In step the Goblins. Inexperienced and Experienced adventurers alike seem to consistently underestimate the evil and capability of these "low level" beasts. There is no glory in slaying a goblin. There is no glory in slaying 100. As such hoards of these beasts are often able to group together and congregate, forming surprisingly powerful and effective roaming militias, despite their individual low intelligence and strength.
Goblin Slayer is our protagonist. A man who sees this festering, ignored evil and has a single-minded obsession with ending their barbarism. He LIVES Goblin Slaying. He eats solely because his body needs nutrition to kill Goblins. He sleeps solely because he needs to be well-rested to kill Goblins. GS is your standard grim-dark stoic protagonist. Egged on by a terrible past to prevent suffering as much as he, as one man, can.
Throughout the series we learn that, while GS goes underappreciated among the ranks of most adventurers, even those below his skill level, that he has garnered a rather impressive cult following among civilians of the world who have seen the horrors roaming bands of Goblins can inflict upon helpless villages and travellers.
The series mocks overly-positive fantasies where nothing truly goes wrong and the hero and other inhabitants of the world are always safe via last second plot-armour, in the naive and overconfident adventurers found wholesale in the world. The series mocks edgy grim-dark fantasies in the overtly brutal nature of the goblins and GS's character and history. It is interesting seeing a world in which both extreme tropes exist and characters from both interact regularly. I think it also has a positive message about the dangers of dismissing "little" threats for too long.
The majority of negative reviews on this anime accuse it of offering little substance, however to me it seems that, that is the point, as the genre as a whole is over-saturated with power fantasy anime and edgy grim-dark goreporn with little-to-no actual substance or even basic narrative, beyond letting a reader put himself in the place of a powerful protagonist who always comes out on top, regardless of the odds or allow a reader a peek into a cold, uncaring world that does not forgive weakness. GS offers a limited view into both sides of this coin, with the subplot about the perfect seemingly invulnerable "Hero" and the naive adventurers and with the main-plot following GS on his darker crusade against the threat of Goblin-kind.
Other negative reviews complain about the infamous (mostly off-camera, barely graphic in any sense of the word) rape scene. They complain it is "unnecessary" and "adds nothing" to the show. These reviews should be immediately and fully disregarded. The scene is fairly important in cementing the unwavering evil of these creatures that is overlooked due to their weak individual strength by the naive adventurer community as a whole. This complaint is thinly veiled discomfort at darker themes, not a legitimate complaint in any sense. Commonly tacked onto these reviews is a weak complaint from power-trip fans who are upset that the victim doesn't instantly recover from her unspeakable trauma and become a mary-sue of Goblin Slaying.
