Goblin Slayer – 02[Goblin Slayer]

The opening to this series is surprisingly more melancholic than I would have expected. When the shows opening started I was waiting for it to break into heavy metal but it stayed low and actually does match the rather dark nature of the series itself. After all this is a series about a PTSD madman who dedicated his life to killing all goblins and unlike Eren Yeager has actually made decent progress on that resolution. With the first episode mainly acting as a introduction of our protagonist and antagonists, the second episode sets out to go into more depth with Goblin Slayers routine. There are changes from what i have read of the manga and I am not certain if it’s truer to the source light novels but I find White Fox are handling the material well. There are some misgivings among viewers over missing scenes such as the comedic moments but I find that White Fox are focusing more on Goblin Slayers cold and ruthless nature while having him slowly get more human as the story goes on. I still find it ridiculous that this guy can somehow have a harem of three(Incoming elf girl for four) girls despite having no real charm and talking about nothing besides killing Goblins. Besides with him constantly hunting Goblins I would suspect he would smell quite bad from all the goblin blood.

I like the way that White Fox is interlacing the Slayers speech about being like a Goblin from the Goblins perspective with his merciless slaughter of a goblin hideout and one thing about this series that I do like is that despite his effort purely being out of personal revenge as well as being looked down upon by other adventurers, Goblin Slayer has gained quite a bit of fame for his exploits due to the fact that he takes care of one of the greatest threats to normal villagers. The contrast between him and other adventurers is certainly interesting as the adventurers act very much like any rpg player would. Indeed when playing an rpg why would I bother with a quest that pays little, nets me barely any exp and has no real reward besides moral grandstanding. Thus Goblin Slayers mental trauma has effectively netted him much goodwill from the people despite him never doing it for them in the first place. Even with the Slayers backstory I appreciate that White Fox are toning down the rather problematic aspects of the story as we certainly do not need a full page spread of goblins raping the protagonist’s sister in order to understand that this was a horrific traumatic event which set his course of life from that moment forward. Nor do we need any shots of goblin rape to remind us that Goblins are horrific creatures that fully deserve every pain the Slayer bestows upon them. Be it getting stabbing in the head with a pickaxe or lit on fire. Actually on that note I might as well say that fire arrows are not actually a effective weapon in reality as the wind from the arrow traveling through the air would often extinguish the flame.

There are two points of contention with this adaption for me though with the biggest being White Fox’s odd decision to render Goblin slayer in both 2D and 3D. This isn’t necessarily a rant against CGI in anime as I have no problems with Goblins being CGI at points and understand the reasoning behind it. Having a single goblin model which you can copy and paste around the place is more cost effect that drawing fifty goblins. It’s the lack of consistency which annoys me and the opening scene of this episode is a prime example. In the opening scene Goblin Slayer is having a chat with his old childhood friend and constantly throughout this scene they switch between 3D and 2D. Perhaps they thought it was seamless but to anyone watching it’s like someone pasted a toy model to the screen with how much it fails to blend into surroundings.It’s iterating as it constantly takes you out of the show to see him change so suddenly so frequently and I don’t quite understand as to why it was needed. Making a walk cycle for his childhood friend was no problem but making Goblin Slayer walk is too much trouble? Or is it that they don’t want to ruin the fanservice girl because boy is this big titted farm girl been showing a lot of that. Her very first scene isn’t even her face but instead her nude body after waking up and we got an unnessary scene of her bathing later as well which I just find strange. Fanservice is certainly nothing new but in a series like this you can’t help but feel it’s a forebringer of darker tidings as any cute girl is marked as a potential target for future goblin rape. I am just saying that in a series which features a awful lot of rape, isn’t trying to turn on your audience rather distasteful? That could lead to some rather bad fetishes developing for some people. Either way i wonder what will happen next week? WIll Goblin Slayer kill more Goblins? Well Yeah, most likely.