Goblin Slayer is a "dark" medevial fantasy dungeon crawler. It's a homage to Dungeons and Dragons. Characters go on quests and kill goblins. I put "dark" in quotes because it really falls off being dark past the infamous first rape episode and becomes more lighthearted. And boring.
Characters: Generic and shallow. Goblin Killer is basically a walking joke. Kill Goblins, that's his personality. It's a pretty funny gag at first when characters react with "*exasperated sigh* all he cares about is killing Goblins.." but this quickly becomes old when it happens with every line of Goblin Slayer's dialogue and is nearly the sole source of comedy. These kind of blank slate characters can be fine, but not when it's the main character.
The female protagonist is just as bland and uninteresting. She's generic anime female character with no personality other than mindless devotion to Goblin Slayer San.
Lizard man: boring. Dwarf and Elf: Legolas and Gimli ripoff but Legolas is a generic tsundere and Gimli isn't funny. The latter 3 feel like cartoon characters and are part of the tonal issues with this show.
World building: There isn't any. We are given generic fantasy land. I keep forgetting it's not an Isekai, that's how generic this world is. You have elves, warriors, basically DND adventurer types that live in villages and go on quests.
An example of poor writing is how Goblins are considered "low level quests". Goblins in this show are portrayed as extremely dangerous and sneaky, our introduction to them is them raping and killing a group of adventures. Adventurers go in on their first quest without any fear whatsoever. If Goblins really are so dangerous, word would spread about how much of a threat they are and they'd be made higher priority quests. The worst part of this is that the "guild girl" (quest giver) obviously knows they're all going to die and she doesn't even try to stop them besides a very weak "maybe you shouldn't, it's not easy..." Any sane person who has sent adventurers on quests and sees what happens would have firmly stopped them; the writing there is just laughable. This makes guild girl a detestable character but the show treats it like we're supposed to like her.
The whole notion of goblins being weak fodder enemies is a notion we the viewer gets from books, movies and video games that feature goblins as weaklings. In a world where they are not weakings and are a clear threat, this pre-concieved notion wouldn't arrise.
To further the problem of Goblins being "low level" quests: We see Goblin Slayer going on multiple quests. Obviously if the story was just Goblin Slayer killing little goblins, the story would get boring fast. So it turns out he encounters Super Goblins, basically giant Goblins that are considered platinum rank. Platinum rank is one of the high tiers of adventurers; Super Goblins (or Ogres) being around on low level missions (multiple times) makes it laughable that Goblins are still conisdered low level quests in this world. This paired with the aforementioned horrible quest giving excuse; it's all extremely contrived and poorly thought out.
Tone: The tone of this show is all over the place. Actually it starts out dark and shocking, with the rape scene. After that it turns into very generic comedy adventure isekai. They were trying to set the tone of this world with the first episode. The problem is that you can't just have one shocking thing happen, and then completely forget about it because what you just build up feels cheap and makes the show inconsistent. I have a hard time believing that rape happened in the first episode with how lighthearted things are in the later ones.
Story: There is no story. It's just Goblin Slayer enters dungeon with cute anime girl, elf, ilzard man and dwarf, kill goblins. Rince and repeat for the first 10 episodes. Needless to say it is hardly thrilling or compelling, defiinitely not one that makes you excited to see the next episode. Watch the first 2 - 3 episodes. See how it goes from shock to shallow world building; and is already resorting to big tittie cowgirls to try to keep you interested.
Action: The action and animation is dull. Nothing interesting happens. Goblin slayer often cleaves goblins in half with his sword... that's about it. There's no emotion behind the fight scenes because all of the enemies are just orcs and goblins with no personality behind "GRRR IM EVIL". If you compare a good show like Fullmetal Alchemist, every battle in that show wasn't just a battle, it was a dialogue between two opposing sides. That made it interesting. A battle doesn't need a dialogue back and forth but if there's no tension or good action to it - the goblins rarely put up a fight and we all know girl and Goblin Slayer aren't going to die - it's just a bore.
Art: It's crap. It gets the job done, nothing special about it. Lots of cute girls. Talking heads. Very basic action. Not much to say about it. Character designs and scenes are all very dull looking and generic. Same goes for the sound.
Enjoyment: It's a bore because there's nothing to get invested in. The characters are flat and boring, the world building is laughably shoddy, and the story is non existent.
I imagine Goblin Slayer was written by someone who likes anime and wanted to make something edgy and cool but didn't really know what they were doing so they stuck in a bunch of anime tropes that they liked without understanding how those things worked. What we got is a mess of different tropes thrown together haphazardly without any substance or depth.
Overall I give Goblin Slayer a 3/10.
Thanks for the read. Let me know if there are typos. Goblin Slayer was a super disappointment to me as someone who loves edgy and dark shows. Have a great day.
