Goblin Slayer (anime! light novel!)

So I watched this.

I am...okay with it? The first episode was very disturbing and atleast for me different as I tend to watch anime where adventurers have a much easier time but I do think that they could of achieved the same terrifying effect without what was pretty much an on-screen gang rape.

It does come off as gratuitous but at the very least its an very realistically horrible depiction of rape which is sadly kind of unheard of in anime and in some other pieces of media these days which is sorely needed I think so I'll let that slide for now.

Although, I heard about what happened to that Steel Adventurer party and thank fucking god they didn't show that. That is not a good way to go and definitely would of turned me off this anime and manga for good considering how it was even more graphic then what happened to the rookie party.

Edited by Wispy on Oct 15th 2018 at 11:53:51 AM

As they say there is a fine line between torture & just plain torture porn.

I personally think they should have at least mentioned that a Steel Party didn't come back from that quest. It highlights that the goblins can be dangerous even for experienced adventurers to handle if they aren't careful. But yeah, the anime made the right call not depicting their gory fates in more detail.

I suspect this was both to save time and because the producers thought it would be too much right after the first episode. That and it'd be even more disturbing considering the episode starts with blatant fanservice in the form of Cow Girl.

Edited by M84 on Oct 17th 2018 at 3:04:12 AM

If Goblins can still be dangerous to even decent ranked adventurers, then why are they still seen as low level threats that newbies think will be small fry?

Because of the low pay. A lot of adventurers, especially rookies, think the pay is proportional to the danger level. Of course, the reason the pay is so low is because that's all the poor villagers who put up the quests for goblin extermination can afford.

Rookies like the Greenhorn Warrior also gain the impression that Goblins are weak due to driving off random lone Goblins who try to steal from them. Not realizing until it's too late that fighting a bunch of Goblins, especially in their own nest, is a very different matter.

And most of the time, goblins are easy kills for experienced adventurers. The Farm battle demonstrates that handily. In that battle, due in large part to GS's tactics, it's a complete rout in favor of the Adventurers. Only the Goblin Champions score any kills, and they go down to the Silver Rankers fairly quickly too.

Again, the reason the Steel ranked party fell was because they had already killed a lot of goblins by that point and were not at the top of their game.

It also doesn't help that Steel ranked and above parties don't usually do Goblin quests in the first place, so there are precious few examples of Steel rankers being killed by goblins to serve as a warning to others.

Edited by M84 on Oct 17th 2018 at 3:22:02 AM

How much money would an average adventurer want for a goblin quest anyway? We saw this episode that Cow Girl's uncle made a fair amount in one day alone.

And even with the low pay you'd think some more adventurers would go goblin hunting over the mundane tasks that the guild offers like ditch digging.

Edited by Rynnec on Oct 16th 2018 at 2:27:36 PM

There are usually enough quests available that high level adventurers aren't hurting for work. Which doesn't say anything good about the state of the world — it's one of the unpleasant implications of an Adventure-Friendly World.

And yeah, goblin quests don't pay much. GS does enough of them — particularly since he's the only non Rookie Adventurer taking them — that he could actually live fairly comfortably and afford much better gear.

And most villagers probably aren't as well off as Cow Girl and her uncle, who between them own a sizable farm. They even have dairy cows — those are not cheap.

The most typical victims of Goblin raids are poor frontier folk who are already struggling to make a living. The pay they offer is probably the result of the village taking up a collection gathering what little they can spare.

Edited by M84 on Oct 17th 2018 at 3:40:01 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXZgBoDF4uk

I think this is the first Rammstein video I have found for goblin slayer. Common mark for an edgy series is to have an amv set to Rammstein music.

Decent to good adventurers from my understanding do know how dangerous they are but because the villagers and peasants can't pay much they don't think the goblin killing jobs are worth the pay. Those women on the steel team killed a shitload of Goblins before they were killed horribly which from my understanding killing goblins just pisses off the surviving rest as they do have enough intelligence to know how to enact cruel revenge.

And from what I have heard and seen goblins are mainly dangerous because they intentionally use very cowardly and shady tactics to kill or subdue the adventurers that try to kill them while other monsters do not. There is other really dangerous monsters like the rock worms but they don't have as big numbers nor do they also rape their victims.

I will give the story credit though. Considering how so much anime and manga whitewashes RPG monsters these days and makes them into cute sex fiends seeing an work that plays an rape monster for how horrid it would actually be is different enough to stand out from those stories.

One thing that does piss me off is how some weebs (not people that watch anime for entertainment, people that act like their whole life needs to be based solely on anime) are still missing the whole fucking point of goblins raping the women they catch. It's horrible and very damaging. It sickens me but sadly doesn't surprise me that some edgelord chucklefucks are making jokes out of that.

Well it sure doesn't help that those scenes in the manga and anime are framed like a really bad hentai.

Yeah, that sadly does not help. I am not sure how they could of done it better either. Depicting rape is very hard. I will give them credit for atleast trying to depict it realistically though even if it causes the edgelords to crawl out of their shitty caves.

I think what the author could of done is show Fighter and the other women getting some form of therapy for what happened to make it better?

In regards to the Slayer himself. I do agree that making him less of a stereotypical pretty boy or an goblin himself would of made his character way more interesting. He is okay now, but not great. I think him being an humanlike goblin that is hunting his own kind would of made for an very interesting story.

Edited by Wispy on Oct 16th 2018 at 1:26:45 AM

I think there's something interesting in how GS ultimately turns out to be an ordinary, if rather good-looking, young man barely out of his teens. He's no hulking scarred mess, no goblin, nothing. He's just an ordinary guy, albeit one with a lot of emotional scars. But when he puts on his armor and iconic helmet...

The Reveal of his face is even more effective (and amusing) since the Adventurer's Guild had made a betting pool about what he looked like. Some of them really did expect that he was a Goblin.

Edited by M84 on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:33:50 PM

Oh no rape is very simple to depict. Just don't show it.

Simply focus on the aftereffects, the condition of the victims is enough to indicate just how bad it is.

Mad Max: Fury Road did it perfectly. The plot revolves helping a bunch of sex slaves escape their tyrannical warlord. How bad was the rape, bad enough that their willing to risk their lives just to get the fuck away from him. Keep in mind the group includes 2 pregnant (one already 9 months) & they still decided to run away even with the risk of death because even death is better than living with Immortan Joe.

At the very least I would have liked for his face to show signs of stress-related aging. Cause a guy like him who went through so much, they do not come out of it pretty.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 16th 2018 at 1:34:06 AM

Keep in mind that he's only twenty.

A 20 year-old who has seen a lot of shit.

Plus was trained by an abusive mentor.

Again you do not come out of that pretty.

It could of been done that way.

Hmm. I wonder why the author didn't, I hope it was to sell how bad it was but sadly I am not so sure.

He could of just made the goblins torture their victims very nasty and graphically and probably achieved the same result of having them be depicted as awful horrible monsters.

Him being handsome is meant to subvert the expectations of the people around him. Again, they all expected him to be a goblin, a scarred mess, or even a woman...they didn't expect him to look like an ordinary good-looking young man.

Besides, it also serves as yet another thing he's got in common with his inspirations like Batman and the Punisher. They've gone through hellish brutal training and get roughed up a lot too, but they rarely get any permanent scars on their faces. Bruce Wayne in particular keeps his chiseled good looks no matter what he is put through.

It's very much done to invoke Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil and Rape as Drama. Remember also that this was originally an LN and not a manga, so a lot of it was depicted in text. The manga takes it to a whole new disturbing level — the anime depiction is actually tamer.

Edited by M84 on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:43:39 PM

The subversion doesn't work when the audience is pretty much expecting him to look like a generic light novel protag.

Yeah I saw a small few images from the manga that did not pull any punches and also heard that Fighter, Mage, and the Warrior also got some backstory too to make it worse.

The steel team having even worse fates was certainly...something.

I wouldn't say the audience expected him to look good. I know I didn't at least. Heck, I bet more people expected him to look like a goblin.

That's one of the problems with adapting an LN to a more visual medium.

Edited by M84 on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:45:34 PM

Yeah that's the issue, I've pretty much become aversed to pretty-boy protags in light novels.

Doesn't help they all use the same damn designs.

I like G-Slayer, I think he's a cool guy on a justified righteous crusade but I don't want him looking like fucking Kirito.

Now that's the line for me.

Edited by slimcoder on Oct 16th 2018 at 1:45:10 AM

At least his full face is never shown and he's wearing that helmet almost all the time. So we don't actually get to see the full facial design.

Edited by M84 on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:46:42 PM

The Priestess was kind of hoping that maybe there would be a good goblin out there which seemed to be pointing towards G-Slayer being one. Maybe he was an goblin at some point but the author decided otherwise.

He did kill the goblin kids rather brutally and all. Chrised I think the sounds of that and it being offscreen made it worse. I know why he killed them but that still didn't make it any less unpleasant to hear.

I am surprised Priestess isn't showing signs of PTSD considering what happened and what she saw.

Edited by Wispy on Oct 16th 2018 at 1:55:52 AM

If I want to be honest, I want monster interspecies sexual relationships to be consensual and not forced. But yeah, the Goblins really seem to be inspired by their earliest Dungeon and Dragons inspiration where all ugly species were usually Always Chaotic Evil and tended to practice some unsavory stuff towards women.

She's a Plucky Girl who is determined to help people, including (especially maybe) GS. And the LN does point out that she is still affected by what happened on her first mission.

This series takes the background lore concerning monsters that's added as an afterthought in most rpgs and makes it the foreground.

Edited by M84 on Oct 16th 2018 at 4:59:19 PM