots of violence and a rape scene, so trigger warning for whom it may concern. The gore may be slightly above average for a modern action series but the show never revels in its displays of violence. They're grim, not gratuitous. The rape scene itself is also grim, but not very graphic. On a visual level the act is simply implied, but that just heightens the impact in my opinion - which might be offputting, but that's kind of the point. A point it achieves at getting across quite well.

The direction was just very impressive in general, some of the shots were just so smartly and artfully done that I was outright stunned. Not something I'm used to in my fantasy action series. Or most any anime to be honest.

Personally though, I thought the hightlight of the show was the protagonist's methodical way of fighting. No power systems, no training montages, just observation and preparation, preparation, preparation. Very nice surprise.

That's the anime in a nutshell, a constant surprise, but always a good one.

tl,dr: Think Violet Evergarden's little brother, with less ghostwriting and more goblin murdering.

Review
It seems gore is a very impactful factor when creating hype over light novel adaptations. Multiple shows filled with blood and deaths try to build upon the concept of despair, sense of imminent danger, and a harsh reality permeating the world where the story takes place. Yet, for as much as these shows try, most of the them end up sliding towards the typical standards of the industry, such as deres, boring male leads, siscon, lolis, or any other disgusting thing poisoning the media. We got Re:Zero, Akame ga Kill, Muv-Luv and a few others which initially seemed as a show about death and survival, yet ended up being about dating sims, typical shounens, or annoying ecchis.

Goblin Slayer is the newest member of such group. Initially, this is a show about a young adventurer, a cleric, trying her luck against some goblins with a few other young and vibrant friends. Reality, however, is deadly and the group is ambushed, slaughtered and raped in front of our cute cleric. This is the entry scene for the Goblin Slayer, a veteran hero whose life purpose has been hunting and killing goblins.

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1. That is a very good start
   The initial impact of Goblin Slayer is impressive. Although this formula of butchering and raping people randomly is not exactly new (we had Grimgar, Ga-rei: Zero, Re: Zero, and a few others), the show manages to deliver these scenes with an amazing impact to the viewers, cutting scenes just at the right moments to leave the bloody gore to our imaginations, yet showing enough to make it stick. The cleric and her group are hopeless against the horde of goblins and even when the Goblin Slayer shows up, he is not exactly overpowered, he is just a guy who is prepared and packed with experience about the how to deal with the little critters.
   
   Yet...
   The real deal here is showing the Goblin Slayer, a guy whose life purpose is killing goblins, eternally avenging his family. Although he could be doing quests with higher danger and rewards, his decision is only, and always, accept any quests about goblins. He is a masked guy, silent, whose skills were honed to that specific purpose.
   
   Sadly though, this is not much to go on with a show. In fact, it doesn't take long for Goblin Slayer to show its true colors: a generic medieval MMO-based fantasy. Yup. Character classes, elves, dwarves, cutie girls, quests, skills, etc. At times it evokes some D&D aura, such as making spellcasters having a limited amount of spells per day, but the common sensation is that of a generic MMO show as we have seen in these last half-a-dozen years. It doesn't help when everyone is quite generic and without a decent purpose to exist such as our protagonist.
   
   And it ends up being full of ass-pulls
   Our lead is a master goblin slayer. He is a guy forged to kill the little green horrors and knows a lot about them. The adventure, however, quickly moves to throw him in the face of occasional bigger monsters, some whom he never faced before and capable of wiping his experienced allies, yet he is always ready to ass-pull some convenient spell scroll, tactic, or just luck to save the day. It goes in a completely opposite way as the first episode, becoming a show of an immortal super-hero instead of a guy specialized in a single task.
   
   And it also smells like a dating sim
   The Goblin Slayer is a boring guy, a psycho who sleeps, eats, and piss while thinking about goblins. He doesn't even take his helm off. A silent guy for a freak purpose. Yet, yes, you know the drill, all girls are a hundred percent horny about him from the get-go. Our cleric? Yes, she wants to bang him. The farmer girl? Sure, she is the childhood friend. The guild receptionist? Yup, want to take him to bed. What about the cutie elf? Sure, why not? She wants him to explore her. It later gets some absurdity with a big-boobs high priestess with nipples so hard their shapes are visible through her garment. Of course, she wants to bang our masked guy too.
   
   Yes. Every girl in the show quickly starts to act shy, make some remarks about how awesome and manly he is, or downright act as horny teens wishing to see what is under that heavy armor. When this happens, it doesn't matter how much gore is thrown at us, it will always end up looking like a glorified dating sim of dubious quality.
   
   It's also boring to look at
   When there's no gore and rape, Goblin Slayer seems like more of the same. The character design is great in the marketing material, but plain and boring in the animation, with most characters having armors and outfits with no detail at all. The girls look generic. The CG model of our protagonist feel out of place at most scenes. There are also many scenes with the quality of an hentai work, which means laziness in coloring and lack of proportions with people with little or no clothes at all.
   
   When there's despair the show gets thing right a bit, with dark rooms, expressive eyes, and a decent sound direction. A pity it happens far too rarely.
   

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Comments
I don't know the deal with White Fox studio. Their style is completely wrong to animate this kind of show. Since Akame Ga Kill it was obvious that they can't maintain the sense of despair, fear, and a theme of survival for more than a few seconds. They like to make their characters generic, their works have little attention to detail, and in medieval fantasy shows the details are crucial, otherwise it ends up just looking like a half-assed job. Goblin Slayer is that and a bit more. In fact, it seems the studio gave much less effort into making dreadful scenes than in Re:Zero.

Goblin Slayer was a repeat of Akame ga Kill from a few years earlier. Just the edgy flavor of the season it aired in, a poorly crafted gorefest for edgelords who overhyped it for, supposedly, breaking some stereotype in the most farcical manner possible. In this case, it’s breaking the stereotype of never showing rape in animated form. Let’s completely disregard the prevalence of rape within numerous light novel adaptations, where one-dimensional evil rapists frequently serve as the stock antagonists in modern anime, all for the sake of making the bland protagonist to come off as heroic by comparison.

Also, can we please stop calling a show mature as long as it has rape? Unless you honestly think that is the only thing that made 90s Berserk as good as it was. Can we also not place this trash anywhere near the level of dark fantasy that was Berserk? The character designs alone are enough to make that clear. Berserk had characters who looked and behaved like they were organically situated within a medieval world. In Goblin Slayer you were never given the impression you were watching a dark fantasy because everyone looked and behaved like cosplayers in some crappy high school slapstick otaku comedy.

The show was full of cute girls blushing, puffing their cheeks, and being playful. Is that what you expect to see in dark fantasy? There was a part where an army of monsters led by an undead king were about to sacrifice naked women, and the whole thing was thwarted by the intervention of three silly-looking girls with hair ribbons and cat-ear hoodies. How could you take any of that seriously? Especially when they were not treated as comedy.

As for the portrayal of rape, the only thing people the show for, it became a controversial topic because half the people called it necessary for establishing the grim setting, while half the other half called it unnecessary because it was presented as gratuitous. They were both right, because Goblin Slayer wanted to keep the cake and eat it too. It was like a war movie that wanted to show the horrors of war, while simultaneously making war to look like the coolest shit ever. You can’t be over the top in both sides of the argument and expect to be taken seriously.

Also, anyone who somehow still thinks this show was not using rape in a tasteless titillating way, it was depicted with alarming frequency and graphic detail even when it could be kept out of screen with the same result. It was also described in detail by a woman even when the protagonist didn’t care to find out. Also the camera was constantly zooming on jiggling boobs and asses instead of hiding the women behind the goblins surrounding them. You can’t deny the facts.

It’s great for a show to spend time with the protagonist’s tragic past and to not shy away from dealing with such tragic subjects. But when it’s done mostly through graphical rape or the narration of a bimbo with bouncing boobs, it destroys all sense of dramatization. Trying to be funny and sad at the same time causes mood whiplash, transforming moments of supposed tragedy into tasteless spectacle. I can say the same thing for the protagonist. He is supposed to be a faceless badass everyone would love to self-insert and mercilessly kill any stinking goblin he comes across. Why do you have him killing innocent goblin babies? Why are you adding moral ambiguity to a show that is supposed to be a mindless power fantasy? The creators had no idea what they were going for.

It was not even consistent in of dramatization, since in the early episodes the other adventurers looked down on the protagonist for only going after silly looking goblins. And then they contradict that claim by:
-Having every single girl in the show exhibiting an inexplicable attraction toward a guy who only wants to kill goblins and who will never respond to their romantic innuendoes.
-Having every other male in the show lusting over his harem bimbos, while he doesn’t even notice them. That was supposed to make him sympathetic to the incel crowd.
-Having everyone agreeing to fight goblins, not because they threatened the cities with their great numbers but because they were paid to do it. That made it sound like they were in it only for the money, before contradicting that claim by showing how they fought the goblins because the protagonist (the very same person they made fun of during the whole show) asked them politely and they felt sorry for the guy.
- For some reason nobody had any idea how to fight the weakest monsters in the land and needed to be taught basic battle tactics by the guy they made fun of.
-All men were amazed with how handsome he was and all women wanted his D. The same people that were making fun of him for being the loser who was only fighting goblins.

And I need to point out how terrible the exposition was.
- The adventurers talked about the protagonist as if they saw him for the first time, when in reality he was going to the same place as them, every day for over a decade.
- The way magic or traps work were shown and explained for the first time as they happened on screen. It’s as if they didn’t exist before, and nobody (not even the characters using them) knew about them and needed to be taught on the spot, instead of being aware of their own equipment before they used it.
-There was a 2000 year old elf, so wise and mature to the point she acted like a 10 year old school girl with a crush on a man, for being autistic and not caring about her. She otherwise didn’t know basic things about her own world and needed everything to be explained to her.
- Despite the numerous infodumps, the only thing we learned about the characters is limited to character class, race, and of course how fuckable they are.
-There was a sorceress who utilized her ample bosom as a repository for magical artifacts.
-There was a priestess who described in detail how she was raped, with no reason to say it at that point in the story. It was thrown in there at the most awkward moment as deviant fan service. And to top it all off, she then begged the protagonist to help her in a way that was basically saying “please fuck me so I can get over the fact I got raped”.
-And don’t get me started on the goblins, which were evil for evil’s sake and as one-dimensional as it gets. Yes, you got to hate them because of what they were doing, but A) this did not make them well-written, and B) they were not even evil if they were simply trying not to go extinct and rape was their only way of procreation.
- Also, why does nobody have a name in the show? Who thought names were not characterization? Every fantard of the show defends that as fine, since they wouldn’t their names anyways. Holy shit, we got to that point where you openly it you don’t bother to names, since you know you are going to forget everything once it’s over, because it’s that shallow. It’s even more infuriating when they insist that’s exactly what it’s like when you play Dungeons and Dragons. What kind of role playing are you guys doing when you refer to your characters by class rather than name? Are you just rolling dice and calculate damage? Isn’t there any semblance of a story with interesting lore and character backgrounds? Because back when I was playing, we were doing a lot of that. And when we were creating our characters, the very first thing the statistic page was asking us to write was the damn name of the character.

And let’s not forget the amazing world building regarding these clearly dark and gritty characters in this totally not sitcom series.
-The archbishop, despite preaching about morality and how bad rape was, paradoxically adorned herself in attire that made her look like a whore, and urged men to want to molest women. Now that’s what I call well thought out world building.
-People sat on the floor when they talked to kings and popes, but when they were in a tavern, they sat on chairs. Well thought out world building indeed.
-We got to learn so many things about the origin of the goblins. And by origin, I mean theorycrafting about them for 5 minutes, since nobody knew from where they came from. This is how you create an amazing setting. With speculation, so the audience can imagine anything they like about what is going on. Great job Goblin Slayer, that’s how you do it.

Also, as much as the show pretended to have tactics and teamwork instead of being an overpowered one-man army, in reality it just had the protagonist reading the script of the episode so he would know what will happen next. It’s usually him using spells or a macguffin that would have any effect the plot demanded at the moment, a thing which allowed him to instantly win any battle in the laziest way imaginable, and made him seem undefeatable and cool. Oh, what’s that? A beholder? I didn’t know I would encounter such a monster, but luckily I happen to have a sack of flour I can use to blind it. And what’s that over there? A demon? I so happen to have a magic scroll that will destroy him.

And it was even funnier when the characters were saying he was not overpowered because he only knew how to fight goblins. The guy possessed a million skills that had nothing to do with goblins, yet were excused as him mastering them because the goblins might use them at some point. At the same time, every other far stronger and more experienced adventurer didn’t even know how to tie his own shoelaces. How is it possible for a guy who only fights the same type of monster his whole life, to know about gases and traps and war formations better than elite adventurers? In the last episode you were left to believe they would be unable to stop the horde without his advices, yet whatever he told them was basic stuff that could work against ANY enemy. How come a guy who only knows about goblins knows more about battle tactics than a hundred others who fight monsters of all kinds?

Sometimes the writer wanted you to believe the protagonist would die, but you were only given that impression because he didn’t tell his own teammates about the broken power or battle plan he had in store until the very last moment. Because if he did, there would never be a shadow of a doubt regarding the outcome.

Also, the plot armor this guy had is unbelievable. Everyone else died with a few hits and stayed dead. He on the other hand was the only one who got resurrected by sleeping with virgins. I am not joking, not only he was resurrected, he also bedded virgins while he was a corpse. Also, this has nothing to do with how resurrection or even healing works in Dungeons and Dragons, it was just another excuse for fan service and yet some had the nerve to call it mature dark fantasy based on Dungeons and Dragons.

If you want to jerk off to semi-decent bestiality, there are actual hentai for that. If on the other hand you are looking for a good anime, you are looking at the wrong place. The only thing people about this show is the rapes and the pitifully misguiding attempts to call it faithful to the Dungeons and Dragons rules. Thoses two elements aside it has nothing, and you realize it further if you watch the second season. It toned down the rape and instantly nobody cared about the show anymore.